QUALITY:
Quality is about making organisations perform for
their stakeholders – from improving products, services, systems and processes,
to making sure that the whole organisation is fit and effective.
Managing quality means constantly pursuing
excellence: making sure that what your organisation does is fit for purpose,
and not only stays that way, but keeps improving.
There's a lot more to quality than just
manufacturing widgets without any defects or getting trains to run on time –
although those things are certainly part of the picture.
What quality means for your organisation is
ultimately a question for your stakeholders. And by stakeholders we mean anyone
who has an interest in the success of what your organisation does.
Customers will be the most important group of
stakeholders for the majority of businesses, but investors, employees,
suppliers and members of our wider society are stakeholders too. Delivering
quality in your organisation means knowing who your stakeholders are,
understanding what their needs are and meeting those needs (or even better,
exceeding expectations), both now and in the future.
The CQI believes this comes down to three things:
strong governance to define the organisation's aims and
translate them into action, robust systems of assurance to make sure
things stay on track and a culture of improvement to keep getting better.
To survive and thrive. Good quality management can
enhance your organisation’s brand and reputation, protect it against risks,
increase its efficiency, boost its profits and position it to keep on growing.
All while making staff and customers happier.
Quality is not just a box to be ticked or something
you pay lip service to. Failures resulting from poor governance, ineffective
assurance and resistance to change can, and do, have dire consequences for
businesses, individuals and society as a whole.
Just ask BP. The company faces a total bill of £35bn
from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill of 2010, which left 11 people dead, the
region's environment devastated and an indelible stain on BP's reputation. Volkswagen, which will be dealing with the
fallout from the 2015 emissions cheating scandal for years to come (it's still
too early to know how much it will cost them, but the amount will run to 10
figures at least).
but the retailers Tesco, Iceland, Aldi and Lidl,
whose reputations took a battering in 2013 when beef products were found to
contain horsemeat.
None of these things need have happened if better
quality management had been in place. But quality isn't just about disaster
prevention – it's about achieving great results, and seizing opportunities to
get better and better.
Quality isn’t just an issue for commercial
enterprises. Every organisation has stakeholders of one kind or another whose
needs they must strive to meet, which is what quality is ultimately about.
responsible for
quality:
Different
people will have responsibility or influence over different things that affect
quality, such as specifying requirements, meeting those requirements or
determining the quality of something.
Having
said that, it’s important to have people who can provide the knowledge, tools
and guidance to help everyone else play their part in achieving quality. These
people are quality professionals (find out more about them here)
and their job is to make organisations better.
They
come in many guises: some are generalists, some are specialists. Many will have
titles such as quality manager, quality engineer, quality director or assurance
manager, while others deal with aspects of quality as part of a broader remit.
Some are concerned with the delivery of products and services, while some are
part of the leadership of their organisations. Some are employed in-house,
while others work outside the organisations they deal with.
What
unites quality professionals is their dedication to protecting and
strengthening their organisations by making sure stakeholders’ needs are met –
and ideally, that their expectations are exceeded.
The
CQI is the only chartered body dedicated to quality professionals. IRCA is a
division of the CQI, and is the leading professional body for management system.
organisations achieve quality:
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