The First Key to Building Quality

By Enrique Bekerman

Many organizations, large and small, have been quite successful in generating Quality and Productivity improvements. You may have heard of some of the Continuous Improvement methods, such as, Total Quality Management (TQM), Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, etc.

What these methods have in common is what I call 5 keys to Building Quality:

1) Continuous Improvement philosophy

2) Consistency in everything you do

3) Teamwork as part of the culture

4) Routine Measure and Analysis

5) Training for all

In this article I will concentrate on exploring the need for a Continuous Improvement Philosophy or mind-set.

Why is Continuous Improvement necessary? The answer is simple.  In nature things never stay the same for long.   Things get better or worse.  Without actively working at improving the outcome, the odds are that deterioration will occur. By pursuing improvement actively, we are actually increasing the probability that the results will indeed be positive, and further, that our organization will survive.

A Continuous Improvement Philosophy implies that the Organization will never sleep on its laurels. The better its processes for products and services become, the more it recognizes the value and importance of a system that provides the impetus for these improvements to occur on an ongoing basis.

Strong leadership that understands the Continuous Improvement concept is needed to successfully implement this philosophy. The leadership team and all employees must be convinced that this is, indeed, a new way of doing business for the company with long term pay-offs for everyone.

Resistance to change is a frequent obstacle that needs to be overcome. Continuous Improvement should not be perceived as just another short- lived corporate program that will be replaced by something else when it outlives its usefulness.

Companies who have undergone this transformation have been rewarded with long-term profitability. These companies have understood that to succeed you need to persevere and not treat Quality Improvement as the annual corporate program that could be replaced next year by something else.

You should note that as quality and productivity improve, costs are reduced while, at the same time, customer satisfaction increases. These combined effects produce a double benefit to the bottom line. As good companies improve and become better companies, these financial benefits continue to make the company a serious contender in the global competitive arena.

Continuous Improvement involves every department and functional area. Every aspect of the organization and how it functions needs to be examined. The design of products and services, the actual execution and delivery and the determination of the satisfaction of the customer are all subjects for examination and potential improvement.

As you can see this is by no means an easy task, but requires the involvement and collaboration of all employees. The process takes effort, but in reality much of what needs to be done will have an effect on future productivity, so the initial time investment will have a dramatic pay-back in due course.

It is often said that there are two types of customers that each department needs to satisfy in order to succeed in Continuous Improvement:

                 1) The external customer which every one in the organization should be trying to satisfy, and,

                 2) Its own internal customers; that is, the departments who are recipients of the outputs from that department.

Only by developing the motivation to excel in both of these areas, can an organization be truly successful. The same characteristics that satisfy the needs of external customers need to be addressed within the company so that problems are not passed on from department to department. Each department needs to deliver the intermediate products and services in an excellent manner taking into account the needs of the receiving department in terms of quality and timeliness.

The Continuous Improvement philosophy has not only been applied successfully in the manufacturing sector, but in non-profit and public sectors as well. Cities, schools, hospitals, and governmental agencies have adopted various Continuous Improvement methods to improve the delivery of their services.

Like their manufacturing counterparts, these organizations have learned that only by providing for the continuous improvement of their operations can they assure their prosperity in the future.

To read first article in this series "5 Keys to Building Quality" click here

Authored by: Enrique Bekerman , Quality Manufacturing Associates. February 2, 2003.