2. TQM Principles, Systems and Theoretical Models

Introduction and Context

Total Quality Management (TQM) is more than a collection of quality-control techniques. It is a philosophy and an organizational management system through which an organization seeks to create sustained value for customers and other stakeholders. TQM integrates strategic direction, operational processes, employee capabilities, information, leadership behaviour, supplier relationships, and organizational culture around the pursuit of quality.

Traditional quality management often treated quality as the responsibility of an inspection department. Products were checked after production, and defective items were rejected or reworked. TQM represents a fundamental shift. Quality is designed into processes, created through coordinated work, and improved by those who understand the work. Inspection remains useful, but it cannot compensate for poorly designed systems, unclear requirements, inadequate training, or ineffective leadership.

The principles examined in this chapter—customer focus, systems thinking, prevention, employee involvement, continuous improvement, fact-based decision-making, and mutually beneficial relationships—are mutually reinforcing. Customer focus establishes the purpose of quality. Systems thinking reveals how activities interact. Prevention reduces avoidable failure. Employee involvement mobilizes knowledge and responsibility. Continuous improvement sustains progress. Fact-based decisions provide disciplined direction, while cooperative relationships extend quality beyond organizational boundaries.

TQM is therefore both socio-technical and managerial. It is socio-technical because quality outcomes depend on the interaction of people, technologies, processes, structures, and organizational culture. It is managerial because leaders determine priorities, allocate resources, establish accountability, and shape the conditions under which quality work takes place.

Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter, students should be able to:

1. Explain the meaning, scope, and historical development of TQM.

2. Interpret the principal TQM principles and their interdependence.

3. Analyze TQM as a socio-technical and organizational management system.

4. Apply major quality theories and models to organizational situations.

5. Distinguish prevention-oriented management from inspection-oriented control.

6. Evaluate the roles of leadership, employees, customers, suppliers, and data in quality improvement.

7. Identify implementation challenges, ethical risks, and common managerial mistakes.

8. Recommend suitable TQM practices for contemporary, technology-enabled organizations.

From Inspection to an Integrated Quality System

Quality may be understood in several complementary ways. It can mean conformity to requirements, fitness for use, reliability, value relative to price, or the ability of a product or service to satisfy explicit and implicit customer needs. These meanings are not identical. A technically conforming product may still fail if it is inconvenient, unsafe, unavailable, or poorly supported.

The development of modern quality management is associated with several influential thinkers. Walter A. Shewhart introduced statistical process control and emphasized distinguishing common-cause variation from special-cause variation. W. Edwards Deming connected quality with systems thinking, reduction of variation, leadership responsibility, and organizational learning. Joseph M. Juran described quality through planning, control, and improvement, often called the Juran Trilogy. Philip B. Crosby emphasized conformance to requirements and the principle that prevention is preferable to accepting defects as inevitable. Armand V. Feigenbaum developed the idea of total quality control, in which quality is the responsibility of the entire organization. Kaoru Ishikawa promoted company-wide quality activities, cause-and-effect analysis, and quality circles.

These contributions differ in emphasis but share an important premise: quality cannot be secured by final inspection alone. Defects are often symptoms of upstream decisions involving design, procurement, training, process capability, communication, or work systems. TQM consequently treats quality as a strategic and organization-wide concern.

The Core Principles of TQM

Customer focus as the organizing purpose

TQM begins with a clear understanding of who receives value from the organization and what those customers require. Customers include external purchasers, users, patients, citizens, regulators, and, in many processes, internal recipients of work. Internal customer thinking can clarify handoffs, although it should not obscure the ultimate needs of external stakeholders.

Customer focus involves more than measuring satisfaction after delivery. It requires identifying stated and latent needs, translating them into specifications, monitoring the customer experience, responding to complaints, and learning from changes in expectations. A hospital, for example, must consider clinical outcomes, safety, communication, waiting time, dignity, and continuity of care. A software provider must consider functionality, security, usability, reliability, support, and data protection.

Customer focus can be distorted when organizations pursue satisfaction scores without examining the underlying value proposition. Customers may report satisfaction with a fast service that is unsafe or unsustainable. TQM therefore combines voice-of-the-customer information with professional standards, regulatory requirements, risk analysis, and evidence about outcomes.

Systems thinking and process orientation

A system is a set of interdependent elements that interact to achieve a purpose. Systems thinking asks how policies, processes, people, technology, suppliers, and feedback influence one another. It discourages local optimization—for example, reducing purchasing cost by buying unreliable materials and thereby increasing production failures.

