Quality (business)

Quality (business)

Quality in business, engineering and manufacturing has a pragmatic interpretation as the non-inferiority or superiority of something; it is also defined as fitness for purpose. Quality is a perceptual, conditional and somewhat subjective attribute and may be understood differently by different people. Consumers may focus on the specification quality of a product/service, or how it compares to competitors in the marketplace. Producers might measure the conformance quality, or degree to which the product/service was produced correctly. Support personnel may measure quality in the degree that a product is reliable, maintainable, or sustainable.

There are five aspects of quality in a business context:

1. Producing - providing something.
2. Checking - confirming that something has been done correctly.
3. Quality Control - controlling a process to ensure that the outcomes are predictable.
4. Quality Management – directing an organisation so that it optimises its performance through analysis and improvement.
5. Quality Assurance – obtaining confidence that a product or service will be satisfactory. (Normally performed by a purchaser)

Quality applied in these forms was mainly developed by the procurement directorates of NASA, the military and nuclear industries from the 1960's and this is why so much emphasis was placed on Quality Assurance. The original versions of Quality Management System Standards (eventually merged to ISO 9001) were designed to contract manufacturers to produce better products, consistently and were focussed on Producing, Checking and Quality Control.

The subsequent move of the Quality sector towards management systems can be clearly seen by the aggregation of the product quality requirements into one eighth of the current version of ISO 9001. This increased focus on Quality Management has promoted a general perception that quality is about procedures and documentation. Similar experiences can be seen in the areas of Safety Management Systems and Environmental Management Systems.

The emergence of tools like Asset Optimisation and 6 sigma is an interesting development in the application of quality principles in business.

Managing quality is fundamental to any activity and having a clear understanding of the five aspects, measuring performance and taking action to improve is essential to an organisations survival and growth.