Just of recent there was a global economic crisis tagged global “economic meltdown” that plagued the global business environment and left many organizations in economic quagmire. Though there is a general feeling of recuperation from the effects of the plague but the reality is that businesses world over have not been as vibrant as it had been before the advent of the plague.
Again the main challenge that companies face as the 21st Century gets underway, is to succeed in a global economy where competition is fierce and where customers are becoming increasingly demanding. For any company to succeed, it must take a global perspective. It must supply products and services that are competitive in both price and quality, and in international as well as in domestic markets. To maintain a competitive edge in such an environment it must continually improve the quality of products, services and relationships with customers.
Total Quality Management (TQM) has proven itself as a way of managing and continuously improving quality. Its successful implementation in Japanese firms has been a major factor not only in their success, but also in establishing the levels of quality that customers now expect in whatever they purchase.
What is Total Quality Management? What indeed do we mean by quality? Quality may be simply defined as meeting customer requirements. In fact, given the level of competition in today’s market place, we might better define it as meeting and improving upon requirements. Total Quality Management, as the name indicates, regards the continuous improvement of customer-oriented quality as both requiring active management and involving the entire company – and often suppliers and customers as well. TQM can be described in practical terms as customer focus, continuous improvement and teamwork.
A great deal has been written about TQM, and more scholarly analyses have identified four fundamental orientations of TQM: systems, customer, learning and change. From this perspective, TQM is seen as a dynamic economic effort by firms to adapt and survive in dynamic environments.

Tread on business development and sustainability to continue from the stables of Homlet to see if we can by any means contribute to Nigerian development through teaching and consulting for greater profitability in business ventures. The number of likes and followership received will encourage us to break the Nsugbe coconut