Process orientation complements systems thinking. A process transforms inputs into outputs through a sequence of activities. Each process has customers, suppliers, requirements, resources, measures, risks, and owners. Mapping a process exposes delays, duplication, unclear responsibilities, rework, and points at which errors are introduced.

Deming’s distinction between common-cause and special-cause variation is central here. Common-cause variation arises from the system itself and requires systemic action. Special-cause variation results from an unusual event and may require targeted investigation. Treating every fluctuation as an employee problem can increase instability rather than improve performance.

Prevention rather than dependence on inspection

Prevention means designing work so that errors are less likely to occur and are detected early if they do occur. Preventive approaches include robust product design, supplier qualification, standard operating procedures, training, mistake-proofing, maintenance, risk assessment, and process capability analysis.

Inspection detects nonconformity after it has emerged. It may be necessary in safety-critical operations, but it is generally more costly than prevention because resources have already been consumed. The cost of quality framework commonly distinguishes prevention costs, appraisal costs, internal failure costs, and external failure costs. Investment in prevention and appropriate appraisal can reduce the much greater costs associated with scrap, rework, returns, complaints, liability, and reputational damage.

Prevention does not mean eliminating all human judgment. It means designing processes that support correct performance. Checklists, interface warnings, barcode verification, automated test routines, and clear escalation rules can reduce reliance on memory and individual vigilance.

Employee involvement and respect for people

Employees possess practical knowledge that may not be visible in formal procedures or management reports. TQM therefore treats employees as contributors to quality, not merely as sources of labour. Involvement may include suggestion systems, quality circles, cross-functional improvement teams, problem-solving workshops, participation in process design, and authority to stop or escalate unsafe work.

Meaningful involvement requires more than inviting ideas. Employees need relevant information, time, training, psychological safety, recognition, and confidence that management will act fairly. If suggestions are ignored or employees are punished for reporting problems, the organization creates concealment rather than quality.

Employee involvement also has a structural dimension. Cross-functional work is important because many quality problems occur at interfaces between departments. A production team may not be able to solve a recurring defect if design specifications, purchasing decisions, maintenance policies, or scheduling practices are controlled elsewhere.

Continuous improvement

Continuous improvement is the disciplined, ongoing effort to improve products, services, processes, and management systems. It includes incremental improvement, often associated with kaizen, and larger process redesign when existing arrangements cannot meet strategic requirements.

Improvement should not be confused with constant change. A change is valuable only when it produces a verified improvement without creating unacceptable risks elsewhere. The Plan–Do–Check–Act (PDCA) cycle provides a practical learning structure. In the planning stage, the problem, objective, baseline, causes, and proposed intervention are defined. The intervention is implemented on a suitable scale. Results are checked against evidence, and the learning is used to standardize, adapt, or abandon the change.

Continuous improvement depends on standardization. Without a current standard, it is difficult to determine whether a change represents improvement or merely variation. Once a better method is validated, it should be incorporated into procedures, training, measures, and management routines.

Fact-based decision-making

TQM relies on evidence rather than assumption, anecdote, or hierarchy alone. Relevant evidence may include process measures, customer feedback, audit results, defect data, financial information, risk indicators, and employee observations. The purpose of measurement is not to produce numbers for their own sake but to support understanding and action.

Good measurement requires operational definitions, appropriate sampling, reliable data collection, and awareness of measurement-system limitations. A performance indicator can create harmful behaviour if it is poorly designed. For instance, measuring call-centre employees only by call duration may encourage premature termination of calls and reduce customer satisfaction.

Useful quality analysis may employ Pareto analysis, run charts, control charts, histograms, scatter diagrams, cause-and-effect diagrams, process maps, failure mode and effects analysis, and basic experimental methods. Statistical significance is not the same as managerial significance; a small numerical improvement may be irrelevant, while a modest improvement in a safety-critical outcome may be highly valuable.

Mutually beneficial relationships

Quality depends on relationships with suppliers, contractors, distributors, regulators, communities, and strategic partners. A mutually beneficial relationship does not mean abandoning commercial discipline. It means establishing clear requirements, sharing relevant information, developing capability, managing risk, and resolving problems through evidence and cooperation.

