Module 10

Pre-reading issues

1. What is quality?

2. Why is it important to produce quality goods or provide quality services?

3. Is it possible to measure quality?

4. What should quality be measured for?

5. How is quality related to management?

Quality management

Our understanding of the word quality should be associated with achieving or exceeding expectations, meeting requirements that customer had not actually stipulated, but once offered become the expectation of everyone.

Quality is defined by the customer, and as such will change over time, often in unpredictable ways. Quality is associated with creating customer value. As a complex concept, quality can only be addressed by the whole organization working together. If ‘quality’ is the end point, then ‘quality management’ is the approach and process for getting there.

If we are concerned with providing ‘value’ to customers, we must consider how we can improve customer value.

There are a number of principles which are central to the practice of quality management:

• Customer focus. If we wish to create value for our customers, we need to become obsessive about understanding of our customers and their requirements and expectations.

• Strategic focus. Companies must create a strategic vision and deploy this throughout the company in associated goals and actions.

• Leadership focus. Nothing happens in any organization without commitment of leaders and their active driving of the strategy.

• Process focus. Emphasis needs to move from assessment of outcome performance to the development and control of processes to deliver customer value.

• People focus. Quality management is fundamentally about people. An excellent process can be let down by a demotivated or poorly trained member of staff.

• Scientific focus. Quality management is fundamentally based on the scientific method: Plan, Do, Study, Act.

• Continual improvement, innovation and learning. At the heart of quality management is dissatisfaction with the status quo. Process improvement in an organization is about proactively seeking to learn about customers and processes, to improve upon existing practices, and to innovate in developing new markets.

• Systems thinking. By integrating the key concepts and seeing the organization in a holistic way, we can deliver a whole which is much greater than the sum of the parts.

Quality management is a contested area. Authoritative and impartial guidance is required to help the majority of organizations to make sense of this area.

The ISO 9000 series of standards is the international standard for quality management. Its objective is to provide a common, authoritative and widely accepted standard by which to evaluate and compare the potential of companies to meet acceptable levels of quality and reliability. ISO does not itself certify companies to ISO 9000. Instead each member country has an accreditation body which accredits certification bodies who deal with accreditation of companies.