The evolutionary steps
Evolution from quality
management to an
integrative
management system
based on TQM and its
impact on the
profession of quality
managers in industry
Dietmar Mangelsdorf
The author
Dietmar MangeIsdorf is Senior Director in the
Information and Communication Networks Group of
Siemens AG, Munich, Germany and a member of the
International Academy for Quality.
Keywords
TQM, Management theory, Business history,
Quality systems
Abstract
Quality has a long tradition in industry. In and after the
Second World War we all focused on quality control. In
the 1980s, quality management systems, as given in the
ISO standards 9000 series, paved the way for a quality-
related business management. Advanced companies
today are in a post-ISO-era, in search of business
excellence to meet the challenges of the globalisation in
all market segments. The total integration of all
management aspects into an integrative business man-
agement will bring the breakthrough needed. This
evolution will have a tremendous impact on the
traditional profession of quality managers in industry.
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The TQM Magazine
Volume 11 . Number 6 . 1999 . pp. 419±424
# MCB University Press . ISSN 0954-478X
419
Let us look back at the 1950s. At that time,
we focused on quality control developing
statistical methods and advanced measuring
and test technologies with increasing degrees
of automation and computerised techniques
to select products of high quality in the
factory.
The growing complexity in products, ser-
vices and in the key processes of a company
made a broader approach necessary: product
quality as a result of well-designed and
controlled processes (see Figure 1).
In the middle of the 1980s, the interna-
tional standards ISO 9000 series introduced
the main principles of quality management in
all branches. These standards focused on the
involvement of the management for quality
on controlled processes, in all core activities
and on continuous improvement of all pro-
cesses in the company.
Over time, companies recognised the es-
sentials of these ideas and learned to introduce
a quality management system with its quality
elements step by step in their various pro-
cesses in the factories, in development and
engineering, as well as in sales and marketing.
At this time, the traditional quality control
activities in the factories, which had grown to
separate, independent large departments
within the organisation, were reorganised.
Owing to modern manufacturing technolo-
gies and the need for more productivity,
quality control and quality engineering activ-
ities became more and more an integral part
of the operational tasks in the various
processes. Quality control was no longer a
separate profession in independent depart-
ments, and as a consequence, many
employees had to be integrated directly into
the production lines.
On the other hand, formal quality man-
agement elements have been implemented in
R&D, sales and service departments for a
complete ISO 9001 management system.
The quality managers were faced with a
new challenge, to implement and to optimise
the company's quality management system
and to get this system certified based on ISO
9000 standards.
Over time, the focus changed from doc-
umentation and formalities at the beginning
of the implementation towards a real man-
agement for process control and for
improvements in products and services, in
 Evolution from quality management
Dietmar Mangelsdorf
Figure 1 The evolution toward total quality management (TQM)
processes and at least ± by means of the
maturity models given in the international
quality award criteria ± in business manage-
ment.
Decisive for this evolution was and is still
today the will and the engagement of the
business management for change and a long-
term training program for all employees to
understand and practice the essentials of
quality management day by day in all levels of
the organisation.
The main influence was the difficult busi-
ness situations at the beginning of the 1990s in
all traditional European industries and the
growing complexity in business and technol-
ogy. Globalisation with loss of market shares,
higher productivity in standardised processes,
the introduction of new and in many cases
more powerful modern products ± due to
advanced technologies ± as well as lower
labour costs in eastern Europe and in other
regions of the world had in consequence a
continuous growth of unemployment and far-
reaching change of jobs within the European
Community. All these aspects needed a new
approach in business management for a turn-
around.
In the search for competitiveness and
``business excellence'', ambitious programs
for productivity and innovations have been set
up ± often supported by business schools or
consultants ± to face the challenges of the
dramatic changes in the markets.
The main aspects of these programs are:
process re-engineering and improved process
control in all functions of the company,
continuous improvement, and ± as a very
important aspect ± programs for culture
change within the companies combined with
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The TQM Magazine
Volume 11 . Number 6 . 1999 . 419±424
a new approach for business management by
people empowerment.
These programs ± at the very beginning
managed as separate projects under labels
such as ``re-engineering'', ``change manage-
ment'', ``6 sigma'', ``top'' and other
expressions ± had incorporated all basic
elements of a new integrative management
with soft and traditional hard facts, but in fact
people did not always recognise this as such a
quality system. Still today in many companies
you can observe that quality systems, mainly
ISO 9000 based, will be operated in addition
to the new management approach as some-
thing separate! Nevertheless, in these days the
integration of quality management into busi-
ness management processes began!
