Remember TQM?
I do. Total Quality
Management rose 20 years ago and fell a short time later. It was considered by
some in the project management field, at the beginning, as the state-of-the-art
successor to our ancient craft.
TQM was the new
wonder. Project Management, as we knew it, was out.
I didn’t see it
that way. I pegged TQM as embroidery on the working jeans of project management
– a nice enhancement, but you still had to have the jeans.
TQM was a
perfectly respectable system, initially devised to improve management of
quality in manufacturing processes. W. Edwards Deming developed the modern form
in Japan after World War II, where he went as a representative of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture. The program helped Japan recover from the
devastation of the war.
