Quality Management

Quality management is aimed at taking control over a company’s activity that has to be done to a certain level of quality. This quality level is determined by the company’s quality policy. Besides that, quality management is responsible for quality planning, assurance, control, implementation, and improvement, which are the main components of this management system. Otherwise, it’s known as total quality management (TQM), however, there is a slight difference between these terms. The latter includes elimination of errors, customers’ service improvement, and employees professional development as integral parts of quality management. Also, TQM implies the participation of all shareholders of the company in these improvements.

Generally, quality management pursues long-term goals by managing short-term tasks. Sometimes, it’s even considered as a philosophy of the company’s long-term success that is based on the joy of the clients. It’s a mistake to think that quality management is focused on the quality of products and services only, it also takes a lot of attention to all the processes involved in creation of these products.

Nowadays, businesses use a quality management system in order to meet all the quality requirements as well as to optimize all the associated processes. These systems help companies to make the working time more effective and well-balanced. Also, they help to reduce costs and get rid of wasteful activities. ISO 9001 represents worldwide standards for the quality management systems.

History of Quality Management 

Quality management originates from a rapid development and an increased popularity of statistics in the 1920s. A lot of statistical methods and theories were created during this time, including the method of statistical process control (SPC). It was designed for quality control of different processes with the help of statistics. This method wasn’t successfully introduced in business until the 1950s. However, it was and still is an extremely useful invention for the business sphere, because control is needed when the production gets bigger. 

Japan has shown great progress in producing and exporting goods since the introduction of quality management in their business processes. In the first half of the 19th century, Japan experienced an industrial crisis. Japanese people were considered quite illiterate, and the country’s production didn’t get rave reviews. Some enthusiastic businesses like Toyota were intended to change the situation, and they did it by introducing quality management and quality control in the work processes. The company’s risk of using a new method was paid off. By the 1970s, due to these innovations, Toyota’s product was significantly improved and gained worldwide fame. Therefore, quality management upgraded the product’s quality, strengthened competence of the employees, and optimized the manufacturing process. Altogether, it made Japan one of the most progressive and successful manufacturer and exporter.

Principles of Quality Management

The aforementioned standards for the quality management systems (ISO 9001:2015) define a few essential principles of quality management. All of them are listed below:

1. Focus on the customers, their preferences and requirements.
2. Presence of a company’s purpose.
3. People engagement, because companies are created for people by people.
4. Interrelation of all the company’s processes.
5. Focus on continual improvement.
6. Usage of reliable data.
7. Attention to relationship management.

Example of Quality Management

As an example of quality management, let’s consider the Japanese invention of the Kanban system. It was implemented by the industrial engineer at Toyota, Taiichi Ohno. Kanban is a specific control system which is based on using different colored signs in order to control the manufacturing processes, especially when it comes to just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing. This type of production is based on the balance of supply and demand. In other words, the company has started to produce as many products as needed and has stopped to produce them in advance. The Kanban system appeared to be a great assistance in JIT manufacturing, and soon it brought success to the Japanese company as well as to the country’s economy.