To achieve quality, you must think quality. (Viewpoint )

Financial Executive, May, 1993 by Johnson, H. Thomas

Total Quality Management (TQM) initiatives remain a valid approach to the transformation of companies into financially viable, customer-oriented learning organizations. The disappointing results often attributed to TQM initiatives can be traced to the fact that many companies claiming to have implemented quality programs have merely continued using traditional bottom-line-oriented methods while relabeling them as new quality-oriented procedures. These companies fail to realize the essential point that TQM initiatives can only succeed if they lead to a 'paradigm shift' in the way business is conducted, so that bottom-line-oriented methods are discarded in favor of customer-oriented, learning-centered methods. Without this 'paradigm shift,' TQM initiatives fail since companies do not...

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