Total Quality Process (TQP): How to Make TQM Actually Work
- Jan 15
- 15 min read
Updated: Apr 8
By Allan Ung | Founder & Principal Consultant, Operational Excellence Consulting
Allan Ung is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Operational Excellence Consulting, a Singapore-based firm established in 2009. With over 30 years of experience leading operational excellence and quality transformation across manufacturing, technology, and global operations—including senior roles at IBM, Microsoft, and Underwriters Laboratories—Allan brings deep shopfloor expertise to every learning room he enters. A Certified Management Consultant (CMC, Japan), Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, TPM Instructor, TWI Master Trainer, and former Singapore Quality Award National Assessor, he has facilitated structured problem-solving and Lean programmes for organisations including the Ministry of Education, Tokyo Electron, Panasonic, Micron, Lam Research, Toyota Tsusho, NileDutch, Sika Group, Infineon Technologies, and NEC.
Most organisations that invest in Total Quality Management already believe in its principles. Customer focus. Process orientation. Continuous improvement. Prevention over inspection. These ideas are not controversial — they are widely accepted as the right way to run an organisation that takes quality seriously.
The problem is not the philosophy. The problem is the gap between understanding the philosophy and executing it consistently, day after day, across every level of the organisation.
Quality gurus explain what good quality looks like. Business excellence models describe how high-performing organisations are structured. But when the workshop ends and the consultants leave, most quality leaders are left with the same practical question: how exactly does this get done tomorrow morning?
That gap — between quality philosophy and quality execution — is what the Total Quality Process (TQP) was designed to close.
Why TQM Initiatives Stall
Before explaining what TQP is, it is worth being precise about why TQM initiatives fail. The failure mode is consistent enough to be predictable.
Traditional TQM implementation tends to be conceptual rather than executable. The frameworks are strong on principles and criteria — customer focus, leadership commitment, process management, continuous improvement — but vague on the specific process by which leaders govern quality and teams improve it day to day.
The result is that quality becomes programme-based rather than process-driven. A launch event. A quality council. A poster campaign. A set of improvement projects. These activities generate visible energy for six to twelve months. Then the energy dissipates, priorities compete, and quality reverts to being the quality department's problem.
A second failure pattern is that traditional TQM is tool-focused rather than system-managed. Organisations invest in training on the Seven QC Tools, PDCA, fishbone diagrams, and control charts. These are genuinely useful. But tools without a governing management system are techniques looking for a context. They do not, by themselves, produce an organisation that manages quality deliberately.
The third pattern is the most damaging: quality becomes dependent on champions rather than embedded in daily management. One committed quality manager or engaged plant director drives results for as long as they are in the role. When they move on, the results move with them — because the system was built around a person, not a process.
TQP addresses all three of these failure patterns at once, by treating quality not as a set of principles to be endorsed but as an end-to-end management process to be executed.
What Is Total Quality Process (TQP)?
Total Quality Process is a structured, role-based approach to managing and improving quality across an entire organisation. It translates TQM philosophy into a clear operating system with defined responsibilities, specific activities, and measurable outcomes at every level.
The conceptual anchor of TQP is a simple but powerful reframe: quality is not a department, a certification, or a collection of tools. It is a management process — and like any process, it can be defined, measured, improved, and sustained.
This reframe matters because it changes who owns quality and how they own it. In a TQP organisation, quality is not owned by the quality department. It is co-owned by leadership (who govern the quality management process) and by teams (who execute the quality improvement process). The quality department supports both — it does not substitute for either.
The best analogy for what TQP does is the relationship between Lean thinking and the Lean Daily Management System (LDMS). Lean provides the philosophy and tools — waste elimination, flow, pull, visual management. But it is the Daily Management System that translates those concepts into what actually happens on the shop floor every day: the huddle board, the tier meeting, the escalation process, the standard work for managers. TQP is to Quality what LDMS is to Lean — the missing operating system that makes the philosophy executable.
The House of TQP: A Role-Based Framework
The structural model for TQP is the House of TQP — a framework that makes visible not just what quality requires, but who is responsible for each element and how they execute it.
