Total quality management, now a well known idea, is a philosophy of management for
continuously improving the quality of products and processes. The idea is that the
quality of products and processes is the responsibility of everyone who is involved
with the development and/or use of the products or services. TQM involves
management, workforce, suppliers, and even customers, in order to meet or exceed
customer expectations. The common TQM practices are cross-functional product
design, process management, supplier quality management, customer involvement,
information and feedback, committed leadership, strategic planning, cross-functional
training, and employee involvement. Six Sigma is a business management strategy
which seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing
the causes of defects and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business
processes. A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of the products
manufactured are statistically expected to be free of defects. TQM’s focus is general
improvement by approaching the problem collaboratively and culturally whereas Six
Sigma utilizes the efforts of many departments, generally with a statistical approach. It
makes use of measuring and analyzing data to determine how defects and differences
could be minimized to the level where there are 3.4 defects per million cycles/products.
Six Sigma can easily be integrated into quality management efforts. Integrating Six
Sigma into the TQM program facilitates process improvement through detailed data
analysis. Using the Six Sigma metrics, internal project comparisons facilitate resource
allocation while external project comparisons allow for benchmarking. Thus, the
application of Six Sigma makes TQM efforts more successful. In today’s highly
competitive environment, organizations tend to integrate TQM and six sigma to gain
maximum benefits. This volume is an effort to gain insights into new developments in
the fields of quality management and six sigma and is comprising of articles authored
by renowned professionals and academics working in the field. Both beginners and
veterans in the field can learn useful techniques and ideas from this volume.