1. Foundations and Evolution of Total Quality Management

Introduction and Context

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a management philosophy concerned with creating sustained value for customers and other stakeholders through the continuous improvement of organizational processes, products, services, and relationships. It is not merely a quality department’s responsibility, nor is it limited to checking finished goods. TQM connects strategic purpose, customer requirements, employee involvement, process capability, supplier relationships, evidence-based decision-making, and organizational learning.

For production managers, quality is inseparable from productivity, cost, delivery, safety, flexibility, and sustainability. A defect discovered after production has been completed is usually more expensive to correct than an error prevented at its source. Similarly, a technically conforming product may still fail if it is delivered late, is difficult to use, or does not meet changing customer expectations. TQM therefore requires a broad view of performance and a disciplined understanding of variation.

The development of TQM reflects a major shift in managerial thinking. Organizations moved from detecting defective output through inspection, to controlling production processes, assuring quality through planned systems, and finally integrating quality into organizational strategy and culture. This chapter establishes the conceptual foundation for later study of quality planning, statistical process control, improvement methods, quality costs, standards, and excellence models.

Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter, students should be able to:

1. Define quality and distinguish important quality-related terms.

2. Explain the dimensions of quality and the perspectives of different stakeholders.

3. Trace the historical movement from inspection and quality control to quality assurance and TQM.

4. Compare the principal contributions of Deming, Juran, Crosby, Feigenbaum, Ishikawa, and Taguchi.

5. Explain prevention, systems thinking, process orientation, and variation.

6. Apply TQM principles to production and service situations.

7. Evaluate common implementation difficulties, ethical issues, and emerging digital applications of quality management.

Quality as a Multidimensional Concept

Quality is commonly described as the degree to which a product, service, process, or relationship satisfies stated and implied requirements. This definition contains two important ideas. First, quality involves requirements: specifications, regulations, contracts, and customer expectations. Second, some requirements are implied rather than explicitly written. Reliability, safety, ease of use, responsiveness, and professional conduct may be expected even when they are not fully stated in a purchase order.

Quality is not synonymous with luxury or high price. A low-cost product can be high quality if it consistently performs its intended function and meets customer requirements. Conversely, an expensive product can be poor quality if it is unreliable or difficult to use. Quality is also different from conformance alone. Conformance means meeting specified requirements, whereas market quality additionally concerns whether those requirements are relevant and valuable to users.

Several dimensions help managers interpret quality:

• Performance concerns the primary operating characteristics of a product or service.
• Features are supplementary characteristics that add functionality or convenience.
• Reliability refers to the probability that an item performs without failure for a specified period under stated conditions.
• Conformance concerns compliance with specifications, standards, or legal requirements.
• Durability indicates useful life before replacement or substantial deterioration.
• Serviceability concerns ease, speed, and competence of repair or support.
• Aesthetics involve sensory characteristics such as appearance, sound, taste, or feel.
• Perceived quality reflects the customer’s overall judgment, often influenced by reputation, communication, and prior experience.

In services, additional dimensions are important. These include responsiveness, assurance, empathy, accessibility, and consistency. Service quality is often evaluated during delivery, making employee behavior and process design central to the customer’s experience.

Quality also has multiple stakeholder perspectives. Customers judge value, usefulness, reliability, safety, and experience. Production employees may emphasize clear methods, capable equipment, appropriate materials, and workable standards. Managers consider customer retention, cost, risk, compliance, and competitive performance. Suppliers need stable specifications, realistic schedules, and constructive feedback. Regulators focus on safety, legality, environmental protection, and public interest. Owners and investors examine reputation, profitability, resilience, and long-term value. A mature quality system recognizes that these interests may support one another but may also conflict. For example, reducing material cost may increase failure risk, while maximizing inspection may delay delivery.

Essential Quality Terminology

A requirement is a need or expectation that is stated, generally implied, or obligatory. A specification translates requirements into measurable characteristics, tolerances, materials, methods, or performance criteria. A defect is a failure to meet a requirement, while nonconformity is the non-fulfilment of a specified requirement in a product, process, or system. The term defect often implies that the failure affects intended use or customer expectations; nonconformity is the broader formal term.

Inspection is the activity of examining, measuring, testing, or comparing output against specified criteria. Quality control (QC) comprises operational techniques and activities used to fulfil quality requirements. QC includes inspection but also involves process monitoring, corrective action, and the use of data to control production.

