What is the difference between total quality management and quality control?

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a management philosophy that involves the whole organisation taking responsibility and ensuring the Quality of their deliverables/products/services and the processes by constantly looking to improve the effectiveness of their operational processes at every stage and get to a right first time state. TQM seeks to identify the source of each defect in order to prevent it entering the final product. An examples would be Ishikawa (Cause and Effect or Fishbone) Diagrams, first used in 1960's in Japanese Shipbuilding yards, they were used to find the root cause of a problem which has an undesired effect, identify the main likely areas of cause, then break these down to further levels and then identify the most likely and solutions to those. Effort can be placed on the 80% of failures normally arising from the 20% of possible causes (Pareto Analysis - used to differentiate between the trivial many and vital few factors).

Historically Quality Control was the final process on the production run where products were tested and if they passed they were shipped to Customers, and if they failed they were either re-worked or thrown in the bin. Economics meant that something better had to be done to avoid waste and to improve productivity/reputation/reduce costs. This is when Quality Management moved from the end of the production line back through the organisation, to the TQM way of thinking.