Abstract:

Total Quality Management (TQM) has been touted as the second industrial revolution dating back to the 1940’s where it began its journey to bring Japan into the forefront of competitive quality. This paper provides a historical journey of TQM from its beginnings through its evolutionary transformation into today’s business climate. The fundamental principles of TQM are explored and the resounding benefits identified with detailed measures of success. A review of the challenges and barriers that prohibit most companies from achieving these successes is conducted to better understand why even the most well intentioned companies are not always able to sustain this management technique founded on sound quality principles. Finally, this paper outlines future research direction to develop sound understanding and reasoning related to the identified challenges and barriers and to propose a conceptual implementation model based on them.