Key Points

• Total Quality Management is a popular system used by companies like Ford, Toyota, and Motorola.
• ISO 9001 is a great system if your organization wants to focus on certifications to differentiate itself from competitors.
• There are some notable differences and synergies between the two systems that can help determine which one is better to use.

Whenever an organization has to make key decisions about improving its operations, it must decide how to best improve processes across the board. In this decision-making, someone must evaluate the different process methodologies, such as Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, and Quality Management Systems. 

These systems are popular approaches for increasing quality in organizations, delivering better products to customers, eliminating waste, improving efficiency, and ultimately adding more to the bottom line. However, to reach this point, if you have to decide between two systems like TQM and ISO 9001, how do you know which one is right? 

What Is Total Quality Management?

When you think about Total Quality Management, it’s a good idea to look at it from the management perspective. This approach focuses heavily on customer satisfaction. The goal is to focus on continuous improvement across organizational processes to deliver a good customer experience. 

Among the core principles of TQM are customer-centricity, continuous improvement, and, perhaps most importantly, data-driven decision-making. Total Quality Management asks organizations to analyze data and determine where they can eliminate inefficiencies and waste. The goal is to proactively look for these opportunities across the organization, as everyone is responsible for helping out. 

Total Quality Management has a solid history over the last 75 years, starting post-World War II as Japanese businesses looked to rebuild. Companies like Toyota famously use it to help respond to competitors’ pressure and adapt to more modern technology through digital transformation.

TQM is a pretty profound cultural shift inside organizations, but with the right leaders and training, it can be tailored to any organization’s needs. 

What Is ISO 9001? 

Published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), ISO 9001 is an internationally recognized Quality Management Systems (QMS) standard. This system heavily focuses on creating a structured framework to ensure companies deliver consistent quality across any product or service they are responsible for. 

ISO 9001 does well by providing organizations with the right set of requirements to establish consistent quality deliverables. Unlike TQM, ISO focuses heavily on documenting all existing processes and then auditing to discover where improvements can be made to ensure compliance. 

First introduced in 1987, ISO 9001 has undergone several revisions (another is coming in 2026) and continues to evolve to meet global companies’ changing needs.

Whether these adjustments focus on better meeting regulatory requirements or improving overall processes to deliver a strong customer experience, ISO remains a flexible option for organizations that want repeatable processes to ensure consistency across their deliverables. 

Synergies: TQM and ISO 9001 

When you think about Total Quality Management, e.g., Six Sigma and ISO 9001, your initial reaction might be that these two process methodologies are different enough not to have any blurred lines. However, quite a few synergies are shared between these two processes, making deciding between them a little more challenging, depending on the organization. 

Quality Improvement

One of the most significant shared synergies between these methodologies is a shared focus on quality improvement. This is the crux of everything that matters most about implementing one of these two systems. TQM is heavily focused on continuous improvement, which aligns well with ISO 9001 and its requirement to evaluate and refine processes or “continuously improve” them. 

Employee Engagement 

If you are familiar with total quality management, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that there is a strong emphasis on ensuring employees are heavily involved in changes. The same can be said for ISO 9001, which requires documented processes for employees and training to ensure everyone is on the same page. The more integrated employees are with both systems, the more the organization can eliminate waste and streamline future operations. 

Focus on Customers

Another significant synergy between TQM and ISO 9001 is the customer-first emphasis. Both approaches focus heavily on customer expectations, with Total Quality Management focused on exceeding customers’ expectations. On the other hand, ISO ensures consistent quality delivered to customers, so what they see with their first purchase is matched on their third or fifth. 

All The Data

Regarding data, TQM relies heavily on analytics, especially in the Six Sigma world, where DMAIC and Analyze are among the biggest stepping stones. Organizations might benefit from utilizing these TQM analytical methods alongside ISO 9001’s auditing steps, which enable both methods to look at where waste or errors can be reduced. In other words, the goal with both of these is to drive more efficiency, which reduces waste and fattens the bottom line. 