Short-term purchasing decisions based only on the lowest price can increase total cost through defects, disruption, inspection, and failure. Supplier quality management may include qualification, capability assessment, joint improvement, performance review, traceability, and contingency planning. The relationship should remain accountable: collaboration does not excuse nonconformance, conflicts of interest, or weak contractual controls.

TQM as a Socio-Technical Management System

A socio-technical system consists of a social subsystem—people, roles, culture, leadership, communication, and incentives—and a technical subsystem—processes, equipment, software, data, infrastructure, and methods. Quality performance emerges from their interaction.

A technically sophisticated enterprise may still deliver poor quality if employees lack training, targets conflict, or communication is weak. Conversely, committed employees may be unable to compensate for obsolete equipment, unreliable information systems, or badly designed workflows. TQM seeks alignment between the two subsystems.

At the organizational level, TQM connects several layers:

• Strategic layer: mission, stakeholder value, policy, objectives, and risk appetite.
• Process layer: value streams, process ownership, standards, interfaces, and controls.
• People layer: competence, leadership, participation, communication, and recognition.
• Information layer: measures, feedback, knowledge management, and learning.
• Relationship layer: customers, suppliers, partners, regulators, and communities.

This perspective explains why isolated quality departments often have limited influence. A quality function can provide methods, assurance, and coordination, but it cannot create quality without operational ownership and leadership commitment.

Theoretical Models for Understanding TQM

Deming’s system of profound knowledge

Deming proposed that effective management requires appreciation for four interrelated areas: a system, variation, theory of knowledge, and psychology. A manager must understand how work elements interact, distinguish types of variation, learn through theory and evidence, and recognize how people respond to incentives, fear, purpose, and change. This model challenges the belief that performance can be improved simply by setting higher targets or ranking employees.

Deming’s fourteen points further emphasize constancy of purpose, quality built into processes, training, leadership, removal of fear, elimination of barriers between departments, and transformation as a management responsibility. Their significance lies less in memorization than in the coherent management philosophy they represent.

Juran’s quality trilogy

Juran’s model divides quality management into quality planning, quality control, and quality improvement. Planning identifies customers and their needs, develops product and process features, and establishes process capability. Control evaluates actual performance against standards and takes corrective action. Improvement addresses chronic problems and achieves breakthrough performance.

The trilogy helps managers distinguish between maintaining a stable process and changing a process to achieve a new level of performance. An organization that only controls existing processes may preserve an inadequate system; an organization that only launches improvement projects may fail to sustain gains.

Crosby’s conformance and prevention perspective

Crosby defined quality as conformance to requirements and argued that organizations should establish a prevention culture rather than accept defects as unavoidable. His concept of “zero defects” is best interpreted as a managerial aspiration and standard of thinking, not as a claim that every complex process can instantly achieve literal perfection. The useful question is whether the organization has designed work to meet requirements correctly the first time.

EFQM and organizational excellence

The EFQM Excellence Model provides a framework for examining organizational direction, execution, and results. It encourages consideration of purpose, strategy, culture, stakeholder engagement, value creation, performance, and transformation. Unlike a narrow compliance model, an excellence framework asks how organizational practices produce sustainable outcomes for customers, people, society, and the organization itself.

ISO 9001 and the process approach

ISO 9001 is a requirements-based quality management system standard. It emphasizes the process approach, customer focus, leadership, risk-based thinking, documented information, competence, performance evaluation, and improvement. Certification can provide external assurance and structure, but certification alone does not prove that an organization has a mature TQM culture. An organization may satisfy documentation requirements while employees continue to experience unresolved systemic problems.

Translating Principles into Management Practice

TQM becomes credible when principles are embedded in everyday decisions. Senior leaders establish quality policy, strategic objectives, resources, governance, and behavioural expectations. Middle managers translate these commitments into process priorities, capability development, and cross-functional coordination. Supervisors shape daily practice through coaching, problem escalation, and response to deviations.

A practical deployment sequence may include:

1. Clarify customer and stakeholder requirements.

2. Identify core and enabling processes.

3. Establish owners, standards, risks, and meaningful measures.

4. Assess current capability and major sources of failure.

5. Prioritize improvement using impact, urgency, feasibility, and risk.

6. Test changes through PDCA or another disciplined method.

7. Verify outcomes and unintended effects.

8. Standardize successful practices and continue learning.

This sequence is not a rigid recipe. In a crisis, risk containment may precede detailed process redesign. In a mature organization, strategic planning and improvement portfolios may already be integrated. The essential point is that improvement should connect customer value, process understanding, evidence, and organizational learning.

