Total Quality Management Culture and Cost of Quality Leadership Training Course

Programme Summary

Total Quality Management culture and cost of quality leadership is a five-day training course for directors and quality heads at advanced level, culminating in a quality culture and cost of poor quality reduction roadmap for their organisation. Many organisations run formal systems yet still absorb rework, complaints and repeated errors that never appear as one line in the accounts. The approach moves from quality philosophies to failure costs, people and suppliers, and governance of improvement. Mars Training Centre UK delivers this programme in Total Quality Management and the economics of quality.

The Business Case

Poor quality is spread across scrap, rework, inspection, delayed payments, lost customers and staff time spent correcting avoidable errors. When leaders quantify these costs and shift spending from failure towards prevention, quality becomes a matter of financial performance rather than departmental routine, and every function owns its part of the result.

• Cost of Poor Quality as a Share of Revenue: Falls as failure costs are identified, owned and reduced.
• Customer Complaints and Repeat Defects: Decline as root causes are removed, not symptoms.
• Employee Involvement in Improvement: Rises as quality circles give staff a recognised role.

Principles and Evidence Base

• Deming's 14 Points and the PDCA Cycle: These principles shape the leadership agenda set in Session 1.
• Juran Quality Trilogy: Planning, control and improvement structure the system reviewed in Session 1 and Session 4.
• Prevention, Appraisal and Failure (PAF) Model: This cost of quality model builds the failure cost baseline in Session 2.
• Seven Basic Quality Tools: Pareto charts, cause-and-effect diagrams and control charts support fact-based decisions in Session 3.

Intended Participants

• Leaders accountable for quality across several functions or sites.
• Senior managers who must reduce rework, complaints and failure costs.
• Heads of quality seeking executive support to change behaviours, not add procedures.
• Directors who chair improvement steering groups or approve quality spending.

The programme serves manufacturing, healthcare, government services and utilities.

Learning Outcomes

1. Participants will be able to evaluate quality culture maturity against the core principles of Total Quality Management.
2. Participants will be able to construct a cost of quality baseline using the PAF categories.
3. Participants will be able to diagnose recurring quality failures with Pareto analysis and cause-and-effect methods.
4. Participants will be able to design employee and supplier involvement that sustains improvement.
5. Participants will be able to prioritise improvement projects by their effect on the cost of poor quality.
6. Participants will be able to justify a quality governance structure to an executive team.

Programme Structure

Day 1: Total Quality Management Philosophy and Leadership

What must leadership change for quality to become everyone's work?

• Deming's 14 Points and the System of Profound Knowledge
• Juran Quality Trilogy: Planning, Control and Improvement
• Crosby's Zero Defects and the Price of Non-Conformance
• Customer Focus and Internal Customers
• Quality Culture Maturity Self-Assessment

Day 2: Measuring the Cost of Quality

How much is poor quality costing the organisation, and where?

• PAF Model: Prevention, Appraisal, Internal and External Failure
• Hidden Failure Costs in Service Work
• Building a Cost of Poor Quality Baseline From Finance Data
• Quality Cost Reporting to Executives
• Shifting Spend From Failure Towards Prevention

Day 3: Fact-Based Decisions and Quality Tools

Which failures matter most, and what is causing them?

• Check Sheets, Histograms and Stratification
• Pareto Analysis of Complaints, Rework and Returns
• Ishikawa Cause-and-Effect Diagrams for Root Cause Analysis
• Control Charts and Common Versus Special Causes
• Scatter Diagrams for Suspected Relationships

Day 4: People, Suppliers and the Improvement System

How are employees and suppliers brought inside the quality effort?

• Quality Circles and Cross-Functional Improvement Teams
• Recognition and Frontline Ownership
• Supplier Partnership and Incoming Quality
• Benchmarking Against Peer Organisations
• Quality Councils and Steering Structures

Day 5: Leading a Total Quality Management Roadmap

Is the roadmap costed, owned and ready for approval?

• Linking the Day 2 Cost Baseline to Improvement Priorities
• Selecting Day 3 Tools for Each Priority Project
• Assigning Day 4 Teams, Supplier Actions and Steering Roles
• PDCA Review Cadence and Quality Performance Indicators
• Quality Culture and Cost of Poor Quality Roadmap Completion

Methodology

The programme relies on case analysis and structured exercises from manufacturing, hospitals, utilities and public services. Each session pairs a short briefing with group work on data participants bring, so tools are tested on real failure patterns.

• Suggested activity: Classifying finance and operations records into prevention, appraisal and failure costs.
• Suggested activity: Building a Pareto chart from complaint logs to set the first target.
• Suggested activity: Running a quality council meeting that reviews progress and removes barriers.

Capstone Output

Each participant completes a quality culture and cost of poor quality reduction roadmap for their organisation. It contains a culture maturity assessment, a cost of quality baseline, three prioritised improvement projects, involvement actions for staff and suppliers, and a governance and review cycle for executive approval.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Total Quality Management leadership training suitable for directors outside the quality function?

Yes. It is set at advanced level for leaders who influence quality results in any function, and assumes management experience rather than statistical expertise.

Which models does the Total Quality Management and cost of quality programme rest on?

It rests on Deming's 14 Points and the PDCA cycle, the Juran Quality Trilogy, the prevention, appraisal and failure cost model and the seven basic quality tools.

How is the Total Quality Management roadmap used at work?

You can present it to your executive team to secure ownership, fund prevention and track the cost of poor quality through regular reviews.

How does Total Quality Management training differ from a quality management system implementation programme?

It addresses leadership, culture and the economics of quality across functions, whereas a system implementation programme concentrates on documented procedures, audits and conformity to a standard.