[This article originally appeared in the April 1994 issue of QUALITY DIGEST.]

IS TQM DEAD?
BY SCOTT MADISON PATON

Mark Twain once remarked that reports of his death were greatly exaggerated.
Those reports pale in comparison to the barrage of media attacks on what was
once hailed as the savior of U.S. manufacturing: total quality management.
 Nearly every major business magazine and newspaper has attacked TQM as
nothing but the latest in a string of failed fads. "Totaled Quality
Management" blared The Washington Post. "Quality Programs Show Shoddy
Results" cried The Wall Street Journal. "Quality? Schmality" harrumphed USA
Today.
 Sensationalism no longer focuses only on the likes of Lorena Bobbitt or
Tonya Harding. The business press delighted in "exposing" McDonnell Douglas'
"failed" TQM process. And who can forget the flurry of stories regarding
Baldrige-winner Wallace Co.'s bankruptcy?
 But even the most sensational stories usually have a kernel of truth hidden
somewhere among all the hyperbole. If so, is TQM dead? Where then lies the
corpus delicti? The smoking gun? The perpetrator? Was it Professor Plum in
the library or Consultant Bob in the boardroom?

The evidence
 Before signing the death certificate, let's examine the evidence in TQM's
supposed demise:
* Only 20 percent of Fortune 500 companies are satisfied with the results of
their TQM processes, according to a 1992 Rath & Strong survey. Seventy
percent said that performance is driven more by internal needs than customer
needs, a key TQM principle.
* Applications for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award peaked at 106
in 1991 and fell to only 76 in 1993, the second straight year of decline.
* Florida Power & Light remains the only U.S. company to have won Japan's
coveted Deming Prize. Its winning strategy was largely dismantled after
complaints of excessive bureaucracy and red tape. (Note: This article
appeared in the April 1994 issue of QUALITY DIGEST before AT&T won a Deming
Prize on October 18.)
* A survey of 300 electronics companies by the American Electronics
Association found 73 percent had quality programs in place, but, of these, 63
percent said they had failed to improve quality by even as much as 10
percent.
* A mere 19 percent of U.S. banks involve their employees in idea-suggestion
programs vs. 70 percent in Japan and 60 percent in Germany, according to a
1992 survey conducted by the now-defunct American Quality Foundation.
* A study of 30 quality programs by McKinsey & Co. found that two-thirds of
them had stalled or fallen short of yielding real improvements.
* The "balkanization" of TQM spreads on an almost daily basis as TQM
splinters into ever-smaller spheres of influence like ISO 9000 and
reengineering-these are new saviors of capitalism as we know it. Does anyone
remember zero defects, quality circles or management-by-objectives?

The accused
 If TQM is dead, who committed the crime? Callous consultants? Cash-crazed
CEOs? Left-leaning labor? Myopic middle managers? Muckraking media moguls? Or
did TQM simply slip away in the night, unable to bear the demands of global
competition?
 Maybe TQM just needs some chicken soup, bed rest and a booster shot of Japan
Inc.
 Or maybe we should look at who's running the show. How can TQM be expected
to survive when most people overseeing a quality effort have no business
doing so?
 "They take somebody who has no design experience and tell them to go out and
do it," says H. James Harrington, a principal with Ernst & Young and former
president of the American Society for Quality Control. "It just boggles my
mind. I see IBM's vice president in charge of quality and he has never worked
in a quality environment. He comes out of sales and marketing. How can you
expect IBM to succeed at that?
 "It is hard to find a quality manager or vice president of quality in the
world today who has more than five years' experience in quality. I have a
hard time finding vice presidents of quality who are certified by ASQC."

Personality profile
 Just what is TQM, anyway? Ask 100 different people to define TQM and you'll
likely get 100 different answers. Five highly respected quality "consultants"
(a term none of them seem to care for) offer their definition:
* "I define TQM as essentially consisting of three things," says Jack Zenger,
president of Zenger-Miller Inc. "One, getting the organization more
customer-focused. Two, streamlining work processes. Three, empowering people
to make improvements in their own work."
* "Basically, total quality is the competitive connector," explains Armand
Feigenbaum, president of General Systems Co., originator of the term "total
quality management" and past president of ASQC. "It reconnects organizations
with their markets, customers, suppliers and investors through the creation
of value."
* "The traditional definition of TQM applies quality thinking across the
whole organization using essentially statistical process control methods
aimed at organizing work processes in such a way that they could be
statistically analyzed and quality-improved," offers Karl Albrecht, president
of Karl Albrecht Associates and co-author of Service America!
* "It is not a technique," emphasizes Paul Kikta, director of quality
management and organizational alignment for Ernst & Young. "It is not a
process. It is not, in my opinion, some little, fly-by-night fad. It is a
basic philosophy of the way in which I want to do business as an
organization."
* "TQM is an organizational management system directed at improving the total
efficiency, effectiveness and adaptability of an organization," observes
Harrington. "It reaches past the thought patterns of products into the
thought patterns of the total performance of an organization."