Quality assurance (QA) is the planned and systematic part of quality management that provides confidence that requirements will be fulfilled. QA emphasizes prevention through documented processes, audits, competence, design controls, and system discipline. Quality management includes coordinated activities for directing and controlling an organization with regard to quality. TQM extends this idea by making quality a pervasive organizational philosophy linked to leadership, strategy, people, processes, and continuous improvement.

Corrective action eliminates the cause of a detected nonconformity or undesirable situation. Preventive action, in its traditional usage, eliminates the cause of a potential nonconformity. Modern risk-based systems often integrate preventive thinking into planning and risk management. Correction fixes the immediate problem but does not necessarily remove its cause. Reworking a defective component is correction; changing the process that caused the defect is corrective action.

Variation is the difference among observations of a characteristic. Common-cause variation results from many ordinary causes inherent in a stable process. Special-cause variation arises from an identifiable, unusual, or assignable source. Distinguishing these causes is fundamental: a stable process should be improved by changing the system, whereas a special cause should first be investigated and removed.

From Inspection to Total Quality Management

The inspection era

Early industrial quality practice relied heavily on inspection of finished goods. Inspectors separated acceptable items from defective ones, often using visual checks, gauges, and tests. This approach was useful where products were interchangeable and production volumes were large, but it had serious limitations. Inspection did not create quality; it detected the consequences of process failure. It also generated appraisal costs, permitted defects to move through the system, and encouraged a division between people who produced work and people who judged it.

Inspection remains necessary in some contexts, particularly where safety or regulatory verification is required. However, inspection alone cannot guarantee quality. If a process produces defects unpredictably, examining every unit may be expensive and may still miss failures.

Statistical quality control

During the development of mass production, attention shifted from individual products to production processes. Statistical quality control used sampling, control charts, process data, and probability concepts to determine whether a process was stable and capable. Walter A. Shewhart’s work was especially important because it distinguished common and special causes of variation and provided a foundation for the Plan–Do–Study–Act improvement cycle.

Quality control reframed the manager’s question. Instead of asking only, “Which products are defective?” the organization began asking, “What is happening in the process, and what evidence shows that it is in control?” This encouraged earlier intervention, although many organizations still treated quality as primarily a technical or manufacturing function.

Quality assurance

Quality assurance expanded the focus from control of production to confidence in the entire quality system. Design, purchasing, documentation, training, calibration, supplier control, audits, and customer feedback became part of quality planning. The objective was not simply to find defects but to establish processes capable of producing conforming results consistently.

Quality assurance is system-oriented and preventive, but it can become bureaucratic if documentation is treated as an end in itself. A procedure that is perfectly documented but not followed, understood, or improved does not assure quality.

Total Quality Management

TQM integrates quality into organizational purpose and daily management. It is characterized by senior leadership, customer focus, employee participation, process management, prevention, fact-based decisions, supplier partnership, and continuous improvement. Quality is no longer assigned exclusively to inspectors or specialists. Every function influences quality: marketing defines expectations, design creates product characteristics, purchasing selects inputs, operations transform resources, logistics protects condition and delivery, and service functions shape the customer experience.

TQM is therefore both a philosophy and a management system. As a philosophy, it emphasizes shared responsibility and long-term thinking. As a system, it requires goals, measures, processes, roles, review mechanisms, and improvement methods. The two dimensions must be connected. A statement that “quality is everyone’s responsibility” is ineffective unless employees have authority, competence, information, and resources to act on quality problems.

The Pioneers and Their Contributions

W. Edwards Deming

Deming emphasized that quality and productivity are outcomes of the system in which people work. Management is responsible for most systemic problems because it controls processes, policies, technology, training, purchasing, and performance measures. His well-known fourteen points called for constancy of purpose, adoption of a new philosophy, reduction of dependence on mass inspection, improved supplier relationships, continuous improvement, training, leadership, removal of fear, elimination of barriers between departments, and transformation of management.

Deming’s system of profound knowledge joined four elements: appreciation for a system, knowledge of variation, theory of knowledge, and psychology. His approach warns managers against numerical quotas that encourage gaming and against ranking employees without considering differences in work systems. The PDSA cycle—Plan, Do, Study, Act—provides a disciplined approach to learning and improvement.

