Quality management ensures the consistency of an organization, product or service. It has four main components: quality planning, quality assurance, quality control and improvement of the service. Quality management focuses not only on the quality of the products and services, but also on the means to achieve them. Therefore, quality management uses quality assurance and process control as well as products to achieve consistent quality. Quality determines what a customer wants and is willing to pay for it. Consequently, quality can be characterized as fitness for intended use or, in other words, how well the product performs its intended function.
We tend to think of Quality Management activities as occurring primarily in companies, and especially in manufacturing. We are all engaged in quality control, though. Think of a certain time that you needed to do something to achieve a certain purpose or to have a continuous service. You probably began by planning how to do this. Then you put your strategy into action to test it out for a time. Then you went on to notice changes needed to improve it. You were basically doing quality management — you continued to improve the quality of achieving the goal or the service.
Maybe you’ve worked within an organization for a supervisor. The supervisor asserted some of the goals you were going to achieve, as well as certain tasks you were going to be doing. As you were working on this, you and your supervisor were monitoring how well you were doing your job. Maybe the supervisor shared feedback on how you were doing, as well as some suggestions for making things better. You may have had an annual performance assessment meeting with the supervisor at which you received an official rating of how well you were doing. Those practices are called performance management of employees. They are a type of quality control — although the word “control” may be negative in this situation.
Having completed this course, you will be able to:
- Describe an overview of Quality Management
- Define Quality Management Terminologies.
- Define Total Quality Management
- Explain Total Quality Management tools and external benchmarking
- Describe and explain ISO 9000
- What Lean Management is.
- Describe Six Sigma Quality