Six Sigma and TQM

Posted by: meikah | 21 November 2007 | 11:41 pm

Long before Six Sigma, there was Total Quality Management or TQM that was the panacea for ailing companies.

The TQM approach started in the 1950′s and became popular in the 1980′s. TQM is a philosophy that makes quality the driving force behind leadership, design, planning, and improvement initiatives. This philosophy is governed by eight elements: ethics, integrity, trust, training, teamwork, leadership, recognition, communication. Read more…

Six Sigma on the other hand, is a disciplined, data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating defects (driving towards six standard deviations between the mean and the nearest specification limit) in any process — from manufacturing to transactional and from product to service. Read more…

How do they differ then?

BusinessKnowledgeSource.com puts the two side by side and highlights the following differences:

1. TQM helps improve quality but it often reaches a stage where no further quality improvements can be made. Six sigma focuses on taking quality improvement processes to the next level.
2. TQM views quality as conformance to internal requirements. Six Sigma focuses on improving quality by reducing the number of defects.
3. Six Sigma helps numerous organizations because it reduces the operational costs by focusing on reducing the number of defects that are produced, reducing the cycle time, and cost savings.
4. Six Sigma focuses on cost cutting measures that can reduce the value and quality and getting rid of costs that have no value to the customer.
5. TQM focuses on improving individual operations within unrelated business processes, which means it has a broad view compared to Six Sigma’s narrow view, which focuses on improving all operations in a single business process.

What’s your take on this?

Source:
A Comparison of TQM Versus Six Sigma

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