Total Quality Management: Armand Vallin Feigenbaum

Armand Feigenbaum

Armand Vallin Feigenbaum was born on April 6, 1922 and lived to November 13, 2014. He was an American quality control expert and businessman known for the concept of Total Quality Control which later became Total Quality Management (TQM). He obtained a bachelor’s degree from Union College and his master’s degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management. He progressed to a PHD in Economics from MIT. In 1958, he became the Director of Manufacturing Operations at General Electric for a period of ten years. During that period, he was chair of a special committee under the American Society for Quality that laid the foundation for raising the level of importance of quality control in professional

Feigenbaum was the President and CEO of General Systems Company of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, an international engineering company that designs and implements total quality systems, which he founded in 1968. He was also the founding chairman of the board of the International Academy for Quality, which brought together leaders of the European Organization for Quality, the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers, and American Society for Quality. He went on to become the President of the American Society for Quality from 1961 to 1963, having been the vice president from 1958 to 1961. In recognition of his origination and implementation of basic foundations for modern quality control, Feigenbaum received several awards and honors including the First of American Society for Quality’s Lancaster Award, the National Security Industrial Association Award of Merit, the Union College Founders Medal, and the Member of the Advisory Group of the U.S. Army, among others. He also authored many books including his now famous book “Total Quality

The 14 founding companies are Bosch, British Telecommunications PLC, Bull SA, Ciba-Geigy AG, Dassualt Aviation, AB Electrolux, Fiat Auto SPA, KLM, Nestle, Olivetti, Philips, Renault, Sulzer AG and Volkswagen AG. It was formed to develop the concepts of Total Quality Management as a response to the work of W. Edwards Deming.

The foundation was initially formed with 67 members consisting of representative business leaders of the aforementioned companies. They brought together experts from various sectors and academia to develop a framework for operation known as the Excellence Model. The EFQM Excellence Model is an essential framework they have used to drive sustainable organizational development for over 20 years since it was launched in 1992. It also acted as a framework for assessing applications for the European Quality Award and other transnational quality awards of Europe. The EFQM model for excellence is based on a concept that consists in evaluating quality in two categories further classified into nine key criteria. The first category is the Factors, consisting of Leadership, Management of employees, Policy and Strategy, Partnerships and Resources and Processes. The second is the Result category consisting of Employee Satisfaction, Client