All About Total Quality Management (TQM) | Smartsheet

While TQM’s method of using employees as a source of ideas and solutions can help companies, Six Sigma’s process and measurement focus — which promotes data-driven decisions — offers compelling benefits. Walters uses the example of producing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
 
“We’d start out with two pieces of bread, add the peanut butter, add the jelly, and put the two pieces of bread together. But, maybe the edges are smashed together. Maybe the corners are damaged. Or, when our customers get it, they say the bread is soggy. Within that process, we’re not sure whether we’re putting on too much jelly or whether we’re using the wrong type of peanut butter. You just don’t know what it is, so you have these group meetings and brainstorm until your customer response is what you want, and the level of acceptance of your quote unquote quality product is where you desire it to be,” says Walters.
 
With Six Sigma, however, the questioning process would drill down to the details. What kind of bread were you using? What kind of peanut butter? What kind of jelly?
 
“That to me is the benefit because it takes the onus off the people and focuses strictly on the process,” asserts Walters. “So, if we tighten up the process, we can feel like we already have quality people. And after the process is repeating in the same manner, even if there are other performance issues, that automatically sets you back to the human side. But then you can manage the human issue properly because you don’t have to worry about your processes. Your numbers aren’t changing.”
 
Walters states further that most companies want to develop brand loyalty, even if their product is essentially the same as a competitor’s. “If we use TQM, we hope a product is of better quality, so you’ll come back. With TQM, you have to wait for your customers to confirm that it’s good. With Six Sigma, at the end of the day, you don’t guess if your product is better. You know it. If you properly identify your market and your product has the best fit for the niche, you know you have the best product from a process perspective. That leads to the deeper relationships,” he says. 
 
If Six Sigma can offer definitive results for an existing process and TQM can help achieve results over time, where does Kaizen fit? Kaizen is a Japanese word meaning philosophy of improvement. It includes the 5 Ss, seiri, seiton, seiso, Seiketsu, and shitsuke, translated loosely into English as sort, set in order, shine, standardize, and sustain. Kaizen is considered more of a philosophy for how to organize your workspace and the larger workplace and how to have the right attitude toward your work and coworkers. 
 
Kaizen events are improvement efforts that involve small teams that spend a short time, usually about a week, considering and testing improvements. The team then presents its findings to management. Management periodically reviews the solutions to make sure that they continue to benefit the team. 
 
Like TQM, Kaizen approaches efforts from the perspective that the whole company is responsible for quality and that improvement must be continuous. It is generally less methodological than Six Sigma, although Kaizen may inform the lean aspect of Lean Six Sigma.