The House has three components: a roof that covers everyone, a left pillar that is primarily the work of leadership, and a right pillar that is primarily the work of managers and frontline teams. The two pillars are distinct but inseparable — a quality system with strong governance and weak execution produces plans that go nowhere; strong execution without governance produces local improvements that do not sustain.
The Roof: Five Quality Principles
The roof of the House represents the shared principles that govern all quality decisions and behaviours across the organisation. These principles apply universally — to the CEO and the frontline operator alike — and form the intellectual foundation on which everything else stands.
They are drawn from Philip Crosby's quality philosophy, updated for operational reality:
1. All work is a process. Every task, transaction, and interaction is a chain of inputs, activities, outputs, and customers. Seeing work as a process shifts attention from managing people to managing systems — from blaming individuals when things go wrong to asking what in the process allowed it to go wrong.
2. Quality means meeting requirements. Not exceeding them unnecessarily, not approximating them tolerably — meeting them. This is a precision standard, not an aspiration. It requires that requirements are clearly defined, communicated, and understood before work begins, not discovered after it is finished.
3. We focus on processes by measuring. Measurement provides facts where opinions would otherwise dominate. It enables objective problem diagnosis, targeted improvement, and the ability to distinguish genuine progress from wishful thinking. Processes that are not measured cannot be reliably managed.
4. Our quality standard is 100% right. Zero defects is not a slogan — it is an attitude of prevention. It means that the acceptable number of defects caused by not following the agreed process is zero. It does not mean perfection in the face of novel problems; it means no tolerance for preventable failures.
5. The system for quality is prevention. Inspection is reactive, expensive, and unreliable. Detection catches defects after they have already been made. Prevention eliminates the conditions that produce defects — through process design, mistake-proofing, training, and the disciplined management of process inputs. Prevention is always cheaper than correction, and correction is always cheaper than failure.
These five principles are not aspirational statements to be posted on a wall. They are operational commitments that should govern how work is designed, how problems are investigated, and how quality performance is reviewed.
The Quality Management Pillar: Leadership's Role
The left pillar of the House of TQP defines the quality management process — the specific activities through which senior and middle management govern quality across the organisation. This pillar carries greater emphasis for leadership, and it is structured around four sequential management activities.
Activity 1: Make a Commitment
Quality transformation begins with a leadership decision — not a memo, not a policy statement, but a genuine personal commitment that is visible in behaviour, decision-making, and resource allocation.
The commitment process follows a three-stage arc: conviction (leaders develop a deep personal understanding of why quality matters and what the current cost of poor quality actually is), commitment (leaders make an explicit, public decision to manage quality differently), and conversion (leaders bring their teams with them through consistent communication, role-modelling, and the willingness to change their own management practices).
This is the activity that most TQM implementations perform superficially. A leadership commitment that is not visible in how leaders spend their time, what they measure in operational reviews, and how they respond when quality and schedule conflict is not a commitment — it is a declaration. The difference shows up in results within six months.
Practical outputs at this stage include a clear quality vision, a quality policy that is genuinely lived rather than laminated, and leadership communication that connects quality to business performance in specific financial terms — including Cost of Quality data that makes the cost of poor quality visible to everyone, not just the quality team.
Activity 2: Plan for Quality Management
Planning is the translation of commitment into organisation. The central structure created in this activity is the Quality Management Team (QMT) — a cross-functional leadership team that directs, coordinates, and reviews the quality management process across the organisation.
The QMT is not a quality steering committee that meets quarterly to review audit results. It is the governance body for TQP implementation — responsible for setting quality direction, allocating resources for improvement, reviewing COQ performance, recognising achievement, and resolving cross-functional barriers that individual teams cannot overcome alone.
Alongside the QMT structure, planning activity includes creating quality awareness across all functions (so that everyone understands what TQP is and what their role within it is), and investing in the quality education that prepares people to participate effectively. Managers need to understand process management and measurement. Supervisors need problem-solving skills. Frontline employees need to know how to identify and report quality issues — and to trust that doing so will lead to improvement rather than blame.
Preparing for goal setting is the final element of the planning activity — establishing the measurement baselines and data collection processes that will make quality targets meaningful rather than arbitrary.
Activity 3: Put Systems in Motion
This is where TQP becomes operational. The systems established in this activity are what make quality management a daily reality rather than a periodic exercise.