 Five well-respected men; five different answers. Five men who, whether they
will admit it or not, owe their notoriety to TQM. Why aren't their
definitions more similar? But they are similar in one respect: TQM is a
philosophy, not a science. Ask five well-respected preachers to explain God,
and you'll likely get five different answers, too. Imagine what would happen
if you asked those preachers if God is dead.
 The same five men offer their opinion on the "death" of TQM:
* "I neither think that it is dead nor that the popular press has labeled it
as being dead," responds Feigenbaum.
* "There are two questions there," proposes Albrecht. "One, is TQM dead? Two,
has it failed? I think it has failed. I don't think it is dead. I think it
will keep coming back in successive incarnations."
* "The term TQM is a bad choice," states Harrington. "A better term is
performance improvement or process improvement. TQM really provides a
misleading thought pattern to upper management. If we had it to do over, we
would not have chosen the term TQM."
* "To the people who are serious subscribers to the whole total quality
concept and management philosophy, I don't see them wavering one little bit,"
says Zenger. "The people who are out searching for the latest fad and the
people who are kind of the dilettantes and flit from on thing to another; I
think, for them, TQM is dead."
* "Will the term total quality continue to exist?" asks Kikta. "It probably
shouldn't. I am not sure that one should be wedded to the term total quality.
Maybe it is time that those words are gone, but I don't think the philosophy
and what it aspires to will ever die. I don't think an organization can
survive in the world-class, world-competitive market without those precepts."

 TQM may work great for building rockets, but the TQM philosophy isn't really
rocket science. And TQM, contrary to popular belief, isn't new. The first
training film on TQM debuted 40 years ago. Called "Right First Time," the
film focused on the key elements of TQM: reducing variation, continuous
improvement, supplier relations, and listening to and working with your
customers. It remains one of the best "TQM" films to date. The British
Productivity Council produced the film, which is still available on video
from PQ Systems in Dayton, Ohio.
 Although the late W. Edwards Deming may not have liked the term TQM, his
work with Walter Shewhart and Joseph M. Juran at AT&T's Bell Labs was the TQM
of its day. Just as the craft guilds of the pre-Industrial Revolution worked
at turning out quality products and meeting customer expectations, so, too,
did the late Allan Mogensen's work simplification in the 1950s. And before
QUALITY IS FREE, Philip Crosby worked toward continuous improvement with his
zero defects concept in the 1960s. Kaoru Ishikawa wanted nothing less with
quality circles in the 1970s.
 TQM is a philosophy. Philosophies are seldom suddenly born, and they almost
never die. They simply get improved upon.
 TQM is not dead nor is it dying. It's undergoing yet another metamorphosis
and will emerge with yet another name. It's sure to be new, improved and
ready to go to work.

What's next?
 A number of "new" terms are vying to be TQM's "replacement," including ISO
9000, reengineering and a renewed focus on productivity.
 It's hard to imagine a management trend generating as much confusion and
debate as ISO 9000 has. To some, ISO 9000 is the Holy Grail. To others, it's
the antithesis of TQM.
 Albrecht sees ISO 9000 as the next great leap backward. "I believe ISO 9000
is one more turn of the wheel of the old paradigm," he says. "It is one more
attempt to do the same wrong thing harder."
 Wisdom, observes Albrecht, cannot be stored in a document and retrieved when
needed. "The problem with ISO 9000 is that it starts with a flawed
assumption, which is that the collective wisdom and knowledge of the
organization is incorporated in a bunch of manuals on a shelf," explains
Albrecht. "It assumes that if only we could use those manuals effectively, we
would have an effective organization."
 Harrington disagrees, saying that ISO 9000 should be done before launching a
TQM process. "If you don't have a quality system, you can't build anything,"
he counters. "Before you start TQM, you ought to have a quality system. ISO
9000 gets you up to the starting gate. TQM gets you into the winners'
circle."
 And what about the noisiest of the new buzzwords, reengineering?
 Albrecht, a pessimist when it comes to TQM, sees reengineering as little
more than a short-lived offshoot of a dying philosophy. "TQM is just the last
dying gasp of the Harvard model, and I think we will go through several gasps
of it," emphasizes Albrecht. "One of those gasps is reengineering. I think
reengineering will accomplish some useful things but certainly will not live
up to the potential that it has been hyped for."
 New fads to watch for include a renewed emphasis on productivity.
 "The next big thing on the horizon is going to be a focus on productivity
and productivity improvement," predicts Zenger. "Productivity is the ultimate
measure of everything that we do."
 But an emphasis on productivity improvement can easily lead to major
investment in equipment while ignoring people and processes, warns
Harrington. "Our banking systems are a good example of that," he states.
"They poured billions of dollars into improving their productivity. But when
you look at actual productivity-value added per person-we find that banks
were most efficient in 1979 because their focus has since then primarily been
on technology without looking at people and processes."

