Supervisor's Survival Kit: Your First Step into Management, Ninth Edition

THE THREE BASIC ELEMENTS OF TQM

Quality First

Although one must recognize that quantity (the number of products produced or customers served) runs a close second, under TQM quality is pushed up front because management understands that higher quality puts a firm in a better position to compete domestically and internationally.

Mrs. Kelly decided to open a small delicatessen in her hometown that would compete head-to-head with one that had been in operation for more than twenty years and had an excellent reputation. Was there room for two delicatessens in the same town? Most observers said she would last less than a year. But Mrs. Kelly adopted a new paradigm, the Total Quality Management (TQM) approach. She purchased the highest quality food ...