Risk Management

The final synergy that can easily be wrapped around both TQM and QMS approaches is the proactive nature of both methods. In the case of TQM, you focus on problem-solving using data to reduce overall waste. ISO looks to identify the same types of problems and eliminate risk by auditing current processes and removing riskier steps in manufacturing and/or delivering to customers. 

Differences: TQM and ISO 9001

While these two frameworks have agreeable synergies, they also have an equal number of fundamental differences that can be determined. In the case of TQM and Six Sigma, you heavily focus on a data-driven approach. In contrast, ISO 9001 is focused on consistent improvement, allowing for distinct differences between these two approaches.

Different Approaches

If you look at TQM, it is a management philosophy that encourages employees from the top down to commit to improving quality without imposing super-rigorous guidelines. This differs from ISO 9001, a standard framework with very specific goals that companies or organizations do not deviate from. This allows for TQM to be more flexible, while ISO is objectively more rigid in achieving a company’s goals. 

Timeframes

Any management system or philosophy often has a timetable associated with achieving results. Whether monthly or yearly milestones, TQM focuses more on gradual improvements over time, allowing changes to take root in a company’s bones to ensure all employees are on board. For companies seeking more immediate changes or impacts, ISO 9001 certification can often be achieved within 3 to 6 months of integration, depending on the organization’s size and complexity.

Implementation 

If you are looking for immediate success, there’s a definite barrier to how fast either TQM or ISO 9001 can be implemented. In the same way, timeframes make a big difference as implementing TQM is essentially a major cultural shift across an organization from the top down.

Alternatively, ISO 9001 involves an entirely different implementation process that focuses less on changing an organization’s culture or bones and instead needs to work through audits and certifications. 

External Recognition 

On the positive side, ISO 9001 certification can enhance an organization’s credibility by demonstrating a commitment to quality management, though the impact may vary depending on the industry and customer expectations.

Having an ISO 9001 certification means that there is proof of quality across deliverables and a heightened level of customer trust. TQM doesn’t have any certification as it’s all handled internally, and most external forces, like customers, have no idea what is happening behind the scenes. 

When to Use TQM Over ISO 9001 (and Vice Versa) 

If you are focused on changing an organization’s culture from the top down, TQM will be the better choice. Not only is it more suitable for all kinds of businesses, but it’s also far more flexible than ISO 9001. For industries like technology or creative industries that focus on advertising or marketing, there is a much stronger argument that TQM is the right choice. 

Alternatively, if you are looking at an industry where credibility and certifications can help you win business, ISO 9001 will be better. This might be an industry like telecommunications or finance, where there are both regulatory and compliance factors to consider. TQM is better for industries where regulatory concerns are not a huge factor. 

Small businesses might prefer to look at ISO 9001 for the benefits of a certification, as a way to establish a reason to choose it over a competitor. Large or small organizations with a larger runway to make changes can look to TQM, as it takes time to fundamentally change how a company operates. 

One caveat here is that there can be an argument for using both, taking the best of each for their strengths, and implementing them accordingly. A company might want to look at TQM to help change its overall culture by emphasizing quality while looking to ISO 9001 to receive certifications that its main competitors are not pursuing. 

Other Useful Tools and Concepts

If you are looking for some more reading material about this subject and more, there is plenty of reading you can do around Lean Six Sigma. How about a look at the common myths about Total Quality Management and how to work around them? You could also look for some great ideas for empowering cross-functional teams in a Lean Six Sigma environment so you are breaking down silos. 

Of course, if you are in the Six Sigma world, you should know that the approach has some generational differences. This is why looking to the future and helping modernize Six Sigma training is super important. Lastly, understanding how companies are thriving through digital transformation is a great way to understand how changes of all kinds can help grow the bottom line. 

Conclusion 

Ultimately, whether an organization chooses Total Quality Management or ISO 9001 will depend on its goals. The primary goal is usually to improve customer experiences or drive efficiency, but how you achieve these goals will determine which of these two models you pursue.

The image featured at the top of this post is ©Cast Of Thousands/Shutterstock.com.