Total Quality Management

Total quality management (TQM) is a philosophy, methodology and system of tools aimed at creating and maintaining mechanism of organization’s continuous improvement culture. It involves all departments and employees into improvement of processes and products. It helps to reduce costs and to meet and exceed needs and expectations of customers and other stakeholders of an organization. TQM encompasses the concepts of business and social excellence that is sustainable approach to organization’s competition, efficiency improvement, leadership and partnership. The objectives of this course is to introduce the main principles of business and social excellence, to generate knowledge and skills of students to use models and quality management methodology for the implementation of total quality management in any sphere of business and public sector.

In the past, quality control in most organisations was the responsibility of the production department, and it was wrongly assumed to be synonymous with physical inspection of goods before they left the premises. The modern view is that quality control and management are the responsibility of everybody in the organisation, starting with the chief executive officer, including managers, drivers, cleaners and even some external stakeholders like suppliers.