Joseph M. Juran

Juran viewed quality as fitness for use. His quality trilogy consists of quality planning, quality control, and quality improvement. Planning identifies customers, discovers their needs, develops product and process features, and establishes process controls. Control evaluates actual performance against goals and takes action when differences occur. Improvement addresses chronic problems and raises performance to a new level.

Juran also highlighted the Pareto principle: a relatively small number of causes may account for a large proportion of problems, although the precise distribution must be established through evidence rather than assumed. His work placed strong emphasis on management responsibility, project-based improvement, and translating customer needs into measurable requirements.

Philip B. Crosby

Crosby defined quality as conformance to requirements and argued that the performance standard should be “zero defects,” meaning doing the job right the first time rather than accepting an arbitrary acceptable defect rate. His four absolutes included the idea that quality means conformance, that the system of quality is prevention, that the performance standard is zero defects, and that the measure of quality is the price of nonconformance.

Crosby’s emphasis on prevention and the cost of poor quality was influential. However, zero defects should not be interpreted as a simplistic demand that employees never make mistakes. It is a managerial commitment to design processes that prevent errors and to avoid normalizing avoidable failure.

Armand V. Feigenbaum

Feigenbaum introduced the concept of total quality control, defining quality as a company-wide responsibility. He argued that quality is created through the interaction of multiple functions, including marketing, engineering, manufacturing, purchasing, installation, and service. His work developed the idea of quality costs, commonly grouped as prevention, appraisal, internal failure, and external failure costs.

Feigenbaum’s contribution is especially relevant to cross-functional management. A production department may reduce its own defects while creating problems for logistics or service. Total quality requires optimizing the overall value stream rather than isolated departmental results.

Kaoru Ishikawa

Ishikawa promoted company-wide quality control, quality circles, employee participation, and simple quality tools. His cause-and-effect diagram, also called the fishbone or Ishikawa diagram, helps teams organize possible causes of a problem under categories such as methods, materials, machines, measurement, manpower, and environment. He also advocated the seven basic quality tools and argued that quality education should be widely distributed within the organization.

Ishikawa’s approach demonstrates that employee involvement is not merely motivational. Frontline workers possess practical knowledge about process conditions, recurring interruptions, and workarounds that may not appear in formal reports. Participation must nevertheless be supported by management action; asking employees for ideas without implementing or explaining decisions damages trust.

Genichi Taguchi

Taguchi developed a robust design approach that seeks to make products and processes less sensitive to sources of variation. His quality loss function proposes that loss increases as a characteristic moves away from its target, even when the result remains within specification limits. This challenges the assumption that all values inside a tolerance are equally desirable.

Taguchi distinguished control factors, which designers can set, from noise factors, which are difficult or costly to control. Through designed experiments and parameter design, organizations can select settings that deliver consistent performance under varying conditions. His contribution shifts quality improvement upstream into product and process design.

Comparing the contributions

These thinkers differ in terminology and emphasis, but their work is complementary. Deming focused on systems, leadership, and variation; Juran on planning, control, and improvement; Crosby on prevention and the cost of nonconformance; Feigenbaum on company-wide responsibility and quality costs; Ishikawa on participation and practical tools; and Taguchi on robust design and loss from deviation. Together they support a coherent proposition: quality must be designed into processes, managed through evidence, improved across functions, and sustained by leadership and learning.

Prevention, Systems Thinking, and Variation

Prevention means acting before failure reaches the customer. It includes clear requirements, capable process design, mistake-proofing, supplier development, training, maintenance, risk analysis, and controlled changes. Prevention does not eliminate the need for inspection, but it changes inspection from the primary defense to one element of a broader control system.

Systems thinking views an organization as an interconnected set of processes rather than a collection of independent departments. A purchasing decision affects material variation; material variation affects machine settings; machine settings affect defects; defects affect delivery and customer confidence. Local optimization can therefore harm total performance. For example, maximizing machine utilization may increase queues, reduce maintenance time, and create late deliveries. TQM encourages managers to examine interactions, feedback, constraints, and unintended consequences.

