Nearly every night on the evening news for the past several years they have been doing stories bemoaning the decline of American business, and the apparent lack of quality. We saw the fabulous success story of Japan, a nation that had been utterly defeated rising to take its place among the great nations. While Japan's fortunes have dimmed slightly in recent years, America has come back full steam, what is the reason behind both of nations successes? Well, one very important reason is a new management style know as Total Quality Management(TQM).

TQM was developed in America but it was in Japan that it found a home. In post-war Japan Douglas MacArthur, head of the American occupational forces recruited an American by the name of Edward Deming to rebuild Japanese industry. He was a firm believer in a new style of management known as Quality Circles(later TQM). This philosophy centered on, "...The needs of the customer, present and future." (E. Deming), it utilized cooperation, group work, and individual accountability to produce materials of the highest quality. This built well on Oriental philosophy with its focus on the community, patience, and honor. This almost equated personal honor with the quality of the product that was produced by the individual. This method of management led to the Japanese miracle, and nearly put the myopic American business interests out of business, because of their belief that quality was too expensive. This is a major difference between TQM and older management styles, in TQM you believe that quality pays for itself and that it justifies its own expense. Much of the emphasis on quality that we are now seeing is a result of the Japanese success and the realization that quality can sell a product as well as price will.

Now that you have had a brief overview of the history of TQM you need to know some of the specifics behind these broad ideas, of quality, and the importance of the customer. There are many difference lists of the "Principles of TQM" but here are some of the more important:

1. The Customer Defines Quality, the CUSTOMER'S needs are paramount, in other words, know your customer.

2. Quality is a strategic issue and the primary focus of strategic planning.

3. Quality is the responsibility of all employees, at all levels of the group.

4. All problems of the project team are solved through cooperative effort.

5. Training and Education of all employees are the basis of continuing quality improvement.

6. All functions of the project team must focus on continuous quality improvement to achieve strategic goals.

How are we going to apply these goals to a web page project written by Sophomore engineering students? Why would we even engage in a discussion that would seem to have a more appropriate forum in the business school? Well, to answer these questions we need to look at the six pillars of TQM. First who is our customer, it is the students that are taking Virginia Tech's introduction to Materials Science(MSE), a varied group ranging from MSE's themselves to Mechanical and Industrial Engineers. What do they want? We could make our page at an almost graduate student level by including all of the concepts that we have ever heard of, but that would defeat the purpose of trying to help these introductory students gain a deeper, but not Mariana Trench depth on the material. These are important considerations that come to light immediately once you consider the first ideal of TQM. We do not want to make something that we would want but what our customer would want. This is important when we are trying to consider the educational value of this project. This project would be educationally worthless if we overshoot our audience.

Secondly if we look at the teams that are involved in this project we see that the quality must begin there. An important concept within TQM is the idea that every team is a supplier, and customer of its fellow teams. If we can achieve a high degree of quality within these relationships we will be able to pass that quality down the line, but if it breaks anywhere along the line then the consumer of our product will not receive the best possible product. Also the need for communication makes throughout the project makes innovative management important for if our groups do not work together then nothing will work.

The final point that I would like to make is why this is being done at all. In our modern would graduate engineers will be expected to work in teams that may be managed by the concepts we have gone over here, with that understanding of the importance of the customer we can make ourselves better prepared for the outside world. This is not just something for business majors to discuss because it will be engineers that must work with these ideas, and if they understand then they will better be able to implement these ideas. This is also an important reason behind the formation of the Evaluation group, because we will try to make this produce as customer oriented as possible. We will report back in greater depth as to the success of our adventure into the land of Total Quality in our project, and see if these ideals help to provide a better product, and educational experience.