Vol. 2, Issue 2, Part C (2016)

Abstract
In the present scenario of highly competitive business environment in domestic as well as global market, implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM) concept has become an essential business culture and a key survival tool, both for manufacturing and service industries, from large scale to small scale, for achieving the business competitiveness. TQM has been adopted by a good number of large scale industries. However, negligible units of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) has adopted TQM. Especially in developing countries like India, though SMEs play an important role in the economic growth of the country, SMEs are still reluctant to adopt TQM. Many Indian SMEs, under the pressure from the customer, have set up suitable QMS (Quality Management System) for getting ISO 9001 certification leading to Quality Assurance, but have not adopted TQM. As such, understanding the causes behind their reluctance in TQM implementation has become very important. In this review paper a number of literatures on the study on the Critical Factors for successful implementation of TQM and the causes responsible for reluctance of the SME in adopting TQM. The result will encourage and guide the future research to remove or reduce the difficulties of SMEs in implementing TQM to achieve the business excellence.