Quality Is Not a Four-Letter Word
Quality professionals are in
a unique position: They are held responsible for the quality
of their organization’s products and/or services,
yet they often have little control over the design, development
and implementation of those products and/or services. In
other words, they get blamed when things go wrong and are
ignored when things go right.
Mention quality in the executive suites of many U.S. organizations
and the standard answer is, “We did quality in the
‘80s. It didn’t work.” These “enlightened”
managers have “moved beyond” quality to more
sensible initiatives such as Six Sigma, lean or other more
fashionable models.
I’m not knocking Six Sigma or lean. They’re
great, but what about quality? Why has quality become almost
passé in the business world? To understand why, we
need to define what quality is. I’m not talking about
the definition of the term. (By the way, my favorite is
Phil Crosby’s definition: “conformance to requirements.”)
I’m referring to the definition of the quality function.
Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition
defines quality control as “a system for maintaining
desired standards in a product or process, especially by
inspecting samples of the product.” This definition
is too narrow to apply to the entire field of quality, but
it does serve as the starting point, especially if merged
with Crosby’s definition. If so, we get “a system
for maintaining desired conformance to requirements in an
organization’s products, services or processes.”
It’s the “maintaining desired conformance”
portion of the definition that gets murky. How do we maintain
desired conformance? Today’s organizations use a cornucopia
of methods--some that get lumped into quality and some that
don’t. Examples include quality management systems
such as ISO 9001, Six Sigma, employee involvement teams,
kaizen, Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria,
and metrology systems for inspection and testing. But what
about design of products, services and processes? What about
systems for measuring customer satisfaction? What about
new product development? How about benchmarking and employee
training and motivation? All of these are necessary to maintain
desired conformance.
The word “total” in total quality management
focused many executives on looking at how all the pieces
of quality fit together. When TQM was dropped in favor of
the next fad du jour, the quality pieces didn’t go
away, but they often stopped working as a whole.
The notion that quality is passé is insulting to
the entire quality profession. The short-sighted executives
(and others) who think this way are doing a disservice to
their customers and their organizations.
A few years ago I criticized the American Society for
Quality for not doing enough to promote the quality profession.
I’m happy to report that as part of its new membership
model, the ASQ will begin to promote quality through ads
in The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Chief Executive,
Hospital and Health Networks, IndustryWeek, and
School Administrator. Copy for the advertisements reads,
“Quality is there for you 24/7. Acknowledge it. Champion
it. Embrace it. Join the quality movement.”
Quality, far from being passé, is as essential
as ever.
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