Legacy[edit]
Interest in TQM as an academic subject peaked around 1993.[1]
The Federal Quality Institute was shuttered in September 1995 as part of the Clinton administration's efforts to streamline government.[18] The European Centre for Total Quality Management closed in August 2009, a casualty of the Great Recession.[19]
TQM as a vaguely defined quality management approach was largely supplanted by the ISO 9000 collection of standards and their formal certification processes in the 1990s. Business interest in quality improvement under the TQM name also faded as Jack Welch's success attracted attention to Six Sigma and Toyota's success attracted attention to Lean manufacturing, though the three share many of the same tools, techniques, and significant portions of the same philosophy.
TQM lives on in various national quality awards around the globe.[20]