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Tqm: Evolution, Scope and Strategic Significance for Management Development

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TQM: Evolution, Scope and Strategic Significance for Management Development R.A. DiPietro Montclair State University School of Business, Upper Montclair, New Jersey, USA The Evolution of Total Quality Management Any attempt at understanding TQM and applying it meaningfully in building a healthy market-driven organization requires an awareness of its evolution as an interdisciplinary model for managing organizations. For the uninitiated and, to a lesser extent, those reasonably familiar with it, the semantic jungle of acronyms developed thus far can be so mindboggling as to inhibit successful utilization of what many view as the appropriate paradigm for the twenty-first century. From its earliest roots, developed by Walter Shewhart at …show more content…

More dramatically, quality enhancement, when approached correctly, reduces real total cost. A widely accepted definition of quality is, quite simply, "an absence of variation from customer expectations". In today 's more competitive value-driven environment, focus on the price-quality equation necessitates a move away from a "quality at any cost" mentality. The traditional American approach to quality control has been inspection-oriented. According to David Kearns, former CEO of Xerox Corporation, drawing on research commissioned by the Business Round Table, of which he was a member, as much as one-third of the American workforce has been preoccupied with inspecting and correcting the work of the other two-thirds. John C. Day, DuPont 's manager of world class manufacturing, states that in an inspection-oriented plant, more than half of all workers are somehow involved in detecting and reworking rejects. The total investment in this process can account for 20 to 35 per cent of production costs, and in extreme cases 50 per cent[1]. These observable realities in no way assist in estimating the hidden costs associated with lost customers due to the inconvenience, irritation and frustration they traditionally experience in warranty and service activities. Customer satisfaction researchers have estimated that

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