Total Quality Management (TQM)

Standard course duration: 16 hours

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a philosophy of perpetual improvement. This philosophy was employed in the 1980’s and is coming back through the ISO Quality Standard. Total Quality Management is a basis for an ISO 9000 implementation. TQM is the concept that quality can be managed and that it is a process. Major topics include: Quality Mission; Quality Improvement – Projects; Quality Improvement – Organizing; Quality Improvement – Diagnosis; Quality Improvement – Remedy; Operator Errors; Cost of Quality; and Motivation for Quality.

Upon completion of this course participants will have developed an understanding of TQM methodology and will have gained experience in applying these techniques in company-specific situations.

Risk Management and Mitigation

Standard course duration: 8 hours

Risk Management is the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks; risks can be defined as the effect of uncertainty on the achievement of objectives. Risk Mitigation is the coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events or to maximize the realization of opportunities.

Risks can come from threats from project failures (at any phase in design, development, production, or sustainment life-cycles), deliberate competitive attack, technological evolution, legal liabilities, uncertainty in financial markets, accidents, natural causes and disasters as well as events of uncertain or unpredictable root-cause.

The course presents participants with the definition of risk, the underlying principles of risk management, the process of identifying and evaluating risk to create a risk index for prioritization, development of options or strategies for mitigating risk, and the steps to creating a risk management plan.

Within this context, a proven Risk Management method serves as the course backbone:

  1. Identify and characterize threats
  2. Assess the vulnerability of critical projects, assets or activities to specific threats
  3. Determine the risk – the expected likelihood and consequences of specific types of threats on specific assets
  4. Identify ways to reduce those risks
  5. Prioritize risk reduction measures based on a strategy

Upon completion of the course, participants will know the logic behind and the process to develop a function-specific or company-specific Risk Management and Mitigation Plan and will be able to apply the process in their work setting. They will be able to assess, identify, evaluate, rank and prioritize risk; then develop strategies to manage the likelihood or impact of threats.