Variation is unavoidable, but unmanaged variation is not. Managers should identify the characteristic being measured, establish reliable measurement, understand the process distribution, and distinguish ordinary from unusual causes. Over-adjusting a stable process in response to every fluctuation can increase variation rather than reduce it. Conversely, ignoring a special cause can allow a temporary failure to become normalized.

Process capability concerns whether a stable process can meet specified limits. A process may be statistically stable but incapable because its natural variation is too wide. It may also appear capable in a short sample while being unstable over time. Capability analysis therefore requires sound measurement, appropriate sampling, stable operating conditions, and understanding of the customer’s critical requirements.

Applying TQM in Production and Service Organizations

A production manager can translate TQM into practice by connecting customer requirements with process measures. The sequence may begin with identifying critical-to-quality characteristics, mapping the value stream, determining process inputs and outputs, establishing operating standards, and selecting indicators such as first-pass yield, defect rate, process capability, customer complaints, on-time delivery, and cost of poor quality.

Improvement should be structured rather than driven by isolated enthusiasm. A team may use PDSA, root-cause analysis, Pareto analysis, process mapping, control charts, failure mode and effects analysis, or designed experiments depending on the problem. The selected method should fit the nature of the decision. A recurring breakdown requires different analysis from a customer requirement that has never been translated into design characteristics.

Supplier quality is also central. Organizations should communicate requirements clearly, assess supplier capability, collaborate on improvement, and avoid treating suppliers solely as sources of price reduction. A supplier’s process variation may become the manufacturer’s defect rate. Similarly, service organizations apply TQM through process standardization, employee empowerment, demand management, complaint analysis, and recovery systems.

Digital technologies can strengthen these activities when properly governed. Sensors and manufacturing execution systems can provide real-time process data; statistical analytics can identify drift; machine learning can support predictive maintenance or anomaly detection; and digital traceability can connect material lots to customer outcomes. Technology does not replace process understanding. Poor measurement, biased data, inappropriate alerts, and opaque algorithms can produce false confidence. Human judgment, cybersecurity, data integrity, and clearly assigned accountability remain essential.

Illustrative Case: Preventing Defects in a Precision Components Plant

Background

The following is an illustrative case. A plant producing precision-machined components for industrial pumps had acceptable overall output but experienced rising customer complaints concerning leakage during field use. Internal inspection showed that most components met dimensional specifications.

Situation and analysis

Management initially proposed increasing final inspection. A cross-functional team instead mapped the process from incoming material to assembly and service feedback. It discovered that leakage was associated with a surface characteristic near, but not directly represented by, the existing dimensional inspection plan. Variation increased after tool changes and was greater for one material batch. Operators also adjusted machine settings differently across shifts because the documented setup instruction was incomplete.

The team separated common and special causes. Tool wear represented a recurring source of variation requiring a planned replacement interval and improved parameter settings. The material-batch effect required supplier investigation. Inconsistent setup practice represented a process-control and training issue. The problem was therefore systemic rather than the result of individual carelessness.

Approach and solution

The plant revised the critical-to-quality specification, improved the measurement method, and conducted a measurement-system study. Engineers used designed trials to identify robust machine settings. A visual setup standard and verification checklist were introduced, while a control chart was used for the key surface characteristic. Supplier representatives participated in reviewing material controls. Final inspection remained in place for safety and customer protection, but it was no longer the principal quality strategy.

Outcome

The plant reduced leakage-related complaints and improved first-pass yield. More importantly, managers gained visibility into the relationship among tool condition, material variation, setup practice, and field performance. Operators were involved in developing the revised standard, increasing practical acceptance of the changes.

Learning points

The case illustrates several TQM principles. Customer outcomes may depend on characteristics not captured by traditional inspection. A defect can have multiple interacting causes. Prevention is more effective when design, production, purchasing, measurement, and service information are connected. Finally, data are useful only when the measurement system and process understanding are sound.

Challenges, Risks, and Professional Responsibilities

TQM initiatives commonly fail when leaders announce quality as a slogan but continue rewarding volume, speed, or short-term cost regardless of defects. Other failures include excessive paperwork, poorly chosen metrics, training without authority, treating every problem as an employee error, launching improvement projects without prioritization, and copying another organization’s practices without understanding local processes.

Metrics can also create unintended behavior. A target for low reported defects may encourage concealment; a target for high machine utilization may discourage preventive maintenance; a target for short service time may reduce meaningful problem resolution. Measures should therefore be balanced, transparent, and reviewed for behavioral consequences.

