A manufacturer can produce what they think is a quality product, but unless it meets the consumer's standards it will never be considered a quality product. Once American companies adopted quality programs, our products competed much better. TQM is a philosophy that makes quality values the driving force behind leadership, design, planning, and improvement initiatives. The purpose of quality management is to deploy the quality necessary to satisfy and even delight the customer. It is a system engineering process that prioritizes and links the product development process so that it assures product quality as defined by the consumer.
Continuous improvement is the idea that improvement in quality is always possible.
Continuous improvement utilizes benchmarking to help organizations continually rejuvenate and strive for top quality in their service or product. Continuous improvement does this by taking into consideration the management, production, and marketing of a product. Total quality control is the system developed to implement continuous improvement. The tools of total quality control include the seven basic tools and the seven new management tools among others. Total quality control typically progresses through three phases.