QUALITY BUSINESS DEFINED

Quality ensures that, every time a process is performed, the same information, methods, skills and controls are used and applied in a consistent manner to ultimately help ensure customer satisfaction. Quality is the totality of features and characteristics of products or services’ ability to satisfy assumed needs.

In the business world of engineering, and high-quality manufacturing, there is a pragmatic interpretation of superiority of goods or services. Meaning that quality fulfills the intended purpose while satisfying customer expectations and ensures that products are made to a minimum standard, or better.

Examples:

Quality refers to how good something is compared to other similar things i.e.: its degree of excellence. An international standard-setting body: ISO - International Organization for Standardization consists of representatives from various national standards organizations which define quality as “the totality of features and characteristics of a product or services specifying its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs.”

Business, manufacturing, and engineering uses a more pragmatic interpretation specifying the superiority or non-inferiority of something. They refer to a product as ‘fit for purpose, while simultaneously satisfying consumer expectations.

Perspective: Importance of Products:
1. For Companies: Bad-quality products adversely affect the consumer’s confidence, image of and sales of the company… leading to a potential decline of the company.
2. Consumers: Are ready to pay high prices, but in return, they expect best-quality products. If they are not satisfied, they’ll switch their purchases to the company’s competitors.”

Customer’s & Producer’s Interpretation
Consumers may focus on the specification quality of a product or service, or how it compares to competitors in the marketplace. In this context, the word ‘consumer‘ is also the ‘customer‘.

Producers generally measure the conformance quality, or degree to which the product/service was produced correctly. Other perspectives gauge quality by the degree that a product is reliable, maintainable, or sustainable.

Quality Management

Quality in business has many aspects … as it may refer either to goods or services. The key aspects of how good or ‘fit for purpose’ goods are, is based on the concept of quality management, defined in the following four perspectives:

1. Quality Planning: QP develops the goods, systems, and processes required to meet consumer expectations. In many cases, the producer tries to exceed them.

2. Quality Assurance: QA is a systematic monitoring of all aspects of production, a project, or a service. The objective ensures that the producer and what the producer markets meets the required standards.

3. Quality Control: QC is a system in manufacturing that maintains standards. Here, the focus is on the finished product, i.e., ensuring that it is defect-free and meets all specifications and standards. The distinction: while QA focuses on what happens after the product is made, QC focuses on what happens before it is made.

4. Quality Improvement: QI is the systematic approach to the elimination of waste and losses in the production process; it also includes the reduction of waste and losses. QI involves eliminating what is not working properly, and either improves it or eliminates it.

Consumers and companies have been thrown many roadblocks in the past two years. If companies want to survive, the above quality management approaches are strongly advised … or they won’t make it. The following suggestions benefit all sides of the equation:

1. Focus on Customers: Quality management would be wise to focus on meeting customer requirements while striving to exceed customer expectations when possible.
2. Leadership: Managers would be wise to establish unity of purpose and direction while creating conditions that engage individuals in achieving the company’s quality objectives.
3. People Engagement: Enhancing a company’s creative capability to deliver value requires that it has competent, engaged and empowered people. This includes employees at the top and all levels within the organization.
4. Process Approach: Everybody must understand the activities and why they matter. It is also vital that they are managed as interrelated processes that function seamlessly as a coherent system. Only then can a company achieve consistent and predictable results effectively and efficiently; It takes time to achieve this.
5. Improvement: For a company to be successful, it should focus on continuous improvement.
6. Evidence-based Decision-Making: Employees should base their decisions on the evaluation and analysis of data – in other words, hard facts. Only then are they likely to produce desired results.
7. Relationship Management: Companies striving for sustained success should manage their relationships with interested parties, such as retailers and suppliers.

There is logic in this process. Many business owners incorporate some of the quality management processes already. If you are already following a similar plan – super!
If you are not, give it some thought. 

Pat Dwight - HQZ Experts’ helps you evaluate your email strategy ... Questions? Contact Pat Dwight: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call: 949-455-0003.