An instrument for measuring total quality management implementation in manufacturing-based business units in India

Total Quality Management (TQM) is an integrative management philosophy aime d at continuously improving the quality of products and processes to achiev e customer satisfaction. The TQM literature is replete with practitioner or iented 'do-everything-right' articles and case studies. There is no complet e agreement on operating system elements of TQM. The objective of this pape r is to describe an empirical research on the development of an instrument for TQM implementation in business units in India. Through a detailed analy sis of the literature, this research identified 150 measures of quality man agement. After a pre-test, 111 measures were used to develop a questionnair e. These items were empirically tested by data collected from 50 respondent s. A factor analysis uncovered ten underlying dimensions of TQM with a tota l of 106 items. These factors and items were found to be reliable and valid .