Evaluating and prioritising critical success factors of TQM implementation based on fuzzy AHP

Total quality management (TQM) is an effective quality management technique which tries to integrate all functions of an organisation such as marketing, engineering and customer service. To achieve successful implementation of TQM, several critical success factors (CSFs) should be considered. This study attempts to identify and prioritise CSFs of TQM implementation in Iranian organisations. CSFs are extracted from the literature and are assessed based on experts' opinions. Through a comprehensive and detailed literature review and using the experts' opinion, 27 CSFs are identified to develop a questionnaire and classified to seven main groups to construct the hierarchy structure of CSFs. Afterward, based on the opinions of the quality managers collected from questionnaires, the importance degrees of identified CSFs are determined by applying the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP). In addition to the use of fuzzy scale for expressing the expert's opinion, the vagueness and uncertainty which exist in expert's opinion is considered in the proposed FAHP method. Based on the obtained results, the management main group of CSFs is more important than other main groups of CSFs. The teamwork structure sub‐factor related to the organisation main factor is also more important than other sub‐factors.