ESSAY: ISO and Total Quality

Explain the origins of ISO 9000 and total quality. How are they different? Refer to this week’s lecture before crafting your post.

ANSWER

The international organization for standardization (ISO) is responsible for developing the specifications for systems, products, services, and procedures, as a means to measure levels of excellence (Vetchagool et al., 2018). ISO was created in 1946 by a group of 26 countries, whose representatives met at the Institute of Civil Engineers in London. Total Quality Management (TQM), on the other hand, refers to the role the management in an organization plays to ensure that its customers are satisfied with the products and services sold to them. TQM was created in the early 1920s as the application of statistical theory in quality control was becoming popular in Japan.

There are several differences between the origins of ISO 9000 and TQM. The first is that the motivations for creating ISO were to allow the improvement of aspects such as operations, processes, quality, and competitive posture and customer satisfaction. The organizations that would choose to comply with ISO standards would have the opportunity to make sure that their business processes were up to international standards (Kiran, 2016). The motivation for the origin of TQM, on the other hand, was to continually improve all business operations for a particular organization. Therefore, the management does not have any standards to compare itself with, instead, they just make sure that their protocols are improving based on their ideas.

Secondly, ISO was created to fill the void of harmonizing multiple organizational processes so that they could have both a national and international standard. The creation of these standards was designed to minimize the chances of organizations choosing to cut corners when it comes to quality so that they could make extra money (Bakator et al., 2018). In contrast, TQM has its origins and motivation set in Japan and was primarily designed to help this particular country have the opportunity and ability to compete in international markets by raising the operational levels of the local companies. It was designed to give the local companies something to aspire to….