Chapter 1

Introduction

Japanese Total Quality Control (JTQC), Total Quality Management (TQM),

Demings System of Profound Knowledge, Business Process Reengineering
(BPR), Lean Thinking and Six Sigma are quality and operations improvement
systems all oriented towards process improvement. They have implementation
factors and results in common such as: continuous improvement, customer satis-
faction, people and management involvement to mention a few. Nonetheless, the
systems also present different and important characteristics due to their different
origins and the historic path of implementation inside companies.
The literature itself has considered the systems at different times and in different
ways. Six Sigma comes from the USA, it is the most recent system, and along with
the Japanese Toyota Production System (TPS) revisited by Womack and Jones
(1998) with the new name Lean Thinking, it is still extensively researched and
discussed by practitioners and academics (Wedgwood 2006). The literature on
TQM and JTQC reached a peak in the middle of the 1990s, although less so with
TQM but it is still being researched (Osayawe Ehigie and McAndrew 2005). BPR
became very popular in the USA in the early 1990s, since then interest in it has
decreased and nowadays only the term reengineering has been inherited (Stoica
et al. 2004). Demings system has been analysed and discussed less than the other
systems.
In the light of this there is a need to better compare and discuss the evolution of
the systems, the ways of implementing them, their distinctions and what they share
in common. Indeed the main purpose and contribution of this book lies in the
concurrent analysis and classification, by the means of a literature review, of the
results and critical implementation factors of the six systems. Demings Plan-
Do-Check-Act (PDCA) model (Deming 1950) has been used to classify the results
from the literature review.
The findings will open an interesting debate for future research about the future
of the systems and the lessons learnt from their evolutions.
The findings could also be a useful comparison programme for practitioners
that want to apply the systems or integrate them.

A. Chiarini, From Total Quality Control to Lean Six Sigma, SpringerBriefs in Business, 1
DOI: 10.1007/978-88-470-2658-2_1, The Author(s) 2012
2 1 Introduction

References

Deming, W. E. (1950). Elementary principles of the statistical control of quality. Tokyo: JUSE.
Osayawe Ehigie, B., & McAndrew, E. B. (2005). Innovation, diffusion and adoption of total
quality management (TQM). Management Decision, 43(6), 925940.
Stoica, M., Chawat, N., & Shin, N. (2004). An investigation of the methodologies of business
process reengineering. International Systems Education Journal, 2(11), 310.
Wedgwood, I. (2006). Lean sigma, a practitioners guide. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Womack, J. P., & Jones, D. T. (1998). Lean thinking: Banish waste and create wealth in your
corporation. New York: Simon & Schuster.