First International Conference on Emerging Trends in Engineering and Technology
A comparative review of TQM, TPM and related organisational performance
improvement programs
A. P. Kedar R. R. Lakhe V. S. Deshpande P. V. Washimkar
Asst. Professor Director Professor
PIET, Nagpur SQMS, Nagpur SRKNEC, Nagpur PIET, Nagpur
Abstract
Competitiveness is a driving force behind the
revolution of global business. Total Quality
Management (TQM), Total productive Maintenance
(TPM), Six Sigma, Business Process Reengineering
(BPR), Lean, International Organisation for
Standardization (ISO) series of standards and so on
are most popular initiatives employed by the
manufacturing organizations as Organizational
Performance Improvement Techniques. All these
approaches are generated in developed countries and
have different orientations. Similarities, differences
and interrelationship among these techniques in terms
of objectives concept, methodologies and scope have
remained confusing to the industry. Similarly, selection
of one of these or combination of several of these
techniques has remained a problematic issue in
industry. All approaches are useful but to be treated
with caution. Each has its strength and weakness and
also in some cases a certain amount of overlap. This
paper reviews in brief the theoretical aspect of TQM,
TPM, Six Sigma, BPR, Lean and ISO series of
standards which highlights similarity, differences and
potentiality of these approaches to improve
organizational performance.
1. Introduction
In Today’s world of intense competition the
industrial growth and survival depends on various
strategies followed by the organizations. If the
strategies are properly implemented, the organization
may become cost effective, responsive in operation and
may meet needs of customer in competitive
environment. Contemporary strategic thinking is
dominated by the central notion that the business
performance is a result of successful implementation of
organizational performance improvement program such
as TQM, TPM, Six Sigma, BPR, Lean, ISO series of
978-0-7695-3267-7/08 $25.00 © 2008 IEEE 725
DOI 10.1109/ICETET.2008.133
M.V.Wakhare
Lecturer Lecturer
PIET, Nagpur
standards and so on. These programs are employed
world over for attaining customer satisfaction,
reliability, productivity, market share, profitability and
even survival, which are directly affected by the quality
of organization’s product, services and performance
[12] [2] [4]. These philosophies have worldwide appeal
and their principles have received widespread attention
over the last two decades in many organizations-large
or small, profit or non profit, manufacturing or service,
commercial or government.
A wave of improving manufacturing/service
competitiveness arose in the late ’80s.The literature
review reveal that the earliest of corporate
transformation efforts was the “TQM” effort of mid
’80s. Then came the “Six sigma” program pioneered by
Motorola. Along the way, in 1987, “ISO 9000” and got
mixed with TQM. It was followed by the concept
“Total Productive Maintenance” which was extension
of maintenance. A little later the concept of “Lean
Manufacturing” was brought in 1990. During the same
period, 1990, “BPR” emerged as the concept, which
enables organisation to take a radical and revolutionary
examination of the way in which it operates.
Table 1 (Annexure-1) provides an outline of the
characteristics of the six approaches which highlights
similarities and difference between the approaches. The
comparison finds many similarities between the
concepts, especially between TPM and Lean. This
suggests there is strong linking between the two, but as
a total they are two separate concepts. BPR is the most
exceptional among the six concepts in terms of being
abrupt, short term and renewing rather than improving
in the long term. Comparison between the six concepts
indicates that focus of changes in TQM comes within
the relation between customers and suppliers over a
long period of time, where BPR endures radical
improvement process over a short period. Change in
TPM and Lean manufacturing initiate from continuous
improvement within the production. ISO focus on
quality goals based on internal capabilities. TPM
focuses primarily on improvement of production
equipment, where as Lean manufacturing has emphasis
on flow. Overall continuous improvement serves as
common denominator for the TQM, TPM, Six Sigma,
Lean and ISO. This paper reviews theoretical aspect of
the six most popular improvement approaches, in brief,
employed over last two decades based on intensive
review of international articles.
2. What needs to be improved?
Of course, performance should be improved. At the
operative level, performance improvement is about
identifying value streams and reducing waste.
Definitions of waste and losses, e.g. downtime and
rework, are included in most Performance
Improvement methods. The performance objectives
may be speed, quality, flexibility, cost and precision of
operations as described by [18]. The reason for using
these performance objectives, is that they are of a
general nature and are widely accepted, [19].
