Total quality management: A way towards total integration

This paper describes the result of a survey carried out in manufacturing environments to find out future trends and current implementation difficulties of quality management schemes. There is some evidence from the survey that the future of manufacturing systems lies within total information integration. Some of the companies have already achieved partial integration and many are considering establishing a totally integrated understanding of management. A total quality management (TQM) philosophy can play a major role in leading towards such total integration, which would probably result in new forms of management. Currently, it is also interesting to find that the required quality data are gathered on the shopfloor and then processed by middle management, but do not influence top management quality policies as much as might be expected. However, TQM based on continuous improvement is seen as a competitive advantage, although many companies and industries interpret it differently. It seems that the new hi...