The influence of an ongoing
international standardisation process
The main influence on this evolution besides
the new approach in business management
was the international standardisation and
national/regional legislation (see Figure 2).
In the 1990s, national, European and
international standards for environmental
protection added a further management
aspect into a formal management system.
Other aspects such as occupational health and
safety, data and information security, product
safety and liability, risk management and
other management aspects are under discus-
sion in standardisation bodies.
Besides requirement standards and certifi-
cation procedures for management aspects,
specific product standards and product
Figure 2 Standardisation driving the evolution toward an integrative
management system
 Evolution from quality management
Dietmar Mangelsdorf
certification procedures ± sometimes con-
nected with certified quality management
systems ± have been defined. An example of
this is the European Community's directives
for product certification, CE- marking and
homologation based on national, European
and international standards.
Today, specific product certifications are
required in different nations/states and re-
gions in the world. For a global market
mutual recognition and supplier's declaration
will overcome these non-added value activ-
ities in the future.
In the middle of the 1990s, a new tendency
became evident: the development of branch-
specific deductions and supplements of ISO
9000 standards; e.g. QS 9000 in the auto-
motive, TL 9000 in the IT and
telecommunication and AS 9000 in the
aviation and aerospace industry.
The principles of these specific standards are
all the same, the details are quite different. This
evolution needs a lot of additional efforts and
resources especially for companies in business
with customers in all of these branches.
Many companies of today have already
integrated some or all of these aspects
mentioned above into their management
system. As a consequence, more or less new
responsibilities grew out of these activities for
the quality managers of the companies.
The growing influence of maturity
models based on quality award criteria
In the 1980s, the Malcom Baldrige National
Quality Award was developed and signed into
law 1987 as a maturity model to strengthen
the competitiveness of US industries. In
Europe some years later the European
Foundation of Quality Management ±
founded, supported and financed by the
largest companies in this region ± developed
the European quality award nearly based on
the same or similar criteria.
These award schemes have been copied
worldwide in regional or national quality
awards. An example for the plurality in
Europe of today is given in Figure 3.
Maturity models such as ``Bootstrap'' or
``CMM'' also have had some tradition in the
software-process-level to assess and improve the
rapid growing complexity in SW-technology.
The charm of a maturity model on business
management level for many companies is, to
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Volume 11 . Number 6 . 1999 . 419±424
have an efficient tool to assess the real
improvements in their change programs for the
new approach in business management with its
fabrics of soft and hard facts.
For this reason the regular self-assessment
is driven by the business management itself, at
the beginning not in order to win the award
but to use the maturity model as a manage-
ment tool.
Experience shows that many, quite well
organised companies start with self-assess-
ment results of about 200 to 300 points and
that it takes at least three years and more to
reach the level of about 600 to 700 points, an
entrance level for an award application.
The adaptation and implementation of a
regular self- assessment based on the quality
award criteria is a real next evolutionary step
from an ISO based quality management toward
total quality management (TQM). It is the
decisive beginning of the integration of quality
management into the business management in
many companies, and it paves the way for an
integrative management system on the road to
business excellence embracing and harmonising
all the various activities and programs within a
company of today (Figure 4).
The maturity model based on the nine
criteria of the European quality award helps
to bring all the various management aspects
into a balanced relationship to each other and
to find out strength and weakness profiles.
The evolution in management system
certification
Together with the implementation of ISO-
based quality management systems, the pro-
cesses of system certifications in second and
third party sessions began.
On the one hand these certification proce-
dures supported the implementation
processes, on the other hand they focused
predominantly on documentation and form-
alisms. At least in a high-technical
environment, it is very difficult for an external
auditor to analyse and assess the real effec-
tiveness and efficiency of the quality system
practised in a complex company.
In ten years of certifications, this process is
more and more a routine in industry today
with more and less added values. This fact is
the reason for a search of alternative certifi-
cation procedures (Figure 5).
 Evolution from quality management The TQM Magazine
Dietmar Mangelsdorf Volume 11 . Number 6 . 1999 . 419±424

Figure 3 The various national quality awards in Eruope

Figure 4 On the way to an integrative management system (IMS)

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 Evolution from quality management
Dietmar Mangelsdorf
Figure 5 Evolution of management system certification procedures
Two trends can be recognised. One tendency is
to extend the audit time and audit intensity
combined with more specified requirements;
e.g. QS 9000 standard in the automotive
industry. Another tendency is to trust the
supplier's declaration and his own activities in
the search for excellence. Supervised manage-
ment system (SMS), supplier audit
confirmation (SAC) or supervised supplier
audits (SSA) are three alternative procedures to
obtain ISO 9000 certification and registration.
