DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
QUALITY CONTROL AND
TOTAL QUALITY
MANAGEMENT
Arsh Sood

INTRODUCTION
• Quality can be considered as an important concept to every organization. It can
be expressed as a measurement which is used to estimate the standard of a
particular product or service. In 1950, Father of quality management Doctor
Edward Deming defined quality as something which fits for the purpose. Both
TQM and TQC are directly linked with quality. TQM stands for Total Quality
Management and TQC stands for Total Quality Control. However, there is a
difference between TQM and TQC.
Quality cannot be controlled by a team, division or process - it is something that
must be engrained into the cultural fabric of a company from top to bottom.

QUALITY CONTROL
• Quality control, or QC for short, is a process by which entities review the quality
of all factors involved in production. QC is concerned with ensuring that a
product meets the prescribed technical standard of quality, and meets the
customer's requirements. It involves physical checking of activities at each
specified stage of production from receiving materials and manufacturing to
testing, packing and shipping. It provides a control over the entire production
process.

TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT
• TQM is a continuous process of increasing the quality of the output by
eliminating waste and the non-value adding activities in the system. In
organizational perspective, a quality product comes within a quality process,
which means that quality should be built into the process.
• TQM consists of organization-wide efforts to install and make permanent; a
climate in which an organization continuously improves its ability to deliver high-
quality products and services to customers.

TQM VS TQC
• Both these are concepts related with quality.
• TQM expresses about continuous improvement in the processes while QC is about
maintaining the quality standards throughout the process.
• QC is used to verify the quality of the output; TQM is the process of managing for
quality.
QC and TQM groups work hand-in-hand to fulfill the company's vision and mission to
provide a competitive edge in offering the best products and services to the company's
customers. For the organization to be successful, every staff member should consider
himself to be a partner in business with his colleagues, and serve as his own QC
inspector, and TQM consultant!