Can quality management be extended to supply chains? This paper explores the increasing interest in extending quality management programs into customer-supplier relationships in manufacturing, particularly the potential for joint quality improvement initiatives to yield mutual benefits. Reports are made on research with eight suppliers into the telecommunications and electronics industries. It documents several findings in relation to propositions for effective total quality partnerships, which are essentially integrating mechanisms for the development of joint customer-supplier total quality management. This progress towards creating a partnership is currently limited among the sample of companies studied. As such, management's attention is warranted to implement total quality control throughout a sample of company suppliers.