Ethically, quality professionals have obligations to protect users, disclose risks, maintain accurate records, and resist pressure to release unsafe or nonconforming products. Regulatory compliance is a minimum requirement, not a substitute for responsible judgment. Traceability, data integrity, calibration, confidentiality, and independence in auditing are essential aspects of professional governance. When quality and production targets conflict, decisions should be guided by safety, contractual obligations, evidence, and long-term stakeholder consequences.

Current developments include integrated quality and sustainability management, resilient supply-chain quality, remote auditing, digital twins, automated visual inspection, and the use of artificial intelligence for prediction and classification. These developments increase analytical capability but also introduce risks involving privacy, explainability, cybersecurity, model drift, and accountability. TQM remains relevant because these technologies must still be embedded in reliable processes and a culture of learning.

Best Practices for Building a Quality Culture

A quality culture is developed through consistent managerial behavior rather than slogans. Effective organizations establish a clear purpose, translate customer needs into operational requirements, provide process owners with authority, use data alongside professional judgment, encourage early reporting of problems, and recognize improvement rather than concealment. They invest in competence, maintain reliable measurement systems, involve suppliers and employees, and review whether improvements remain effective over time.

The most important practical discipline is to treat problems as opportunities to understand the system. Immediate containment may be necessary, but it should be followed by cause analysis, corrective action, verification, and organizational learning. This sequence prevents repeated reliance on inspection, overtime, sorting, and individual heroics.

Chapter Summary

Quality is the ability of a product, service, process, or organization to fulfil stated and implied requirements and create stakeholder value. It includes performance, reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability, aesthetics, and perceived quality. Inspection detects problems, quality control manages operational conformity, quality assurance builds confidence through planned systems, and TQM integrates quality into leadership, strategy, processes, people, suppliers, and continuous improvement.

Deming emphasized systems, leadership, and variation; Juran developed the trilogy of planning, control, and improvement; Crosby emphasized prevention, conformance, zero defects, and the price of nonconformance; Feigenbaum advanced company-wide quality control and quality costs; Ishikawa promoted participation and practical tools; and Taguchi developed robust design and the quality loss perspective. Their ideas reinforce prevention, systems thinking, evidence-based decisions, and upstream design.

For production managers, TQM means connecting customer requirements to capable processes, distinguishing common from special causes, improving cross-functional performance, and using technology responsibly. Successful quality management depends on ethical leadership, reliable data, employee involvement, supplier partnership, and sustained learning.

Key Terms

Quality: The degree to which stated and implied requirements are fulfilled.

Requirement: A stated, generally implied, or obligatory need or expectation.

Specification: A measurable description of required product, process, or service characteristics.

Defect: A failure that affects fulfilment of a requirement or intended use.

Nonconformity: The non-fulfilment of a specified requirement.

Inspection: Examination, measurement, testing, or comparison against criteria.

Quality Control: Operational techniques and activities used to fulfil quality requirements.

Quality Assurance: Planned and systematic activities that provide confidence that requirements will be met.

Total Quality Management: An organization-wide philosophy and system focused on customer value and continuous improvement.

Correction: Action that fixes an identified problem without necessarily removing its cause.

Corrective Action: Action taken to eliminate the cause of a detected nonconformity.

Prevention: Action taken to avoid the occurrence or recurrence of undesirable outcomes.

Variation: Differences among observations of a process or characteristic.

Common Cause: A source of variation inherent in a process system.

Special Cause: An identifiable and unusual source of variation.

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

Quality Cost: The cost associated with prevention, appraisal, and internal or external failure.

Robust Design: Designing products or processes to perform consistently despite noise factors.

PDSA Cycle: A structured cycle of planning, performing, studying results, and acting on learning.

Quality Culture: Shared organizational values and behaviors that support reliable performance and improvement.