The methods are based on utilising the
supplier's (first party) internal audit system in
combination with the certifier's/registrar's (third
party) own assessment activities.
The objectives are elimination of unneces-
sary audit duplication, use of the pool of
company's qualified auditors with specific
``insider-know-how'' and improvement of the
effectiveness of third party certification audits.
The aim is more added value compared to
traditional certification auditing methods.
The SMS procedure is based on supplier's
declaration including several management
aspects such as quality, environmental protec-
tion, occupational safety and health and other
activities for progress and results of interest for
the customer. SMS integrates self-assessment
activities based on a maturity model as well.
The aim is to enable a better utilisation of a
successfully implemented advanced manage-
ment system with its various steering and
controlling procedures and to strengthen
confidence in the company's ability to provide
quality in a broader sense.
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Volume 11 . Number 6 . 1999 . 419±424
In the SMS procedure, the certifier vali-
dates and assesses the supplier's declaration,
participates in a regular management review
and performs joint audit activities together
with internal auditors. If a basis is given for
certification/registration (e.g. ISO 9001, ISO
14001 or other) a certificate can be issued by
request of the company.
The TQM evolution changes the
profession of quality managers in
industry
The evolution in the last 10-15 years in
business environment and in the field of
quality management has changed, as already
mentioned, the profession of a quality man-
ager in industry tremendously (see Figure 6).
In the 1960s, the quality manager was
responsible for the selection of good products
in the field of incoming inspection for supplied
components, as well as for testing and inspec-
tions in all the company's own manufacturing
processes, using sophisticated statistical
methods to reduce costs. Supplier quality
management and customer complaint man-
agement belonged to his duties as well. The
philosophy at this time was to employ separate
test and inspection resources independent of
the production lines. Quality control as a
managerial task in sales, research and devel-
opment or service was more or less unknown
although quality engineering aspects were used
in these areas and although everybody knew
that quality must be produced and not selected
by test and inspection.
 Evolution from quality management
Dietmar Mangelsdorf
Figure 6 Evolution from quality control to total quality management (TQM)
Growing complexity in technology, in the
sequences of operations and in the division of
labour within the company and by co-opera-
tion with other partners world-wide gave need
for well-designed and defined processes not
only in the factory but also in development and
engineering and step by step in sales and
administration. The growing complexity,
higher automation in production and the
search for more productivity gave the impulse
to fully transfer and integrate quality engi-
neering and control activities into all
operational processes. Every department
manager and every employee is now respon-
sible for his results and deliverables.
Frequently the quality departments shrank
into staff or smaller service units for corporate
quality assignments.
The transition from quality control to quality
management gave the quality managers new
responsibilities for the implementation of a
quality management system within the whole
company and to ensure certification and
registration.
The evolution in business management,
described previously in this paper, is now again
a new challenge and a chance for an out-
standing quality manager of today, to make a
step forward to the profession of a manager for
``strategic development of business manage-
ment''.
The challenge is to support the CEO and the
business management of the company to
implement an integrative management system,
to push productivity, improvement and culture
change programs and to assess and report
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Volume 11 . Number 6 . 1999 . 419±424
successes, flops and failures; to support the
shift into a holistic approach for business
excellence. There are many challenging tasks
within the scenario of the future evolutionary
way to an integrative management based on
TQM elements in the high competitive global
market environment of today. The necessary
skills and experiences of a ``strategic business
manager'' go far beyond those of a quality
manager of today.
(Dietmar Mangelsdorf is senior director in the
Information and Communication Networks
Group of Siemens AG, responsible for the
corporate department for quality and envir-
onmental management, with an independent
institute for quality engineering, testing and
approvals. This group operates worldwide as
a solution provider in the field of information
and telecommunication networks, equipment
and services. He studied mathematics and
physics at the Technical University of Darm-
stadt, Germany, and has worked in different
positions within the Siemens AG, corporate
r&D departments and in other groups for the
last 34 years. Mr Mangelsdorf is the repre-
sentative of Siemens in QM strategies as
speaker and chairman of the Siemens corpo-
rate working group for QM and quality
engineering. He is a member of the Interna-
tional Academy for Quality and the German
Society for Quality. He has numerous pub-
lications in the field of test technology, quality
engineering, quality management, as well as
certifications of products and management
systems.)