Total Quality Management (TQM) movement cannot be separated from Lean Manufacturing. Demming’s photo is in the lobby of Toyota’s headquarters, bigger than the photo of founder Toyoda Sakichi. Demming didn’t find an audience in the US after WW II, because managers at the time thought that poor quality was caused by people who just didn’t want to do a good job. They didn’t think there was much managers could do to improve quality except exhort employees to do a better job.

Demming’s basic message was that quality is a management responsibility, and poor quality was almost always the result of systems imposed on workers which thwarted people’s desire to do high quality work. He taught the Japanese managers how to empower production workers to investigate problems and systematically improve processes. He taught that teamwork and long term, trust-based relationships with suppliers were far better than adversarial relationships. He emphasized a culture of continuous improvement of both processes and products.

In the 1980’s, Demming’s fourteen points (See Appendix 1) were studied by virtually every manufacturing manager. Among these fourteen points are the well known mantra’s:

Don’t Inspect Quality Inconstantly Improve the System. Break Down Barriers Between Departments.But a few of Demming’s fourteen points might seem revolutionary even today, such as:Drive Out Fear.Eliminate Quotas, Numerical Goals and Merit Ratings. Don't Award Business Based on Price; Minimize Total Cost.

The basic practices of TQM in the 1980’s might be summed up in these ten simple rules:

• Eliminate Waste
• Minimize Inventory
• Maximize Flow
• Pull From Demand
• Empower Workers
• Meet Customer Requirements
• Do it Right the First Time
• Abolish Local Optimization
• Partner With Suppliers
• Create a Culture of Continuous Improvement

These Lean Manufacturing rules have been tested and proven over the last two decades. They have been adapted to logistics, customer service, health care, finance, and even construction. The application of the rules may change slightly from one industry to the next, but the underlying principles have stood the test of time in many sectors of the economy.

Summary of W. Edwards Demming’s 14 points

1. Create consistency of purpose.
2. Adopt a win-win philosophy.
3. Don’t depend on mass inspection; build quality in.
4. Don’t award business based on price; minimize total cost; build long-term relationships of loyalty and trust with a single suppliers.
5. Constantly improve the system of production, service, planning, etc.
6. Train for skills.
7. Provide leadership: help people do a better job.
8. Drive out fear and build trust so everyone can do a better job.
9. Break down barriers between departments; abolish competition and build a win-win system of cooperation.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations and zero defect targets; the cause of the bulk of problems lie in the system, and are beyond the power of workers to correct.
11. . Eliminate quotas, numerical goals and Management by Objectives; substitute leadership.
12. Remove barriers that rob people of joy in their work; abolish the annual rating or merit system.
13. Educate and improve individuals.
14. Involve the entire organization

What is Total Productive Maintenance ( TPM ) ?

It can be considered as the medical science of machines. Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a maintenance program which involves a newly defined concept for maintaining plants and equipment. The goal of the TPM program is to markedly increase production while, at the same time, increasing employee morale and job satisfaction.

TPM brings maintenance into focus as a necessary and vitally important part of the business. It is no longer regarded as a non-profit activity. Down time for maintenance is scheduled as a part of the manufacturing day and, in some cases, as an integral part of the manufacturing process. The goal is to hold emergency and unscheduled maintenance to a minimum.

TPM - History

TPM is a innovative Japanese concept. The origin of TPM can be traced back to 1951 when preventive maintenance was introduced in Japan. However the concept of preventive maintenance was taken from USA.

Nippondenso was the first company to introduce plant wide preventive maintenance in 1960. Preventive maintenance is the concept wherein, operators produced goods using machines and the maintenance group was dedicated with work of maintaining those machines, however with the automation of Nippondenso, maintenance became a problem as more maintenance personnel were required. So the management decided that the routine maintenance of equipment would be carried out by the operators. ( This is Autonomous maintenance, one of the features of TPM ). Maintenance group took up only essential maintenance works.

Thus Nippondenso which already followed preventive maintenance also added Autonomous maintenance done by production operators. The maintenance crew went in the equipment modification for improving reliability. The modifications were made or incorporated in new equipment. This lead to maintenance prevention. Thus preventive maintenance along with Maintenance prevention and Maintainability Improvement gave birth to Productive maintenance. The aim of productive maintenance was to maximize plant and equipment effectiveness to achieve optimum life cycle cost of production equipment.

By then Nippon Denso had made quality circles, involving the employees participation. Thus all employees took part in implementing Productive maintenance. Based on these developments Nippondenso was awarded the distinguished plant prize for developing and implementing TPM, by the Japanese Institute of Plant Engineers ( JIPE ). Thus Nippondenso of the Toyota group became the first company to obtain the TPM certification.

Why TPM ?

TPM was introduced to achieve the following objectives. The important ones are listed below.

• Avoid wastage in a quickly changing economic environment.
• Producing goods without reducing product quality.
• Reduce cost.
• Produce a low batch quantity at the earliest possible time.
• Goods send to the customers must be non defective.

Similarities and differences between TQM and TPM :

The TPM program closely resembles the popular Total Quality Management (TQM) program. Many of the tools such as employee empowerment, benchmarking, documentation, etc. used in TQM are used to implement and optimize TPM. Following are the similarities between the two.

• Total commitment to the program by upper level management is required in both programmes
• Employees must be empowered to initiate corrective action, and
• A long range outlook must be accepted as TPM may take a year or more to implement and is an on-going process. Changes in employee mind-set toward their job responsibilities must take place as well.

The differences between TQM and TPM is summarized below.

TQM	Category	TPM
Object	Quality ( Output and effects)	Equipment ( Input and cause )
Mains of attaining goal	Systematize the management.  It is software oriented	Employees participation and it is hardware oriented
Target	Quality for PPM	Elimination of losses and wastes.