Work process measurements are established for every significant process — the metrics that tell process owners whether their process is performing to requirement, trending in the right direction, and responding to improvement efforts. These are not lagging outcome metrics alone; they include in-process measures that provide early warning of drift before defects are produced.
Cost of Quality measurement is deployed as the financial tracking system that makes quality performance visible at leadership level. COQ converts quality events — scrap, rework, warranty claims, customer complaints — into dollar values that appear on management scorecards alongside revenue, cost, and productivity. This is what moves quality from a technical conversation to a business conversation.
Quality Action Teams (QATs) are formed to address specific improvement priorities identified through the COQ analysis and process measurement data. QATs are cross-functional, structured around specific problem statements, equipped with problem-solving methodology (PDCA, 8D, Root Cause Analysis), and time-bounded. They are the execution engine of quality improvement at the team level.
Recognition is built into this activity deliberately — because participation in quality improvement must be reinforced, and the behaviours that TQP requires (raising problems, investing in prevention, contributing to team problem-solving) are only sustainable when they are seen to be valued.
Activity 4: Keep It Going
The fourth management activity is the one that most quality programmes omit entirely — the systematic process for sustaining TQP after the launch energy has dissipated.
Sustainability requires scheduled, structured review — not ad hoc check-ins when someone remembers to ask how quality is going. QMT reviews should be a standing management rhythm, with a standard agenda that covers COQ trend performance, QAT progress, recognition of achievement, and forward planning for the next improvement cycle.
The QMT itself should be periodically refreshed — bringing in new members, maintaining the energy and perspective that comes from cross-functional involvement, and preventing the team from becoming a self-perpetuating committee disconnected from operational reality.
Benchmarking against external standards — ISO 9001, the Baldrige framework, EFQM, the Singapore Quality Award — provides the external reference point that prevents the organisation from mistaking relative improvement for absolute excellence. The standard for quality is not "better than last year." It is world-class.
The Quality Improvement Pillar: Teams in Action
The right pillar of the House of TQP defines the quality improvement process — the specific activities through which managers, supervisors, and frontline teams execute quality in their daily work and drive systematic improvement in their processes.
This pillar carries greater emphasis for middle management and frontline teams, and it is where TQM philosophy meets operational reality.
PDCA as the Governing Discipline
Every improvement activity in the quality improvement pillar is structured around the PDCA cycle — Plan, Do, Check, Act. This is not a philosophical choice; it is a practical one. PDCA provides the learning discipline that prevents improvement from becoming trial and error, ensures that changes are tested before they are standardised, and creates the institutional knowledge that makes gains permanent rather than temporary.
The PDCA cycle is executed through eight structured improvement steps that take a team from problem identification through to the standardisation of verified improvements:
Select the improvement theme — based on COQ data, customer feedback, or process measurement results
Grasp the current situation — understand the process, collect baseline data, define the problem specifically
Set improvement targets — quantified, time-bound, aligned with quality objectives
Analyse root causes — using Root Cause Analysis tools including 5 Whys, fishbone diagrams, and data stratification
Plan and implement corrective actions — targeted at root causes, not symptoms
Evaluate results — measure the impact of actions against the baseline and the target
Standardise the improvement — update procedures, retrain, build the improvement into the standard process
Review and follow up — confirm that the improvement has sustained and identify the next improvement opportunity
This eight-step process is the operational core of the Quality Improvement Course (QIC) — OEC's programme for equipping managers and teams with the practical discipline to execute quality improvement systematically.
The Seven QC Tools
Quality improvement teams are equipped with the seven classic quality control tools that convert data into insight:
Stratification separates composite data into meaningful categories, revealing patterns that aggregate data conceals. Check sheets provide structured data collection at the point of occurrence, making it easy to gather the right data reliably. Graphs and control charts display process performance over time, distinguishing common cause variation from special cause events that require investigation. Pareto charts rank quality costs or defect types by frequency or impact, making the "vital few" priorities visible. Fishbone diagrams structure cause-and-effect analysis by organising potential causes into the 6M categories — Man, Machine, Material, Method, Measurement, and Mother Nature. Histograms display the distribution of process output, revealing whether the process is centred on the target and how much variation it produces. Scatter diagrams explore the relationship between two variables, helping teams confirm or disconfirm cause-and-effect hypotheses.