A Detailed Illustrative Case: Quality Transformation at Northstar Medical Devices

Background

Northstar Medical Devices is a fictional medium-sized manufacturer of disposable diagnostic cartridges. It supplies hospitals and laboratories through regional distributors. The company has experienced growth, but its quality system developed unevenly as new equipment, suppliers, and product variants were introduced.

Situation and problem

Customer complaints increased because some cartridges produced inconsistent readings. The final inspection department detected a portion of the problem, but failures were also discovered by distributors and hospitals. Management initially proposed doubling final inspection and disciplining operators associated with defects.

Analysis

A cross-functional team mapped the process from product design and supplier receipt to molding, assembly, calibration, packaging, and distribution. The analysis identified several interacting causes:

• calibration instructions differed across shifts;
• a resin supplier had changed its formulation without adequate technical review;
• preventive maintenance was based on calendar time rather than equipment condition;
• operators hesitated to stop the line because production targets were emphasized;
• complaint data were stored separately from manufacturing data;
• inspection detected failures but did not identify where variation entered the process.

Control-chart analysis showed that the process was not simply experiencing isolated operator errors. Several shifts displayed different patterns, suggesting systemic causes involving training, materials, and equipment settings.

Approach and strategy

Northstar’s leadership replaced the inspection-only response with a TQM programme. First, it contained the risk by quarantining affected lots, notifying relevant customers, and reviewing product safety. Second, it established a cross-functional improvement team including design, procurement, production, maintenance, laboratory quality, customer service, and an operator representative.

The team clarified critical customer requirements and translated them into measurable process characteristics. Supplier approval was revised to include change-notification requirements and joint validation. Work instructions were harmonized, and training was demonstrated through observed competence rather than attendance alone. Maintenance was redesigned using equipment-performance data. A simple digital traceability system linked complaint records, lot numbers, machine settings, and supplier batches.

Employees received authority to stop production when a defined critical condition occurred. Daily meetings reviewed a small set of indicators: first-pass yield, complaint rate, process stability, overdue corrective actions, and time to containment. Improvement trials followed PDCA, and validated changes were added to controlled procedures.

Outcome

After implementation, Northstar reported fewer customer complaints, improved traceability, and faster containment of abnormal lots. More importantly, the organization changed its interpretation of quality problems. Defects were no longer treated primarily as evidence of individual carelessness; they were examined as possible signals of weaknesses in design, materials, equipment, information, or management systems.

The case does not imply that inspection became unnecessary. Final verification remained important because the product was safety-related. Its role, however, shifted from being the main defence against poor quality to one element within a broader prevention and learning system.

Learning points

The case demonstrates that customer protection may require immediate containment and longer-term systemic improvement. It also shows the interdependence of TQM principles: customer focus defined the critical requirements; systems thinking connected suppliers, equipment, people, and data; prevention reduced recurrence; employee involvement revealed practical barriers; fact-based analysis guided action; and supplier cooperation extended quality beyond the factory.

Challenges, Risks, and Common Mistakes

TQM initiatives commonly fail when leaders announce quality as a slogan but continue to reward only volume, speed, or short-term financial results. Another mistake is launching numerous improvement projects without strategic prioritization or sufficient resources. Project fatigue then replaces learning.

A compliance mentality can also narrow TQM into document production. Procedures are useful only when they reflect actual work and help people achieve intended results. Excessive documentation can conceal rather than solve process problems.

Other risks include confusing customer satisfaction with unconditional compliance, using poorly defined measures, treating all variation as individual failure, conducting training without checking competence, and applying improvement tools without understanding the process. Benchmarking can mislead when organizations copy practices without considering different technologies, risks, cultures, or customer requirements.

Employee involvement may become symbolic if management collects suggestions but does not provide feedback or resources. Similarly, supplier partnerships may fail when organizations demand collaboration while using unstable forecasts, unreasonable payment terms, or constantly changing specifications.

TQM also involves ethical responsibilities. Organizations must not manipulate quality data, conceal defects, pressure employees to bypass controls, or define performance measures that encourage unsafe behaviour. Customer and employee information used for quality analytics must be protected, accurate, and accessed appropriately. In regulated industries, quality records require integrity, traceability, and retention consistent with applicable obligations.

