Because TQM involves everyone in the organisation (and a good many outside!), it must start with senior management and cascade through all levels and functions. All must be committed and all must be actively involved.

Unless everyone is serious about quality, committed and involved, all the planning, effort and enthusiasm from TQM sponsors will count for nothing!

TQM is about cultural change.

Every day employees make decisions and take actions (or decline to take decisions and actions) all of which affects their performance and impacts on others. If these decisions are viewed from various perspectives and if considerations improve judgment, then the organisation will have improved efficiency and effectiveness.

TQM is an evolutionary process starting with attitude. It needs time to achieve, and considerable effort and commitment throughout the organisation, without which success is most unlikely. TQM needs leadership and therefore the process must start with senior management.

TQM represents a journey not a destination.

The TQM concept is simple. Each part of the organisation relates in some way to every other part and therefore has customers. The need to identify and deliver against customer requirements forms the core of TQM's approach.

Because TQM is about mutually dependent relationships, its vision and therefore its application must be universal.

The task of implementing TQM can be daunting making it difficult to decide where to begin. This is a two day introductory course which has been designed to help make this decision and get the process started.

The course will provide an awareness of the concepts by looking at the background of TQM, the implications of its introduction and the potential benefits available.

The course will review what is meant by quality, quality assurance and TQM. Consideration will be given to quality standards, how the organisations culture and employee attitudes might need changing, and the views of quality "gurus".

The introduction of TQM to an organisation needs great planning care; the resources that will be required and the infrastructure to support the activity must be in place before the journey commences. We shall therefore look at these topics and provide the participants with a route forward which will allow the organisation to achieve the goal of thriving on quality.

We shall consider why the Japanese have succeeded while other nations (including the UK) have only achieved partial success, or indeed in many cases failed!

Through reviewing the success, and failure factors, this management training course will endeavour to increase the probability of success.