Total Quality Management is a philosophy gradually evolved from the management theories such as Management by objective quality circles strategic planning etc. To understand the concept it is better first to understand the three words constituting the concept, i ,e, Total Quality and Management.

1.Total: Everyone in the organization is involved in creating and maintaining the quality of the services and products offered by the organization. It is a comprehensive way of dealing with complex sets of interacting issues involving everyone at all levels and address in gall major issues.

2. Quality: The organization through individual and collective actions focuses on meeting customers ( agreed ) needs at lowest cost first time and hence recognizing that it is the customer perception that identifies quality. Total quality therefore refers to the fact involved in achieving quality according to some requirements or laid down.

3. Management: While managing the system the emphasis should be towards continuous improvement and not on quick fixes. Then only Total Quality can be achieved. This requires everyone in the organization to be responsible for managing gtheir own job. TQM portrays a whole systems view for quality management. TWM builds on the idea that an organization is an interactive network of communication and control.

According to Professor Leopald S. Vasin " TQM is the control of all transformation processes of an organization to best satisfy customer needs in the most economical manner."

According to Sashkin and Kiser ‘ TWM may be defined as creating an organizational culture committed to the continuous improvement to skill teamwork processes and product and services quality and customer satisfaction ."

According to Price and Chen TQM is a management systems not a series of programmes. It is a system that puts customers satisfaction before profits. It is a system that comprises a set of integrated philosophies tools and processes used to accomplish business objectives by creating delighted customers consistently meeting or exceeding their expectations and creating happy employees.