Digital Technologies, Analytics, and Emerging Developments

Digital technologies can strengthen TQM when they improve visibility, feedback, and decision quality. Integrated enterprise systems can connect orders, production, inventory, complaints, and supplier information. Sensors and the Industrial Internet of Things can support real-time monitoring and predictive maintenance. Statistical and machine-learning methods can identify patterns associated with failure, although predictive accuracy does not automatically establish causation.

Artificial intelligence may assist with anomaly detection, document review, complaint classification, and forecasting. Human oversight remains essential, particularly where decisions affect safety, employment, privacy, or regulatory compliance. Data quality, algorithmic bias, cybersecurity, model drift, and explainability are quality-management concerns in their own right.

Emerging TQM practice increasingly addresses resilience, sustainability, circular economy requirements, remote and hybrid work, cybersecurity quality, and service ecosystems. Quality is being considered across the product life cycle rather than only at the point of manufacture. Organizations are also combining lean methods, Six Sigma, agile approaches, design thinking, and formal management systems. Such combinations can be productive when their purposes are clear; indiscriminate tool accumulation creates complexity without capability.

Best-Practice Guidelines

Effective TQM is supported by the following practices:

• connect quality objectives to organizational purpose and stakeholder value;
• make senior leaders visibly responsible for the quality system;
• manage work as linked processes rather than isolated departments;
• distinguish systemic causes from special events;
• prioritize prevention and risk reduction;
• involve employees in diagnosing and improving their work;
• use a balanced set of customer, process, people, financial, and risk measures;
• verify improvements and standardize successful changes;
• develop suppliers through clear requirements and evidence-based collaboration;
• protect the integrity, security, and appropriate use of quality data;
• treat audits as opportunities for learning as well as assurance.

Chapter Summary

TQM is an organization-wide philosophy and management system aimed at creating sustained stakeholder value through quality. Its central principles are customer focus, systems thinking, prevention, employee involvement, continuous improvement, fact-based decision-making, and mutually beneficial relationships. These principles cannot operate independently: customer requirements guide process design, systems thinking reveals interdependence, prevention addresses causes, employees provide knowledge, data support learning, and relationships extend quality across organizational boundaries.

The chapter examined TQM through Deming’s system perspective, Juran’s trilogy, Crosby’s prevention orientation, the EFQM Excellence Model, and ISO 9001’s process approach. TQM is socio-technical because quality emerges from interactions among people, technology, processes, information, and culture. Its success depends on leadership, aligned measures, psychological safety, process ownership, ethical conduct, and disciplined improvement. Digital tools can enhance visibility and prediction, but they do not replace sound management judgment or human responsibility.

Key Terms

Total Quality Management: An organization-wide management philosophy and system focused on sustained quality and stakeholder value.

Customer focus: The systematic effort to understand, satisfy, and continually respond to customer and stakeholder requirements.

Systems thinking: An approach that examines interdependence, feedback, and interaction among elements of an organization.

Process approach: Managing activities as connected processes that transform inputs into outputs.

Prevention: Designing work and controls to avoid defects or reduce their likelihood before failure occurs.

Inspection: Examination or testing used to identify nonconformity.

Common-cause variation: Variation produced by the ordinary structure and operation of a process.

Special-cause variation: Variation arising from an unusual, identifiable influence.

Continuous improvement: An ongoing, evidence-based effort to improve products, services, processes, and systems.

PDCA cycle: A learning cycle involving planning, implementation, checking results, and acting on what is learned.

Employee involvement: Meaningful participation of employees in quality decisions, problem-solving, and improvement.

Fact-based decision-making: Using reliable evidence and appropriate analysis to guide decisions.

Quality planning: Identifying customer needs and designing processes capable of meeting them.

Quality control: Monitoring performance against requirements and responding to deviations.

Quality improvement: Structured action to achieve better performance than the existing level.

Socio-technical system: A system in which social and technical elements jointly shape performance.

Process capability: The ability of a stable process to meet specified requirements.

Supplier quality management: Coordinated activities to ensure that external providers consistently meet requirements.

Quality culture: Shared values, assumptions, and behaviours concerning quality and improvement.

