In consumer business, quality can be defined as meeting the need of the customer, or going beyond what their expectations are. “Customers that are businesses will define quality very clearly using: specifications, standards, and other measures” (Goetsch & Davis, 2010 p.4). Most people would know quality when they see it. Quality is the value that the consumer perceives something as based on measures of standards and characteristics. The perception of quality can lead a company to success or failure.
Total quality can be defined as “an approach to doing business that attempts to maximize an organization’s competitiveness through the continual improvement of the quality of its products, services, people, processes, and environments” (Goetsch & Davis, 2010 p.22). The subject of total quality has a much broader approach as compared to quality. Total quality includes the results, the quality of the people, and process quality. There were pioneers of total quality whose philosophies promoted that total quality was defined and measured by customers and businesses. The main characteristics of total quality are: “strategically based, customer focus, obsession with quality, scientific approach, long-term commitment, teamwork, continual process improvement, bottom-up education and training, freedom through control, unity of purpose, and employee involvement and empowerment” (Goetsch & Davis, 2010 p.22).
Compared to quality which is a concept of the individual consumer, total quality is a number of concepts that are related and brought together (Goetsch & Davis, 2010). The concept of total quality development is contributed to by many people. W. Edwards was the most influential total quality pioneer that contributed to the development of total quality. Deming helped influence total quality through showing how quality started through leaders and management. Deming is well known for “Fourteen...