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In this unit we are going to speak about quality management in organizations.

Quality management includes all activities performed by a company to maintain a desired level of excellence. It has four main components: quality planning, quality assurance, quality control and quality improvement (which are integrated in a continuous Plan, Do, Check, Act improvement cycle). It is focused not only on the quality of products and services, but also on the means to achieve these, so it includes also control of the business processes involved.

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The ISO (International Standards Organization) 9000 family of quality management systems standards is based on eight quality management principlesCustomer focusOrganizations depend on their customers and therefore should understand current and future customer needs, should meet customer requirements and strive to exceed customer expectations.LeadershipLeaders of an organization establish unity of purpose and direction. They should aim for the creation and maintenance of an internal environment in which people can become fully involved in achieving the organization's quality objectives.Involvement of peoplePeople at all levels of an organization are the essence of it. Their complete involvement enables their abilities to be used for the benefit of the organization.Process approachThe desired result can be achieved when activities and related resources are managed in an organization as a process.System approach to managementIdentifying, understanding and managing interrelated processes as a system contributes to the organization’s effectiveness and efficiency in achieving its quality objectives.Continual improvementOne of the permanent quality objectives of an organization should be the continual improvement of its

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overall performance, leveraging clear and concise Process Performance Measures (PPMs).Factual approach to decision makingEffective decisions are always based on the analysis of data and information. Mutually beneficial supplier relationshipsSince an organization and its suppliers are interdependent, a mutually beneficial relationship between them increases the ability of both to add value.

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There are many ideas and methods which aim at improving quality; we are going to discuss three of them.Total quality management (TQM) is a management strategy aimed at embedding awareness of quality in all organizational processes. It consists of organization-wide efforts to install and make permanent a climate in which the organization continuously improves its ability to deliver high-quality products and services to customers.Quality control techniques are used to ensure that the product and process specifications meet an establish criteria and are applied through all the production process.In Total Quality Management (TQM) all the departments of an organization must collaborate to meet customers' needs, maximizing the company's profits, and meeting the company's goals and objectives.

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The basic principles of Total Quality Management are

•Quality is defined by customers' requirements, the first and major TQM principle is to satisfy the customer •Top management has direct responsibility for quality improvement•Increased quality comes from systematic analysis and improvement of work processes•Quality improvement is a continuous effort and is conducted throughout the organizationTotal quality management standards have been superceded by the ISO 9000 family and its application in manufacturing by newer techniques such as six sigma and lean manufacturing; these integrate most of the older principles but add new strategies.

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Six sigma is a set of techniques and tools for process improvement in manufacturing created by Motorola that combines established techniques with statistical tools. The idea is to improve the quality of the output of a process by identifying and removing the causes of defects and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes.It uses a set of quality management methods, mainly empirical, statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organization, who are experts in these methods.The term Six Sigma originated from terminology associated with statistical modeling of manufacturing processes, and is related to the standard deviation of the process. The maturity of a manufacturing process can be described by a sigma rating indicating its yield or the percentage of defect-free products it creates. A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of all opportunities to produce some feature of a part are statistically expected to be free of defects (3.4 defective features per million opportunities).It shares a lot of the main principles of TQM but emphasizes obtaining verifiable data to make decisions and focusing on reducing variability

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Lean manufacturing or lean production, often simply "lean", is a systematic method for the elimination of “waste” within a manufacturing system, created by Toyota. Lean also takes into account waste created through overburden and waste created through unevenness in work loads. Essentially, lean is centered on making obvious what adds value by reducing everything else. Working from the perspective of the client who consumes a product or service, "value" is any action or process that a customer would be willing to pay for.

The underlying idea is continuous quality improvement by reducing what is not important.

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