Total Quality Management and Sustainability Engineering

I have had a long-time interest in total quality management (TQM) and similar quality programs, and the following is from the last 34 years of experience. In 1994, I co-chaired, along with the American Society for Quality [1], a symposium on pollution prevention and quality management (Perl JP, Pollution prevention, quality programs and training. AIChE, Chicago, IL, 1994). The managers from Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, UOP, Motorola, United States Air Force Center for Environmental Excellence, and the USEPA all presented the manner in which their respective organizations used quality management in the pursuit of pollution prevention and waste minimization. ASQ provided a generic quality management training program. When it gets right down to it, sustainability engineering design is all about optimization and therefore quality management principles must prevail.