Total Quality Management (TQM)

Biological Parallel

Ecosystems practice total quality management: every organism contributes to system health (decomposers recycle nutrients, predators control populations, plants produce oxygen), and failure anywhere cascades through trophic levels. When wolves were removed from Yellowstone, elk overgrazed willows, beaver populations crashed, stream erosion accelerated—quality degradation spread system-wide. The body's quality management is total: immune cells patrol continuously, apoptosis eliminates defective cells, and homeostatic mechanisms regulate thousands of variables simultaneously. TQM mirrors ecology's principle: quality cannot be isolated to one department—it's emergent from every component's performance.