How TQM got its name.

[Billcoop88@aol.com]

Hello again,

We on DEN have tried to answer this question before but I will give it one 
more shot.
Bill Latzko is correct, it was a term developed by the Navy.  I was part of 
the group and was in the room when the name was created and as far as I know 
that was the first official use of the term. As he suggested the navy could 
not use a "living person's name" in any strategy.  That is also true today.  
Six Sigma a good example of that. 

In the early eighties the Navy was focused on "productivity" as was the rest 
of the country.  Everybody was into that term who was in so called 
enlilightened
Management at the time. The Navy was charged to save 950 million dollars and 
to develop a strategy to do it.  A number of us in fairly senior management 
positions who were in the Navy's productivity movement at the time were given 
the task of deciding how to do that in the Airplane Depot repair business.  

We came together at a meeting in Pax River Md. for that purpose.  We at North 
Island depot had begun to embrace Dr. Deming's principles earlier and had a 
major effort underway on our own.  At that meeting I presented what we were 
doing and the Admiral at the time, John Kirkpatrick, said that makes sense 
let us use "that productivity stuff" to satisfy our cost cutting efforts.

This group was then tasked to put together a presentation to the Assistant 
secretary of the Navy.  We talked but did not know what to call our 
presentation.  A nice lady named Nancy Warren, out of a number of 
suggestions, said "why not total quality Management"?   We had all read Total 
Quality Control by Ishikawa and we liked it "as did Dr. Deming."  We wanted 
something with the words Quality, we liked Total by not "control."  Some 
suggested that since this had to be a management driven effort we ought to 
include the term "management" in the title.  Thus was born the Term "TQM."

I know this because I was the one who made the presentation to the Assistant 
Secretary of the Navy Mr. Ev Pyette.  By the way it was not well received by 
him but as history has shown there were smarter and more dedicated people to 
real system improvement in the world than himself.  Dr. Deming"s principles 
were the foundation and were heavily embedded in TQM. TQM ultimately became 
the Department of Defense Mantra for improvement, and many others as well.

Did it work?  History will tell.  I asked Dr. Deming one time what should we 
call his theories in the management world.  He said to me "that when it has 
no name and is just a system, then we will know it exists." 

Bill Cooper