Review Questions

Short Answer Questions

1. Why is final inspection insufficient as the primary quality strategy?

2. Distinguish common-cause variation from special-cause variation.

3. What is meant by customer focus in TQM?

4. State the four stages of the PDCA cycle.

5. Why is employee involvement important in quality improvement?

Long Answer Questions

1. Explain the seven core principles of TQM and show how they reinforce one another.

2. Analyze TQM as a socio-technical organizational management system.

3. Compare Deming’s, Juran’s, and Crosby’s contributions to quality management.

4. Discuss how prevention, process management, and measurement can reduce the cost of poor quality.

5. Explain the role of leadership, culture, and governance in sustaining TQM.

Analytical / Application Questions

1. A call centre rewards employees only for reducing average call duration, while complaints about unresolved issues are increasing. Apply TQM principles to diagnose the problem and recommend a balanced measurement and improvement approach.

2. A manufacturer experiences recurring defects from a supplier but responds by increasing incoming inspection. Analyze the limitations of this response and propose a mutually beneficial supplier-quality strategy.

3. An organization has obtained ISO 9001 certification, yet employees report that procedures do not reflect actual work and managers ignore recurring process failures. Evaluate why certification has not produced TQM and design corrective actions.

22. Multiple Choice Questions with Answers

Question 1

Which situation best demonstrates systems thinking in TQM?

A. Increasing final inspection without examining production causes

B. Reducing purchasing cost while ignoring the effect on defects and rework

C. Examining how design, suppliers, equipment, training, and customer complaints interact

D. Ranking employees according to individual defect counts

Correct Answer: C. Examining how design, suppliers, equipment, training, and customer complaints interact

Question 2

A control chart shows a stable process whose average output consistently fails to meet customer requirements. What is the most appropriate conclusion?

A. The process is stable but may be incapable of meeting requirements

B. Every operator must be disciplined

C. The data should be discarded because there is no special cause

D. Final inspection has eliminated the quality problem

Correct Answer: A. The process is stable but may be incapable of meeting requirements

Question 3

Which action is most consistent with prevention-oriented quality management?

A. Sorting defective products after production

B. Designing a barcode verification step to prevent incorrect material use

C. Offering discounts after customers receive defective products

D. Increasing the number of supervisors without changing the process

Correct Answer: B. Designing a barcode verification step to prevent incorrect material use

Question 4

In Juran’s quality trilogy, establishing processes capable of meeting customer needs belongs primarily to:

A. Quality planning

B. Quality control

C. Quality auditing

D. Quality inspection

Correct Answer: A. Quality planning

Question 5

Why can an employee suggestion programme fail to improve quality?

A. Employees are always unable to understand processes

B. Suggestions may be collected without feedback, resources, or managerial action

C. Quality improvement should never involve employees

D. Suggestions replace the need for customer information

Correct Answer: B. Suggestions may be collected without feedback, resources, or managerial action

Question 6

A manager treats every fluctuation in output as an individual worker error. Which TQM concept is being overlooked?

A. Mutually beneficial supplier relationships

B. Distinction between common-cause and special-cause variation

C. Zero-based budgeting

D. External customer segmentation

Correct Answer: B. Distinction between common-cause and special-cause variation

Question 7

Which statement best describes the relationship between ISO 9001 certification and TQM?

A. Certification automatically proves that a strong quality culture exists

B. Certification is unrelated to process management

C. Certification can provide structure and assurance but does not by itself establish TQM

D. Certification eliminates the need for leadership involvement

Correct Answer: C. Certification can provide structure and assurance but does not by itself establish TQM

Question 8

A company uses machine learning to predict equipment failure. Which additional consideration is most important from a TQM perspective?

A. Whether the model is fashionable

B. Whether data quality, human oversight, cybersecurity, and decision consequences are controlled

C. Whether employees are removed from all maintenance decisions

D. Whether predictions replace preventive maintenance procedures entirely

Correct Answer: B. Whether data quality, human oversight, cybersecurity, and decision consequences are controlled

Question 9

In the Northstar illustrative case, why was increasing final inspection alone inadequate?

A. Inspection is never appropriate for safety-related products

B. The causes involved suppliers, calibration, maintenance, information, and organizational priorities

C. Customers did not care about product consistency

D. The organization lacked any measurable requirements

Correct Answer: B. The causes involved suppliers, calibration, maintenance, information, and organizational priorities

Question 10

Which practice best reflects a mutually beneficial relationship with suppliers?

A. Selecting suppliers solely on the lowest initial price

B. Hiding forecast changes to preserve negotiating power

C. Sharing requirements, managing changes, developing capability, and reviewing evidence

D. Transferring all quality responsibility to the supplier

Correct Answer: C. Sharing requirements, managing changes, developing capability, and reviewing evidence