What is Quality?

Quality is the customer’s perception of how a good or service is fit for their purpose and how it satisfies stated and implicit specifications.

Quality in an organization is best achieved by Management creating a Quality Management System (QMS). A QMS is a formalized system that documents the company structure, management and employee responsibilities, and the procedures required to deliver a quality product or service. Four quality tools should be utilized when creating a QMS: Quality Manual, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), work instructions and supporting documentation as flowcharts and quality records. All four tools must be consistent, coherent and work together to increase the perceived value of the good or service.

How do I manage Quality?

Quality Management is effectively managing your company QMS to achieve maximum customer satisfaction at the lowest overall cost. Quality Management (QM) is a continuous process that requires inputs of time, effort and commitment from all company resources.

Eight QM principles form the foundation for effective quality management:

1. Customer Focus - Understand your customer’s needs. Measure customer satisfaction. Strive to exceed their expectations.
2. Leadership - Management establishes the strategy and leads the company toward achieving its objectives. Management creates an environment that encourages staff to continuously improve and work towards satisfying the customer.
3. People Involvement - Train your staff effectively. Teamwork and full employee involvement makes quality a reality.
4. Continuous Improvement - Continue to make things better.
5. Process Approach - Understand and organize company resources and activities to optimize how the organization operates.
6. Factual Approach to Decision Making - Make decisions based on the facts. Data must be gathered, analyzed and assessed against the objectives.
7. System Approach to Management - Determine sequence and interaction of processes and manage them as a system. Processes must meet customer requirements.
8. Mutually Beneficial Supplier Relationships - Work with your suppliers to produce a win-win outcome.

What is ISO?

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