Furthermore, it is important to find the improvement
factors with high impact on performance. Company
boards and management, as well as employees, have to
focus on productivity and quality rather than have a
strong focus on immediate return on investments only.
3. Performance improvement
Performance Improvement (PI) is a process for
enhancing employee and organizational performance
that employs an explicit set of methods and strategies.
Results are achieved through a systematic process that
considers the institutional context, describes desired
performance, identifies gaps between desired and
actual performance, identifies root causes, selects,
designs and implements interventions to fix the root
causes, and measures changes in performance. PI is a
continuously evolving process that uses the results of
monitoring and feedback to determine whether
progress has been made and to plan and implement
additional appropriate changes.
4. Where PI should be used?
Customer value is mainly created at the operative
level and it is here that PI efforts should be focused.
Much waste is initiated in manufacturing, e.g. actions
performed by manufacturing that are not demanded
from customers. Quality and Delivery precision are
affected by an unstable production, and create waste,
such as rework and scrap. Often this type of problems
shows symptoms in having many routines and large
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administrations, which initially was needed to solve
problems that no longer exist.
5. Improvement approaches
The necessity of performance improvement has
been discussed. It is now time to start looking at how to
improve performance in practice. There are number of
performance improvement approaches and they have
some strengths and weakness. The similarities of the
methods are that they have a number of phases and that
performance is targeted for improvement. This makes
the programs comparable to each other even if they
emanate from somewhat different needs and functions.
5.1. Total quality management
Different definitions of TQM have been presented
over the years. [6] claims that “attempting to define
TQM is like shooting at a moving target”. Some argue
that TQM as a corporate culture characterized by
increased customer satisfaction through continuous
improvement, in which all employees in the companies
participate actively. On the other hand [9] claims that
TQM is both a philosophy and a set of guiding
principles for managing an organization. Total Quality
Management focuses on control of business processes
and customer satisfaction. Activities such as
improvement, statistical control, supply control and
quality engineering are ingredients of TQM. TQM as a
concept emanates from the academic field and has
contributors such as Feigenbaum, Juran and Deming.
TQM has Kaizen as a tool for continuous work.
This is visualised by the Deming’s wheel. Statistical
control is a powerful tool to gain control of
manufacturing defects and it correlates to
measurement. Further, there are many concepts of TPS
found in TQM, such as Kaizen and Process Mapping.
An interesting part of the TQM concept is all quality
awards offered by the different foundations such as
Deming Price, European Foundation of Quality
Management (EFQM), Malcolm Baldridge and so on.
Performance Factors and Process Measurement, which
is used as means for improvement. The concept of
TQM can give competence, so benchmarking could be
used to accomplish this. TQM is an extensive method
and requires specialist or consultant help, which can
endanger the implementation.
5.2. Total productive maintenance
The Japanese evolved the concept of TPM based on
preventive maintenance [13]. TPM is a waste reducing
approach to stabilise utilisation of machining resources.
TPM is considered as an additional driver, which is
complementary to TQM [8]. TPM focuses on
improving machine availability and includes
monitoring of machine equipment called overall
equipment efficiency to visualise losses of utilisation.
Implementation of TPM usually starts with a pilot
project [11]. The main focus of TPM is on the
condition of the equipment and its influence on quality
of output. TPM offers both measurement aid and
improvement schemes. The ideal goal of TPM is to
make the availability time equal to the value adding
time. TPM is an extensive approach, which involves
mainly two parts of an organisation, i.e. production and
maintenance. It is therefore crucial that TPM work
involves leaders of organisational level, also
emphasised in TPM as leader commitment. Further, the
implementation is supported by defined
implementation steps, both for production and
maintenance. The seven steps are: 1) Initial cleaning of
equipment and work area, 2) Finding and fixing causes
of dirtying, 3) Creating standards and checklist of
cleaning, 4) Education of inspection, 5) Creating
standard and checklist of inspection, 6) Organising of
the workplace and 7) Autonomous operator
maintenance.
TPM can also be benchmarked via a TPM award
application. This procedure is similar to the awards in
TQM. The companies applying for TPM should
establish a report, which is evaluated by a prize
committee. If the report gets a good score, the company
can be subjected to an onsite evaluation by TPM
experts to be further evaluated for the TPM prize.
