Total Quality Management: Strategies and Techniques Proven at Today’s Most Successful Companies

Arnold Weimerskirch. John Wiley & Sons, $32.95 (286pp) ISBN 978-0-471-59538-0

Total quality management (TQM), the hot business topic, is frequently presented in a numbing, almost sacerdotal manner. But in their coherent analysis, George, a business consultant and author of The Baldrige Quality System and Weimerskirch, corporate quality director at Honeywell and a Baldridge Award panel judge, have managed to demythologize TQM. They provide a new management model in which “companies work very hard at bringing their customers into their organization.” To help managers achieve this goal and earn a profit, they outline Baldrige criteria and emphasize that “leadership holds the key to the door of continuous improvement.” With candor they note that TQM is not magic and that a minimum of two years is the time frame “most companies of any size are looking at before the transition from a traditional management model to the new systems model begins to become institutionalized.” Add to this the authors’ superb coverage of customer-focused management, proactive employee environments and 53 superior case studies and you have the makings of this total quality book. (Feb.)

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Reviewed on: 01/31/1994