MIT Leaders for Manufacturing program founding (1989)

1989 founding by Kent Bowen and Tom Magnanti with $35M industrial money; now LGO. Tom was co-director "25 or 30 years ago" and learned TQM through it. ## Figures referenced (recurring numeric anchors, not cases)

I decided to do this because 25 or 30 years ago I was co-director of what we called the Leaders for Manufacturing program, which is now the LGO program in the Sloan School, and it was through that I learned about total quality management. I remember back around 1997 or so I was department head, and I asked a group of undergraduates in the department if anyone knew what total quality management was, and the first answer was — someone in the back of the room says, "It's BS." I said, well, you're probably right about a lot of that, but the CEOs of some of the top companies in the country have given a challenge to universities to learn what total quality management is, because they are using it in their companies and we're not teaching it at the universities.