Total quality management of what TQM entails. During the 1990s, standards bodies in Belgium, France, Germany, Turkey, and the United Kingdom attempted to standardize TQM. While many of these standards have since been explicitly withdrawn, they all are effectively superseded by ISO 9000: Interest in TQM as an academic subject peaked around 1993. The Federal Quality Institute was shuttered in September 1995 as part of the Clinton administration's efforts to streamline government. The European Centre for Total Quality Management closed in August 2009, a casualty of the Great Recession. TQM as a vaguely defined quality management approach was largely supplanted by the ISO
British Standards to adhere to a common method for such a specification. The Kitemark can be used to indicate certification by BSI, but only where a Kitemark scheme has been set up around a particular standard. It is mainly applicable to safety and quality management standards. There is a common misunderstanding that Kitemarks are necessary to prove compliance with any BS standard, but in general it is neither desirable nor possible that every standard be 'policed' in this way. Following the move on harmonisation of the standard in Europe, some British Standards are gradually superseded or replaced by the relevant European Standards