Total quality management in the Technical University of Iasi

The paper presents an introduction in Total Quality management, the concept and principles of Total Quality management, ways to measure the quality in universities and the level of quality assurance in technical higher education. This paper is the consequence of a long period of discussions and research of the members on Professional Councils and university Senates. The main conclusion is that the universities could transfer the principles and practices of Total quality Management from productive activities to the technical higher education. Pour quality of education processes is causing waste, meaning the owner and actionaries insatisfaction, from profitability and quality point of view of firm's products on internal and external market. It is show up that universities have a high capability to create and acquire knowledge. but it is difficult to apply those changes on administrative and commercial aspects. This is a special observation, mainly because the word university comes from Latin language and it means that the university's main objective is to ask questions about anything, in purpose of educating the others. The consequences of a good knowledge and teaming are implementing the change. In some cases the universities even forget to ask questions about where changes are to be made. We appreciate that the changes of values in the future are related to the directions in which we had to acquire the knowledge and the way we could act to apply them. The main purpose of the paper is an attempt to adapt the ISO 9000 standards to the specific term of higher education and, on the other hand, to analyse the necessary resources for making the main changes to implement those concepts and introduce on day to day activities the knowledge of Total Quality Management.