Competitiveness for the future: Building onto the TQM foundation

Total Quality Management (TQM) is often seen as the panacea for improvement in our businesses. Using total quality principles certainly can reduce cost and lead to significant improvements. In fact, Baldrige winners have averaged a 99% return on investment. TQM is the practice of improving processes, reducing cycle time, improving customer satisfaction, educating your workforce, and obtaining operational competitiveness. It is a management theory which, if practiced properly, will reduce cost. However, the largest percentage of cost reduction is typically realized in the early years of implementation. The percentage of cost reductions realized due to TQM decreases significantly over time due to the fact that there is less to fix.