TPM is an extensive, resource and competence
demanding approach with risk for conflicts among the
involved departments. Further, TPM implementation is
time consuming and according to standardised
implementation schemes it can take as long as five
years to implement to its full extent. TPM is suited to
companies, which have a lower degree of improvement
maturity, as TPM starts at a basic level, namely 5S.
5.3. Six sigma
As with BPR, the Six Sigma concept gives much
support on how to organise improvement work. Six
Sigma as a concept came from the Motorola Company
in the mid 80s. An engineer at Motorola named Bill
Smith concluded that increased complexity in
manufacturing made it difficult to maintain quality
standards. Bill Smiths idea to improve this was to set a
quality goal of Six Sigma to get a satisfactory final
product quality [5]. Six Sigma is a concept to decrease
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variation in manufacturing processes with the use of
statistical tools and supporting software [3].
Six Sigma is based around the problem-solving
model called DMAIC: i.e. Define, Measure, Analyse,
Improve and Control. A Six Sigma practitioner should
keep an attitude of questioning towards assumptions
and common knowledge, as well as towards the data
collected. Six Sigma is therefore heavily data driven
and many methods used are based around statistical
analysis, which often makes the availability of
specialists necessary. The specialists are trained within
a Six Sigma program in the form of Green belts, Black
belts and Master Black belts, meaning that specialist
training is a part of Six Sigma. Hence, the idea is that
the company should be self-sustaining when it comes to
supplying specialists. The standard Six Sigma methods
are focused on finding the actual root cause of a
defined problem. The Six Sigma concept is, as
concluded above, very specialist dependent, which can
jeopardise implementation. As to competence, there is
very strong support regarding education in Six Sigma;
measurement support is also strong. Lastly, the open-
minded choice of improvement tools can be
advantageous. This is true when practitioners know
what and how to use them; if not it can be difficult to
use Six Sigma.
5.4. Business process re-engineering
Business process reengineering concentrates on
radical change to improve operations [10]. The radical
change allows new revolutionary ideas to evolve which
can help to improve operations more than a Kaizen
approach. Business process re-engineering was
introduced by Hammer and Champy in the early 1990s
and has an approach of breakthrough changes. They
state that small changes give small effects and small
earnings whilst the radical change gives radical
increases in earnings [16]. As with TQM, this is not
taken from a company phenomenon. The BPR main
ideas are that the operations should be organised
around the process instead of around functions. An
important part of BPR is process-mapping. There are
number of factors, which need to be considered in the
implementation of the BPR project - project champion,
steering committee, process design team, process
owner and implementation team. The BPR project
requires four phases of: preparation, innovation and
design, implementation and assessment.
The extensiveness of this concept varies with the
choice of improvement scope, it can be advantageous,
but it requires competence, which makes the approach
difficult to use in improvement immature organisations.
The improvement work in BPR is organised in a
project form. The advantage of this is that this can
render quicker results as the organisational conflicts
should be fewer. This concept is very specialist
dependent, which in turn requires help from experts or
consultants. Results emanating from this concept can
be hard to communicate, which makes implementation
harder.
5.5. Lean
Lean production can be considered to be an
essential element of all the main improvement
approaches. Lean production is an adoption of the ways
of work at Toyota called the Toyota Production System
[14] with the theme of eliminating seven types of Muda
(waste; excess production, waiting, conveyance,
motion, the process itself, inventory and effects). The
term lean was probably coined by [21] in their book
‘The Machine that Changed the World’. The ultimate
goal is to manufacture products after an order is made,
however many products do have a production lead-time
that is too lengthy to be acceptable to customers. A first
approach to improvement with Lean Production is
levelling of flow, from tact production to customer
need.
The key issues of lean can be considered as [14]:
1)Value - The starting point for lean thinking is
“value” as defined by the end customer. It is providing
the customer with right product/service, for the right
price at the right time
2)Value Stream-The set of actions from a
product/service concept to realization, order to delivery
etc.
3) Flow - Seamless movement through a series of value
creating steps
4) Pull - Acting only to satisfy customer needs
5) Perfection - continuously improving the value, value
stream, flow and pull in business operation
The organisation resistance is hard to tackle with Lean,
as this concept is a very extensive method to use for
improvement. Implementation support is lesser with
Lean as in many cases it merely describes desired
results, not how to acquire them.
