TQM & BPR

Total quality management and business process reengineering are both "best" business practices that focus on improving processes.

However, there are some real differences between the two.

Total quality management ( TQM ) is meeting customer expectations through continuous improvement and organization-wide quality ownership. Important considerations here include:

1. Meeting customer expectations -- if you don't do this, you will fail.
2. Continuous improvement -- constantly monitoring the quality of processes and improving them as customer expectations change.
• Transaction process and customer-integrated systems help gather process information.
• Statistical process control (SPC) tools such as control charts, histograms, fishbone diagrams, pareto charts, and scatter diagrams are then used to evaluate the process information and determine improvements.
3. Organization-wide quality ownership -- TQM requires a commitment from every individual in an organization. So, employees must have access to information (the concept of shared information) and must have the technology tools to access and use that information (the concept of decentralized computing).

Business process reengineering ( BPR ) is the reinventing of processes within a business.

• So, while TQM focuses on improving processes, BPR focuses on completely destroying old processes and inventing radically new ones that result in dramatic increased efficiencies.
• BPR is almost always technology-enabled and can very seldom occur without the use of technology.

If you're interested in learning more about total quality management (TQM) and business process reengineering (BPR), we suggest the following resources.

BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING

• Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution , by Hammer and Champy
• Beyond Reengineering: How the Processed-Centered Organization Is Changing Our Work and Our lives , by Hammer
• The Reengineering Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Business Transformation , by Manganelli and Klein
• Business Process Improvement , by Harrington
• Brint.com -- numerous BPR Web resources

TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT

• Productivity and Quality Improvement , by Hradesky
• Quality is Free , by Crosby
• Managing the Total Quality Transformation , by Berry
• The Kaizen Blitz: Accelerating Breakthroughs in Productivity and Performance , by Laraia
• TQMPapers.com -- examples of TQM term papers and research; great for college students