What's the future for quality? | Capable People Blog

Quality management is a relatively new discipline, with most of its cornerstones being set down in the latter half the 20th Century, largely thanks to a small collection of godfathers such as Deming, Juran, Feigenbaum and Crosby. Over time few of the fundamental principles that were set down by these pioneers have lost any of their relevance, so cause and effect understanding, reduced variation, PDCA, management wherever possible supported by measurement, and root cause problem analysis, are as important now as ever they were. In those terms, as the quality profession scans the horizon for the “next big thing” to come along, it’s a safe bet that it will share a high proportion of its ancestor’s DNA

One thing that is for certain, however, is that if the next big thing is to be truly “big” and substantially different to what has gone before (as opposed to merely re-branded) it will need to hit the spot in some additional way and address some as yet unsatisfied need. So the question is “where is quality falling short at the moment?”

Well, there are a few contenders for poll position, let’s go through one or two

1. Quality professionals regularly complain of a lack of buy in and senior support to their programs

OK, if “quality” is so important and inarguably such a good thing, why would that be? Are management and operational personnel all idiots? Probably not. So the next big thing needs to be more persuasive, transparent and attractive to non-quality professionals. A business approach to managing quality, maybe

2. “Quality” is a an overhead, an expensive, but a necessary evil

All activities cost money, consuming time and resources. In business everyone has to justify their existence in terms of cost versus benefit. Wait a minute … everyone? For most organisations, measuring the “cost of quality” is generally limited to conformance related metrics, rarely if ever the efficiency of the quality department. How often has a cost versus benefit analysis been applied to, say, the internal audit program? Does anyone really understand how much the activity costs and what it actually delivers? Again, probably not. EFQM assessment, to take another example, if we are to follow the current “model” process of a 32 sub criterion assessment and a team consensus approach, represents an incredible front-end resource input to generate a long list of strengths and areas for improvement. This, we would argue, has been the biggest reason for the failure of this methodology to realise its potential. Time perhaps for the EFQM to review the assessment process so that it could satisfy a half-decent cost vs benefit evaluation? So the next big thing needs to practice what it preaches

3. Quality initiatives don’t fit the service sector very well, as their origins are generally rooted in manufacturing applications

This is still true, and for so long as manufacturing is by far the most significant contributor to the economy, this might not hurt too much. However there has been a significant drift in the make up of most first world economies over the last twenty years that has seen service providers occupy a larger and larger proportion of the mix. Considering the growing significance and importance of these organisations is it really acceptable to expect service providers to use their gumption to “adapt” methodologies to fit, and then sometimes not very well? ISO 9001, for example, more or less directs organisations to substitute the word “service” wherever they see the word “product”. Frankly this is lazy and unacceptable and does absolutely nothing to endear the standard to potential new service sector users. ISO 9004 is the guidance document, but it provides little to reduce the chances of awkward and clumsy interpretation in the service sector. In other words, given the diminishing importance of the traditional manufacturing operations to first world economies, is it right that the quality management standards (classic example, ISO 9001) continue to be substantially developed, reviewed and implemented by experts and practitioners from that sector?

4. Conformity is no longer the No. 1 battleground

Well it is and it isn’t. It is for as long as conformity is a problem and varies significantly from one provider to the next, but once we’ve all conquered our conformity problems, and the market has put the weaklings to the sword by natural selection, the customer can reasonably expect everybody’s products to basically work. So what then? What are the selection criteria that the customer will use when conformity is consistent across the board? Most methodologies still focus almost exclusively on managing product conformity and production efficiency, and those that have woken up to the customer-centred side of the equation make only general reference to matters relating to “customer satisfaction“, “complaints” and “customer communication“. Many customers, for example, are becoming increasingly choosy about who they do business with. That has led to enhanced profiles for CSR policies. Perhaps it is time to take a more detailed and scientific approach to the management of the customer relationships, and treat this as a real “quality” problem, as, we’d argue, this is the new conformity. It’s time for a new way of taking a really close look at the customer dynamic, to really understand how it works, and what we need to do to make it work better. At the risk of putting shivers up some spines, this could lead to a natural synchronisation, merger even, of Quality and Commercial. Perish the thought?

… and where does creativity and innovation come into it? … or the ability to change and adapt quickly? “Right first time” is all well and good, but the time constraints on that process are becoming ever more challenging … we could go on

Anyway, as we approach another new year, and try to anticipate the challenges that it will bring, maybe its time to take a fundamental look at how we view quality. Over the course of the last 30 years, the world has changed quite radically in any number of ways, but can we really say, hand on heart, that our quality management approaches have kept pace?

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