These tools are not complicated. What makes them powerful in TQP is that they are applied within a structured improvement process, on specific problems identified through COQ analysis, by teams with clear ownership — not deployed ad hoc in training exercises and then forgotten.
Process Ownership and Quality Action Teams
The quality improvement pillar operates through the mechanism of the Quality Action Team (QAT) — the cross-functional working group that takes ownership of a specific improvement priority, works through the eight-step improvement process, and presents results to the QMT.
QATs are the point at which TQP principles become daily practice. A QAT working on reducing internal rework in a production process is not just solving a technical problem — it is demonstrating, in a specific and measurable context, what it means to manage by fact, to focus on processes by measuring, and to treat the system for quality as prevention.
The accumulated results of QAT activity — lower COQ, improved process capability, reduced defect rates — are the visible proof that TQP is not a management programme but a management system. They are also the data that sustains leadership commitment through the second and third years of implementation, when the novelty has worn off and results must carry the case for continued investment.
TQP in Practice: What the Results Look Like
The strongest evidence for TQP's effectiveness comes not from theory but from documented implementation experience.
BRC Weldmesh (SEA) Pte Ltd, a steel wire and mesh manufacturer, implemented TQP as a company-wide quality management system. The results were specific and measurable: scrap costs reduced significantly, late deliveries cut by 50%, and a quality culture established through a functioning QMT, active QATs, and employee involvement at every level of the organisation. The improvement was not driven by a single project or a single champion — it was produced by the systematic operation of the TQP framework across the business.
O. Mustad & Son (Singapore) Pte Ltd, the fish hook manufacturer, implemented TQP with particular emphasis on QC Circles, structured problem-solving education, and COQ measurement. The outcomes included major cost savings from quality improvement projects, a measurable strengthening of cross-functional teamwork, and — most importantly — a cultural shift from reactive firefighting to systematic prevention that sustained well beyond the initial implementation period.
What these two organisations demonstrate is the pattern that TQP produces when it is implemented with discipline: quality improvement becomes embedded in how the organisation works, not dependent on any individual's continued presence or enthusiasm. The system outlasts the programme.
TQP and the Broader Quality System
TQP does not exist in isolation. It is the operating system within which the other tools and disciplines of quality management execute most effectively.
FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) operates within TQP as the primary prevention tool — the structured mechanism for identifying failure modes before they generate COQ costs. In a TQP organisation, FMEA findings feed directly into the quality improvement pillar as inputs to QAT improvement priorities.
Cost of Quality is TQP's financial measurement layer. The COQ system provides the data that leadership uses to govern quality (identifying where non-conformance costs are highest) and that teams use to prioritise improvement activity (targeting the quality cost items with the greatest reduction potential).
Root Cause Analysis and 8D Problem Solving are the corrective action tools within the Quality Improvement pillar — the methods that QATs use to investigate the root causes of high-COQ failure modes and develop permanent corrective actions that prevent recurrence.
Poka-Yoke (Mistake-Proofing) is the engineering discipline that translates QAT recommendations into process designs from which the identified failure causes are physically eliminated — moving from detection and correction to true prevention.
PDCA Problem Solving is the continuous improvement cycle that structures all quality improvement activity within TQP — ensuring that changes are planned, tested, evaluated, and standardised rather than implemented ad hoc.
Together, these tools and disciplines form an integrated quality system. TQP provides the management architecture that holds them together and ensures they are applied where they will have the greatest impact.
The TQP Learning Pathway
For organisations ready to implement TQP, OEC offers a structured family of training programmes that develop capability at every level:
The Quality Management Course (QMC) is a one-day leadership workshop covering the full TQP framework, the four key management activities, and the practical skills required to design, deploy, and sustain a quality management system. It is designed for senior and middle management, quality leaders, and process owners.
The Quality Improvement Course (QIC) equips managers and teams with the eight-step improvement process, the seven QC tools, and the PDCA discipline required to lead Quality Action Teams and execute systematic improvement at the process level.
