Quality Management

The business world is changing fast; competition is fierce, characteristics of markets are moving, technological advancements are unprecedented, new entrants are disrupting the scene, and industries’ dynamics are continuously shifting as a response.

in such an environment, companies need to rethink their operational paradigm— what has worked in the past might not be the best fit for the current shifts. And as these changes bring risks, opportunities do exist. Decision-makers are demanded more than anytime before to experiment with new ways of work; adopt flexible structures; realize the criticality of managing knowledge; and foster more agile strategic planning endeavors.

In the quality field, it’s argued that the current situation resembles the 1970s but with different instruments and tools. During that era, Total Quality Management (TQM) was deemed the panacea to all organizational problems. But the question arises is how sensible is to adopt old thinking to solve new complex problems— Quality 4.0 is real.

Beyond the same rhetoric of why quality initiatives fail—the root cause lies somewhere else; working with several companies across different sectors and sizes we noticed that the enthusiasm towards the initiatives degrades mainly due to:

• Lack of tangible benefits to keeping the commitment to the initiative
• Adopting old quality practices that don’t resonate with the current industry and business shifts

Building quality capabilities are not complex but challenging; these are instilled rather than installed-and they grow and evolve with the company. Therefore, a proper starting point starts with understanding the company’s current situation and using appropriate tools and techniques to baseline it. And afterward, journeys are inaugurated at different hierarchical levels to diffuse a uniformed homogeneous solution.