Syed Umar Ahmed

Mind You! You Got Quality To Deal With What is quality? Is it a dilemma? Is it a puzzle? Is it so perplexing?  Why is it so, that quality has never been taken as a serious subject? Why is it so that no one can actually define the term ‘ quality’ in its most appropriate manner.  The reason I’ve chosen to write on this subject is quite evident to me, yes I’m a quality professional, working in the field of Quality Assurance for around 3 years and recently I’ve been enrolled into a course/professional diploma called as “ Certified Quality Professional”, which is a 4 months duration course. So, I thought to write about my experience and share my thoughts with you people. In my opinion the reason, the term quality needs to be defined appropriately  in modern organizations is due to the fact that ‘quality’ has lot to do in most of the sectors.  Quality- An Ignored Attribute It is sad to admit here that the superiority of the term quality has always been overlooked in the past, but now with a rapid increase in awareness and change in system infrastructures, organizations have started to comprehend and implement quality tools on a larger scale for their own organizational betterment. Now let us move on to define the term ‘ Quality’: I would say that quality is a phenomenon of getting and producing the best. But no, my perception of quality might be erroneous, so let’s now have a look at some of the seasoned quality professional’s ideas about this field.  “Ability of a set of inherent features of a product, system or process, to meet customer’s requirements”.  “Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.” ~Peter Drucker  “Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives.” ~William A. Foster . “Quality is not what happens when what you do matches your intentions. It is what happens when what you do matches your customers’ expectations.” ~Guaspari . “Total quality management is a journey, not a destination.” ~Berry . Looking at the above-mentioned quotes, it can easily be inferred that Quality is that aspect of a product or a service that results in customer’s contentment as well as complying to the rules and guidelines of the regulator results in a quality product, which conforms to the standards set by the regulator. Quality is simply fulfilling customer’s requirements. But yes, it is never that easy to generate a quality-oriented product, as the whole process involves a complex and challenging phase of alleviating the undesired attributes within a product, whilst at the same time maintaining conformance with the rules and defined standards, which lead to a positive outcome. Some of the modules that I will be studying during my post graduate Quality Professional Diploma include: Quality Systems, Quality Management Tools, Supply Chain Management, Customer Focused Organization etc.     Image Source Total Quality Management Defined (TQM):  It is defined as implementing a company wide quality management system, in which all the employees work in a collaborative manner so as to generate productive results with sustained customer contentment,  meaning no one escapes from the taste of quality, everyone must ensure their comprehension into the subject and compliance to it as well. Yes indeed this is the case with TQM.  TQM Implementation Implementing TQM results in a quality-oriented organization that works to provide quality products fulfilling the customer’s requirements in a longer run. In most of the organizations, during the product development, the most overlook fact has always been the quality control. Organizations invest heavily on the marketing/branding of their products, launch of their products, its advertising, they focus significantly on the product’s optimization, but one thing that gets ignored during the whole process, is an uninterrupted chain of inspection during the development phase.  We usually employ such a technique, in which the final product is checked and assessed to meet the set standards, but there involves not a continual assessment phase, where the intermediate product is being inspected at all stages of its production, this stage which is generally ignored, forms an essential part of TQM. As TQM works to furnish a product with minimized defects.   How Do Organizations Prosper What makes an organization distinguished from its competitors? There might be several answers to that, but thinking in a broader spectrum would yield the answer to be quality oriented. Not a single organization could stand firm among its competitors, if it lacks a strong quality management system. A system that incorporates the famous 6 Cs of TQM, those are employees’ commitment, quality improvement culture, continuous improvement in process, co-operation from employees, focus on customer requirements and effective control shall be laid down.    Concluding Words Hence it can be concluded that in order to make your organization superior, prominent and progressive at the same time, the management should continually strive to buildup a harmonized approach towards process improvement. A process, that is customer centric, customer focused and flexible to implement, shall be enforced into the organization, that also encompasses all the basic quality management tools.  Employees should be made abreast on latest ongoing trends on quality management techniques, whilst at the same time they should be empowered enough, so that they could contribute effectively towards the organizational improvement.    Moreover, a prevention scheme shall be adapted during product development, rather than just relying on conventional tactics, that limits the product optimization.  At present, many companies have successfully accomplished their set goals upon realization of the TQM systems as mandatory tool for a prosperous organizational infrastructure.