Keeping up with customers’ evolving demands and expectations involves the continual process of improving and maintaining product and service quality. Enterprises offering better-quality products or services have higher productivity, customer satisfaction, and profitability levels.

Total quality management (TQM) is an organization-wide effort for continuous improvement of internal practices to ensure the delivery of the best possible products and services. TQM frameworks adhere to international standards and are widely applied in the manufacturing, service, agriculture, and public sectors. They involve the processes of reducing or eliminating errors, streamlining, improving customer experience, and enhancing the skill levels of employees.

In efforts to improve the quality of the workforce, facilitate smart transformation, and create a robust innovation ecosystem, a training course on Total Quality Management in SMEs was organized by the APO Secretariat, 30 January–2 February. Thirty-six representatives from 14 APO members attended the four-day virtual course, conducted by two resource persons from I.R. Iran, one from Malaysia, and one from Singapore. Their presentations highlighted the importance of quality improvement for overall business growth through the sharing of case study examples, best practices, and benefits of implementing TQM. In addition, insights from the SME perspective on recent technological and digital advances in quality management were covered.