5.6. ISO
The International Organisation for Standardisation
(ISO) developed the ISO 9000 series in the 1987 and
these standards are now accepted internationally as an
approach to quality systems. An ISO certificate does
not guarantee that the processes or the products are of
the highest quality, it only states that there is a system
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in place which provides confidence that the
organisation will be consistent in their management
processes. Because of the need to describe procedures
and to keep track of non-compliances, ISO is often
seen as a bureaucratic process involving manuals and
record keeping.
The ISO 9000 series cover three standards for which
external certification is possible (ISO 9001, ISO 9002
and ISO 9003). The ISO 9000 standard is a guideline
for helping to choose one of the three standards. ISO
9004 provides the background and philosophy behind
quality systems and can be a good starting point to
develop an organisation’s quality system. Most
literature on ISO 9000 either focuses on adoption or
uses self-reported survey-based performance measures.
Surveys by [17] find no link between ISO 9000 and
organizational performance among Australian and
Dutch firms respectively, though [20] do find that
higher reported business performance is positively
associated with a broader set of motivations for seeking
ISO 9000 certification. [7] finds that Basque
companies report substantial operational and financial
benefits from certification. [1] finds that ISO 9000
certification in New Zealand increases with firm size.
6. Analysis of the approaches
Many organizations have had major problems in
implementing some of the tools and techniques
involved [15]. TQM and TPM emerged from Japanese
experience to make their way to Western
manufacturing organizations. Organisations needed
clear directions regarding the change process which
results in development of approaches like BPR and Six
Sigma. These approaches give clear change of
structure. BPR and Six Sigma aim at much faster result
than TQM and TPM. The whole process is hierarchical
top-down financed and led. TQM and TPM aim at
widespread involvement and commitment throughout
the implementing unit. They include tools and
techniques, which can enable any one at any level to
improve their daily work on a step-by-step basis. They
aim to use the organisation’s own employees and
managers and trainers rather than outside consultants.
TQM and TPM are far less restrictive in their change
process than BPR and Six Sigma. Lean is a diverse
bundle of complementary elements and operating
principles. ISO is able to act as a bridging organization
in which a consensus can be reached on solutions that
meet both the requirements of business and the broader
needs of society, such as the needs of stakeholder
groups like consumers and users.
7. Conclusion
There is plenty to do, and there are plenty of
benefits to be obtained. The approaches discussed have
much in terms of their principles, tools and techniques
that are common to all. They differ in the area of how
the improvement process should be handled.
TQM is clearly a suitable approach where the
quality of the products or services is the major concern.
Although TPM is historically equipment-focused,
effective implementation offers a continuous
improvement methodology to increase overall
manufacturing productivity. TPM methodology
provides enterprises with the tools required to explore,
increase, document, and proliferate organizational
learning. From the analysis it can be said that though
the evolution of Six-sigma is nothing but a result of a
continuous quality consciousness in the business world,
it is a more logical and pragmatic approach of quality
management than TQM as Six-sigma is more
mathematical and rigorous in its approach.
The approach like BPR and Six Sigma lay more
stress on achievement of rapid financial result and have
much structured change process. The approaches are
also very different in the way they are practiced. BPR
is clearly the most divergent as it is concerned with
frame-braking change that attempts to create new
systems rather than repairing old systems. For this
reason, BPR may be the most suitable approach for an
organisation that seeks dramatic changes. It is
commonly used by organisations that have widespread
problems, but it is also suitable as a way to stimulate
innovation for improvement, rather than survival.
ISO approach formalises, firstly, a technique: a
guide to be followed, secondly, the interdependence
between this technique and support tools and finally the
interdependence between this technique and the core
value through the quality criteria.
The approaches such as TQM, TPM, Lean and ISO
outline a desired end state and demand for self thinking
by the organisation. All the approaches can be useful if
handled carefully. Care has to bee taken in deciding
which would be more suitable for any organisation
depending on cost of implementation in terms of time
and money involved.
8. References
[1] Adams, M, Determinants of ISO Accreditation in the
New Zealand Manufacturing Sector”. Omega 27, 1999, pp.
285-292.
[2] Ahire, S.L. Golhar, D.Y. and Waller, M.A. (1996),
``Development and validation of TQM implementation
constructs’’, Decision Sciences, Vol. 27, pp. 23-56.
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[3] Bendell T., A review and comparison of Six Sigma and
the Lean organisations, The TQM magazine Vol. 18, No. 3,
2006.