Elements of success
 Whatever you call your TQM process, six rules determine the success of your
efforts:
* Measure costs-Sooner or later somebody will want proof that "this quality
stuff" yields a payback. Philip Crosby may say that quality is free, but the
budgets of senior management are not.
 "The notion that quality results aren't business-connected stems from some
very bad research," insists Feigenbaum. "Years ago, people went to Japan and
what they thought they heard was to emphasize the quality dimension and
forget the cost dimension because if you talk the cost dimension, then
somehow you will have a negative impact. That isn't what they heard at all.
The Japanese were so advantaged in cost at that particular time that it
wasn't a major issue for them. Today it is entirely different."
* Integrate TQM into your mission-It's essential that quality be driven by
the business purpose of your organization. Measuring, charting and analyzing
data is useless without a proper frame of reference. That reference must
always be: How does this affect my entire organization?
 "I think the unfortunate thing about TQM advocates," notes Albrecht, "has
been that they go through an organization looking for anything that can be
measured and charted and graphed and then call that the work of an
organization. We come up with all the charts, graphs, measurements and
statistics, yet the organization is still not effective because we haven't
evoked a frame of reference for looking at excellence that makes sense for
the organization's mission."
* Use the right tools-One recent study found that firms use 945 different
tools in their TQM processes. Unfortunately, tools do little good if used
incorrectly or inappropriately. Using teams or statistical process control or
quality function deployment is great, but no single tool is TQM, and no magic
combination of tools guarantees TQM success.
 "When TQM has failed, it is not because they used bad tools," says
Harrington. "It is because they implemented them ineffectively."
 Harrington cautions that just because an outside consultant comes in to
train people in quality tools, that's no guarantee that the right tools will
be taught or used within the organization.
 According to Harrington: "A professional [consultant] will say, 'I know 400
tools; you know your business. Let's put these tools together so that we can
cause some change in our leadership styles-some change in the way we measure
ourselves. Let's define what we want to change, and let's lead and get to
that point.' "
* Balance people, processes and technology-TQM's success, in large part,
hinges on successfully balancing people, processes and technology. Too much
focus on technology alienates customers and employees. Focus only on
processes, and technological considerations may be overlooked. A focus solely
on people easily leads to bloated payrolls and poor customer service.
 "A TQM effort that addresses just people or just processes or just
technology is doomed to failure," cautions Harrington.
* Don't lose people to teams-Although teams are a critical element of any TQM
process, individual initiative will ultimately make or break any
organization. Just as organizations must balance people, processes and
technology, they must also balance employee involvement in teams against
individual excellence.
 "The biggest single mistake I see is that lack of people focus," explains
Harrington. "That may shock you because you think TQM is just about teams.
Teams can help you have a good product, meet all the specifications and get
very few complaints from your customers, but they will never make you an
outstanding or excellent company.
 "Excellence only occurs when each individual starts taking pride in the way
he or she answers the telephone, writes letters and interfaces with
customers. You have to go beyond teams to individual excellence. That's when
a company will be a world leader."
* Allow time to change the organization's culture-The most remarkable aspect
in the supposed demise of TQM is how quickly many TQM processes are
pronounced dead. TQM takes time, a very long time, to become fully ingrained
in an organization culture. Only when TQM stops being a separate process or
division or some else's responsibility and becomes just part of the way an
organization functions can it be pronounced a success.
 "The change from a traditional, inwardly focused, command-and-control
environment to one that is customer-focused is a difficult, arduous,
demanding process," warns Kikta. "I think that those who are casting stones
don't have the fortitude for the battle."
 Part of ensuring a successful transition to TQM involves sustaining the
organizational change methodologies that will transform the organization, a
process many senior managers seem unaware of.
 "Until executives understand organizational change methodologies and put
them in place, training a team and sending them out to go solve problems is a
waste of money," advises Harrington.
 The complete transition to a TQM organization may take longer than some
shortsighted senior managers are willing to wait. The cultural change needs
to continue throughout the organization for three CEO cycles to become fully
ingrained, says Harrington.

A premature death?
 Reports of TQM's demise may be premature, to be sure. However, TQM has died
an untimely death in a number of organizations. It wasn't a natural death.
TQM was struck down in these organizations by nearsighted executives pursuing
the Holy Grail of short-term profits. They are the prime suspects in the
death of TQM.
 Their accomplices? Trend-chasing consultants who were more than willing to
sell their prepackaged snake oil.
 The victim? TQM will survive-philosophies usually do. The real victims are
the thousands of employees, shareholders, customers and suppliers who rightly
believed that TQM held the prospect of higher profits, lower costs and a
higher standard of living.
 No, TQM isn't dead. TQM failures just prove that bad management is still
alive and kicking.

 Scott Paton is editor in chief of Quality Digest.
COPYRIGHT 1994 QUALITY DIGEST, A DIVISION OF QCI INTERNATIONAL, 1350 VISTA
WAY, RED BLUFF, CA  96080. (916) 527-8875.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRODUCTION OF THIS ARTICLE IN ANY MEDIA WITHOUT
PERMISSION IS EXPRESSLY PROHIBITED.



Note from Scott Paton: I would happy to send you a free copy of that issue
[that is, the April 1994 issue of _Quality_Digest_] and a current issue as
well if you send me your mailing address. I welcome your comments. [Scott s
Internet address is: qualitydig@aol.com.]