The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) defines Total Quality Management (TQM) as a, "management approach for an organization, centered on quality, based on the participation of all its members and aiming at long-term success through customer satisfaction, and benefits to all members of the organization and to society" (Total Quality Management). Although TQM didn't become popular until the 1980's, the management approach originated in the 1950's. This paper begins by discussing the types of problems that TQM seeks to solve and the mechanisms it uses to solve these issues. It next discusses how globalization and demonstrated success by many companies have made TQM an imperative for most organizations to survive in an increasingly competitive environment. Even so, failure rates for TQM implementations are high. Therefore, this paper concludes by identifying common reasons for failure and by making specific recommendations to increase the liklihood of a sucessful implementation.
             Contrary to its common association with the assembly line, TQM applies to the entire organization. It is mainly concerned with continuous improvement in all work, from high level strategic planning and decision-making, to detailed execution of work elements on the shop floor (Hashmi). Continuous improvement must deal with improving results, and, more importantly with improving capabilities to produce better results in the future. According to TQM, the five major areas of focus for capability improvement should be demand generation, supply generation, technology, operations and people capability.
             A central principle of TQM is that most mistakes are caused by faulty systems and processes, not people (Hashmi). Thus, it is possible to identify and eliminate the root cause of such mistakes and to prevent repetition by changing the process. TQM offers three major mechanisms of prevention (Hashmi):
             1.Preventing mistakes (defects...