[4] Benson, P.G., Saraph, J.V., and Schroeder, R.G, “The
effect of organisational context on quality management: An
empirical investigation”, Management Science, 37(9), 1991,
pp.1107-1124.
[5] Bertels T., Raths & Strong´s Six Sigma leadership
handbook, Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, US, 2003.
[6] Boaden, R. J., “What is Total Quality Management. And
does it matter?”, Total Quality Management, Vol. 8 No. 4,
1997, pp. 153-171
[7] Casadesús, M., G. Giménez and I. Heras.. Benefits of ISO
9000 implementation in Spanish industry. European
Business Review 3(6), 2001, pp. 327-335.
[8] Dale, B.G, “The key features of Japanese quality
control”, Quality and reliability Engineering
International,Vol.9, No.3,1993,pp.169-178
[9] Dale, B.G, Managing Quality. Blackwell Publishers Ltd.,
Third Edition. Oxford, 1999.
[10] Hammer, M, “Re-engineering Work: Don't Automate,
Obliterate”, Harvard Business Review, July-August, V. 68,
1990, pp. 104-12.
[11] Jostes R., Helms M, “Total productive maintenance and
its link to total quality management”, Work study, Vol. 43,
No. 7, 1994.
[12] Mohanty, R.P & Lakhe, R.R, “Factors affecting TQM
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Production Planning & Control, vol. 9 no.5, 1998, pp. 511-
520.
[13] Nakajima, S. Introduction to TPM, Productivity Press,
Cambridge, 1988.
[14] Ohno, T, Toyota Production-System, American
Technical Publishers Ltd, Herts. UK,.1988.
[15] Paton, S.M, “Is TQM dead” Quality Digest, Vol.14,
No.1, 1994, pp.24-30.
[16] Povey B, “The development of a best practice business
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management and technology, Vol. 5 No. 1, 1998.
[17] Singels, J., G. Ruël and H. van de Water, “ ISO 9000
Series: Certification and Performance”, International Journal
of Quality and Reliability Management 18(1), 2001, pp. 62-
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[18] Slack N., et. Al., Operations Management, Second
edition, Financial times Ltd., London England, 1998.
[19] Tangen S, “ Performance Measurement: from
philosophy to practice”, International Journal of
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2004a, pp. 726-738
[20] Terziovski, M., D. Power and A.S. Sohal, “The
Longitudinal Effects of the ISO 9000 Certification Process
on Business Performance”, European Journal of Operational
Research 146, 2003, pp. 580-595.
[21] Womack, J.P; Jones, D.T and Roots, D, The
machine that change the World, Macmillan
PublishingCompany,NewYork,1990.
 Annexture-1

Table 1: Characteristics of TQM, TPM, Six Sigma, BPR, Lean and ISO

Subject TQM TPM Six Sigma BPR Lean ISO

Origin Japan Japan USA USA Japan Europe
Period Mid 1980s 1988 Mid 1980s Early1990s 1990 1987
Approach Quality Resource Variance Fundamental Elimination Documentation and
utilisation reduction rethinking & of waste Consistency
redesign
Fundamental Data-based, Improving No. of Quantum Continuously Focusing on quality
concept employee machine products & leaps in improving the goals based on
driven, availability and process performance value created internal capabilities
orientation includes defects in an are only for the
towards monitoring of enterprise possible by customers by
customers machine should keep reinventing letting them
and suppliers equipment on & pull value
called OEE to approaching redesigning through a
visualize losses Six Sigma streamlined
of utilization. target value stream
Participation Normally Everyone Normally Primary Everyone Normally everyone
everyone and participate everyone management participate
suppliers
Time phase for Continuous Continuous Continuous Short project Continuous Continuous
improvement improvement improvement improvement improvement improvement
Change Slow, Slow, Could be Very fast and Could be Could be
introduced incremental incremental dramatic as radical dramatic as dramatic as well as
well as well as incremental
incremental incremental

Risk Medium Medium Medium High Medium Medium

Implementation Long term, Long, many Short Short Long, many Moderate, 3-5 years
time 5-10 years new things are new things
to be learned. are to be
learned
Initial condition Existing Existing Existing Restructuring Existing Existing process
process process process process
Scope of Enterprise Manufacturing Enterprise Enterprise Enterprise Enterprise wide
Application wide unit wide wide wide

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