Total Quality Management (TQM) focuses on meeting customer needs and expectations. It views quality as the totality of characteristics and features that impact a product or service's ability to satisfy needs. TQM involves all departments and aims to continuously improve processes through techniques like statistical process control, quality planning, and reducing variation. Leading thinkers like Deming, Juran, Crosby, Ishikawa, and Taguchi contributed approaches to TQM still used today like PDCA cycles, cost of quality analysis, and design of experiments.