Today, billions of dollars are wasted through lack of a focus on quality. This waste can stem from something as apparently insignificant as an improperly scheduled meeting that results in a loss of productive human time to a defective product or undelivered service that results in the loss of a customer. This absence of focus on quality results in product and processing systems which lack flexibility, innovativeness, and timeliness to market. How can the total quality management approach help to eliminate this unnecessary waste?

Quality is not something for the quality department. If a corporate culture focuses on the customer, quality control will spring from each employee. Total Quality Management is a process that makes quality principles part of the organization's strategic objectives, applying them to all aspects of operations and striving to meet customers' needs by doing things right the first time.
Total quality management is basically a customer-oriented paradigm that occurs through processes. The emphasis on customer focus requires a company to be process based. A process organization is simply one that is conceived as a flow of interdependent processes, which must be understood and improved.
When people are able to perceive commonality in goals, then it becomes easier to communicate over departmental or functional walls. Teams, by working towards a common collaborative goal, help in breaking down barriers and act as agents for change.
The continuous cycle of establishing customer requirements, meeting the requirements, measuring success and continuing to improve can be used internally to fuel the engine of external and continuous improvement. By continually checking customers' requirements, a company can find areas in which improvements can be made.
There are many success stories of how TQM has helped transform companies. One of them is Ericsson Inc. of Lynchburg, Virginia, that implemented a successful TQM program. The TQM program, named Winshare, saved the company approximately US $60 million over 10 years. Employees were divided into 63 teams, and each team elected a co-worker as a leader. Teams were used to develop improvement ideas and received US $6000 to implement them.