The Total Quality Management (TQM) Training Course provides the broader conceptual foundation — quality as conformance to requirements, the key elements of a TQM framework, and the business case for quality investment.
These three programmes form a complete learning pathway: from TQM understanding to TQP governance to QAT execution. Organisations can enter at any point based on their current capability and implementation stage.
👉 To find out more or explore how TQP can be tailored for your organization, visit Operational Excellence Consulting (oeconsulting.com.sg) or connect with us directly.
Conclusion: The Operating System Quality Always Needed
The principles of Total Quality Management have never been wrong. The problem was always the absence of the operating system that could make them executable.
TQP provides that operating system. It gives leaders a defined governance process — not a vague commitment to quality, but a specific sequence of activities with clear outputs and accountability. It gives teams a defined improvement process — not a toolbox to dip into occasionally, but a structured discipline that produces permanent results. And it connects both processes through a shared set of principles that everyone in the organisation can understand and act on.
The result is not quality as a department function or a certification exercise. It is quality as the way the organisation manages its work — deliberately, systematically, and permanently.
As Philip Crosby observed: "Quality has to be caused, not controlled."
TQP is how you cause it.
About the Author
Allan Ung is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Operational Excellence Consulting, a Singapore-based management training and consulting firm established in 2009. With over 30 years of experience leading operational excellence and quality transformation in manufacturing-intensive environments, Allan's expertise spans Lean Thinking, Total Quality Management (TQM), TPM, TWI, ISO systems, and structured problem solving.
He is a Certified Management Consultant (CMC, Japan), Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, TPM Instructor (Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance), TWI Master Trainer, ISO 9001 Lead Auditor, and former Singapore Quality Award National Assessor.
During his tenure with Singapore's National Productivity Board (now Enterprise Singapore), Allan pioneered Cost of Quality and Total Quality Process initiatives that enabled companies in the electrical and fabricated metals industries to reduce quality costs by up to 50 percent. In senior regional and global roles at IBM, Microsoft, and Underwriters Laboratories, he led Lean deployment, quality system strengthening, and cross-border operational transformation.
Allan has designed and led TQP implementations across manufacturing, electronics, and industrial sectors since the 1990s, with documented results at organisations including BRC Weldmesh and Mustad. His current TQP programmes are deployed across Asia, with clients spanning semiconductor, automotive supply chains, industrial manufacturing, and public sector organisations including Ministry of Education, Tokyo Electron, Panasonic, Micron, Lam Research, NileDutch, Sika, Toyota Tsusho, and NEC.
He holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering) from the National University of Singapore and completed advanced consultancy training in Japan as a Colombo Plan scholar.
His philosophy: "Manufacturing excellence is achieved through disciplined systems, capable leadership, and sustained execution on the shopfloor."
His practitioner-led toolkits are used by managers and organisations across Asia, Europe, and North America to build quality capability and drive sustained operational improvement.
👉 Learn more at: www.oeconsulting.com.sg
Further Learning Resources
The TQM foundation
Total Quality Management (TQM): The Management System That Makes Everything Else Work — The pillar article: TQM principles, history, and why Lean, Six Sigma, and AI all work better when TQM is the foundation
The financial layer
Cost of Quality (COQ): How It Can Save Your Business Money — The measurement system that makes quality costs visible in terms leadership responds to
Prevention and risk
FMEA: A Practitioner's Guide to Proactive Risk Management — Identifying failure modes before they generate COQ costs
Poka-Yoke (Mistake-Proofing) in 6 Steps — Engineering failure causes out of processes entirely
Problem solving and corrective action
Root Cause Analysis: Solving Problems for Good — The investigative discipline that QATs rely on
8D Problem Solving: A Practitioner's Guide — Structured corrective action for quality escapes
PDCA Problem Solving in 6 Steps — The continuous improvement cycle at the heart of TQP's Quality Improvement pillar
Operational Excellence Consulting offers a full catalog of facilitation‑ready training presentations and practitioner toolkits covering Lean, Design Thinking, and Operational Excellence. These resources are developed from real workshops and transformation projects, helping leaders and teams embed proven frameworks, strengthen capability, and achieve sustainable improvement.
👉 Explore OEC's full library of facilitation-ready training presentations at www.oeconsulting.com.sg
