Introduction

There are an enormous number of different approaches that can be adopted in achieving that elusive objective ‘quality’. It is a never-ending quest with a whole variety of methods and techniques, some complementary, some conflicting.   There can be no one solution or approach to achieving quality because it can never be completely achieved. There will always be new advances and improvements. A friend and colleague once said "You know, this Quality Assurance thing's OK, but I'll give it a year or three and something else will come along!" That statement was made some 30 years ago, which makes the statement approximately 28 years out, with time the statement will become even more inaccurate.

Quality has always appears to be a moving target, changing in terms of direction and standard, but after all this time of "getting it right" it would be nice to think there would at least be some consistency here.  Why? Well, it could be considered that quality management ought to be static - "right first time" and yet we have seen huge changes - the latest revision of ISO 9001, Integrated Management Systems and standard such as AS9100, TickIT and ISO TS 16964.  This tends to suggest that "quality" is just about Management Systems (ISO 9001) and this would be very misleading.  What about the significance of; quality and the law, Six Sigma, Poka-Yoke, Process Analysis and much more.   There have also been significant sociological changes, with organisations placing much greater emphasis on employee involvement (Root Cause Analysis), on caring for their customers (Customer Satisfaction) and understanding their customer needs.

Clearly (love it or hate it) the largest, most recent shift in QA thinking was ISO 9001. Many people have been predicting ISO 9001's demise, but no obituaries have yet been written, in fact quite the reverse, it is expanding rapidly into many countries. ISO 9001 has its warts (see Quality Management), but in spite of these problems it has consistently been retained by organisations. Cynics may say this is just because of fear - the effect on customers if ISO 9001 registration is lost. It is difficult to believe that hard nosed business people would retain the standard only for this reason. They retain the standard because it is of benefit (profit). As Abraham Lincoln said "You can fool some of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time". So, as ISO 9001 has been around for fifteen years or so and has not been dropped, then the approach must have some merit.

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© Quality Management & Training Limited 2003    31 March 2005     Email: help@qmt.co.uk