Quality Management
2.4 CornerstonesQuality is not an act, it is a habit
What is quality management?
Definition
The systematic approach to ensure products, services and processes consistently meet specified requirements and standards to ultimately fulfill the stakeholders needs
Purpose
To ensure that the organisation deliver high-quality products and services, meet customer expectations, and continually improve their processes
What is Quality?
Quality refers to the characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stakeholder needs. It is a measure of excellence or a state of being free from defects, deficiencies, and significant variations. In the context of a business, quality can be defined by parameters such as durability, reliability, usability, efficiency, and customer satisfaction.
For example, a high-quality automobile is one that performs reliably, lasts a long time without needing repairs, and meets or exceeds the customer’s expectations in terms of performance and comfort.
Quality is determined by stakeholders
An organisation cannot define the quality of their own products or services. The stakeholders are the ones determining if they perceive a product or service as durable, reliable, usable efficient or satisfactory. In the best case, the stakeholders provide this feedback through own will, but reality is not that simple.
To effectively work with quality management, information through feedback is required to improve the perceived quality. However, without this information, an organisation becomes blind, and its future is determined by chance. This is typically not a wanted situation, and since a lot of stakeholders seldom provide constructive and structured feedback, the organisation must drive this by its own efforts.
Quality can only be measured through interactions with stakeholders. The interaction can however take many shapes and forms. Here are a few different methods for measuring quality. Important to note is that no single measurement provides the complete picture, but by combining a few can provide a broader and more complete picture.
- Incidents received by service desk
- Amount of returned products
- Stakeholder satisfaction surveys
- In depth interviews
- Independent third party testing
- Etc.
Customers are often the most interesting stakeholder group, but employees, suppliers and even other groups can be interesting stakeholders to measure quality. Employee surveys are a way to measure workplace quality that can be used to improve the workplace and attract and retain employees. Suppliers can provide information about the quality of collaboration that can be used to improve supplier delivery quality and collaboration.
The importance of quality
By working with quality management in all layers of the organisation, one systematically ensures that stakeholders of each layer are satisfied with existing deliveries as well as get valuable insights for how to improve.
Quality measurements are one of the most important sources of input for continual improvement and is therefore a key practice for all activities within an organisation.
Next Step
Read more about the next Cornerstone, Operational excellence…