The eight principles of Quality management ensure that an organization, product, or service is consistent and value-added. It has four main components: quality planning, quality assurance, quality control, and quality improvement Quality management is focused not only on product and service quality but also on the means to achieve it.
Five Quality Management Principles
Principle 1 – Customer focus
Organizations depend on their customers and therefore should understand current and future customer needs, should meet customer requirements and strive to exceed customer expectations.
Key Benefits:
• Increased revenue and market share obtained through flexible and fast responses to market opportunities
• Increased effectiveness in the use of the organization’s resources to enhance customer satisfaction
• Improved customer loyalty leading to repeat business.
Application of Principle leads to:
• Researching and understanding customer needs and expectations
• Ensuring that the objectives of the organization are linked to customer needs and expectations
• Communicating customer needs and expectations throughout the organization
• Measuring customer satisfaction and acting on the results
• Systematically managing customer relationships
• Ensuring a balanced approach between satisfying customers and other interested parties (such as owners, employees, suppliers, financiers, local communities, and society as a whole).
Principle 2 – Leadership (as part of the eight principles of quality management)
Leaders establish unity of purpose and direction of the organization. They should create and maintain an internal environment in which people can become fully involved in achieving the organization’s objectives.
Key Benefits:
People will understand and be motivated toward the organization’s goals and objectives
• Activities are evaluated, aligned, and implemented in a unified way
• Mis-communication between levels of an organization will be minimized.
Application of Principle leads to:
• Considering the needs of all interested parties including customers, owners, employees, suppliers, financiers, local communities, and society as a whole
• Establishing a clear vision of the organization’s future
• Setting challenging goals and targets
• Creating and sustaining shared values, fairness, and ethical role models at all levels of the organization
• Establishing trust and eliminating fear
• Providing people with the required resources, training, and freedom to act with responsibility and accountability
• Inspiring, encouraging, and recognizing people’s contributions.
Principle 3 – Involvement of people (as part of the eight principles of quality management)
People at all levels are the essence of an organization and their full involvement enables their abilities to be used for the organization’s benefit.
Key Benefits:
Motivated, committed, and involved people within the organization
• Innovation and creativity in furthering the organization’s objectives
• People being accountable for their own performance
• People are eager to participate in and contribute to continual improvement.
Application of Principle leads to:
• People understand the importance of their contribution and role in the organization
• People identifying constraints to their performance
• People accepting ownership of problems and their responsibility for solving them
• People evaluating their performance against their personal goals and objectives
• People actively seeking opportunities to enhance their competence, knowledge, and experience
• People freely sharing knowledge and experience
• People openly discuss problems and issues.
Principle 4 – Process approach
The desired result is achieved more efficiently when activities and related resources are managed as a process.
Key Benefits:
Lower costs and shorter cycle times through effective use of resources
• Improved, consistent and predictable results
• Focused and prioritized improvement opportunities.
Application of Principle leads to:
• Systematically defining the activities necessary to obtain the desired result
• Establishing clear responsibility and accountability for managing key activities
• Analyzing and measuring the capability of critical activities
• Identifying the interfaces of key activities within and between the functions of the organization
• Focusing on the factors – such as resources methods, and materials – that will improve key activities of the organization
• Evaluating risks, consequences, and impacts of activities on customers, suppliers, and other interested parties.
Principle 5 – Continual improvement
Continual improvement of the organization’s overall performance should be a permanent objective of the organization.
Key Benefits:
Performance advantage through improved organizational capabilities
• Alignment of improvement activities at all levels to an organization’s strategic intent
• Flexibility to react quickly to opportunities.
Application of Principle leads to:
• Employing a consistent organization-wide approach to continual improvement of the organization’s performance
• Providing people with training in the methods and tools of continual improvement
• Making continual improvement of products, processes and systems an objective for every individual in the organization
• Establishing goals to guide, and measures to track continual improvement
• Recognizing and acknowledging improvements.