Review Questions

Short Answer Questions

1. Distinguish quality assurance from quality control.

2. What is meant by “fitness for use”?

3. Define common-cause and special-cause variation.

4. State the main elements of Juran’s quality trilogy.

5. Why is inspection alone insufficient for achieving quality?

Long Answer Questions

1. Explain the historical evolution from inspection to Total Quality Management.

2. Compare the contributions of Deming, Juran, Crosby, Feigenbaum, Ishikawa, and Taguchi.

3. Discuss the dimensions of quality and explain how different stakeholders may judge quality differently.

4. Explain how systems thinking changes the role of a production manager.

5. Discuss prevention, quality costs, and the relationship between process capability and customer requirements.

Analytical / Application Questions

1. A factory has a low final defect rate but frequent customer complaints. Diagnose possible weaknesses in its quality system and recommend an investigation approach.

2. A stable machining process produces measurements consistently outside customer tolerance. Explain the difference between stability and capability and propose corrective actions.

3. A manager rewards departments solely for meeting monthly output targets. Analyze the likely quality risks and design a balanced performance-measurement approach.

22. Multiple Choice Questions with Answers

Question 1

Which statement best distinguishes quality assurance from quality control?

A. Quality assurance focuses on planned systems and prevention, while quality control focuses on operational conformity and control.

B. Quality assurance is limited to final inspection, while quality control concerns customer satisfaction.

C. Quality assurance corrects individual defects, while quality control designs products.

D. Quality assurance applies only to suppliers, while quality control applies only to employees.

Correct Answer: A. Quality assurance focuses on planned systems and prevention, while quality control focuses on operational conformity and control.

Question 2

A process shows random fluctuation within stable limits, but its natural spread is wider than the customer specification. What is the most accurate conclusion?

A. The process has a special cause and should immediately be adjusted.

B. The process is stable but incapable of consistently meeting requirements.

C. The process is capable because all variation is common cause.

D. The measurement system must be ignored because the process is stable.

Correct Answer: B. The process is stable but incapable of consistently meeting requirements.

Question 3

Which contribution is most closely associated with Taguchi?

A. The fourteen points for management transformation

B. The quality trilogy of planning, control, and improvement

C. Robust design that reduces sensitivity to noise factors

D. Quality circles and the fishbone diagram

Correct Answer: C. Robust design that reduces sensitivity to noise factors

Question 4

A company repeatedly sorts defective products at the end of production but does not investigate their causes. Which TQM principle is most clearly being neglected?

A. Prevention

B. Aesthetics

C. Supplier pricing

D. Perceived quality

Correct Answer: A. Prevention

Question 5

A manager changes machine settings every time a measurement fluctuates slightly, even though the control chart indicates a stable process. What is the likely consequence?

A. Reduced common-cause variation through better responsiveness

B. Increased variation caused by unnecessary adjustment

C. Immediate improvement in process capability

D. Elimination of the need for measurement-system analysis

Correct Answer: B. Increased variation caused by unnecessary adjustment

Question 6

Which example is a corrective action rather than a correction?

A. Reworking a component that fails inspection

B. Discarding a damaged product

C. Repairing one customer shipment before dispatch

D. Changing the setup method that caused repeated dimensional failures

Correct Answer: D. Changing the setup method that caused repeated dimensional failures

Question 7

Why does systems thinking matter in TQM?

A. It allows each department to optimize its own results independently.

B. It treats quality as the responsibility of inspectors alone.

C. It recognizes that decisions in one process can affect performance elsewhere.

D. It eliminates the need for process measures.

Correct Answer: C. It recognizes that decisions in one process can affect performance elsewhere.

Question 8

A supplier’s material variation increases field failures even though production operators follow their work instructions. Which response best reflects TQM?

A. Punish operators for failing to detect every material problem.

B. Increase final inspection without examining the supplier process.

C. Work with the supplier, validate measurement, and analyze the linked process causes.

D. Remove all specifications so that material variation is accepted.

Correct Answer: C. Work with the supplier, validate measurement, and analyze the linked process causes.

Question 9

Crosby’s idea of zero defects is best interpreted as:

A. A demand that employees must never make mistakes under any circumstances.

B. A commitment to prevention and doing the work right the first time.

C. Permission to accept defects if inspection costs are high.

D. A statistical claim that variation can be completely eliminated.

Correct Answer: B. A commitment to prevention and doing the work right the first time.

Question 10

Which situation presents the clearest ethical quality concern?

A. Using a control chart to study process drift

B. Training employees in measurement procedures

C. Accurately reporting a safety-related nonconformity

D. Suppressing defect data to meet a production performance target

Correct Answer: D. Suppressing defect data to meet a production performance target