Quality Standards

This is the second of my short articles on quality, giving you an insight into the basics of the quality concepts and programmes that I have developed. In this post I will focus on quality standards and their importance in implementing a quality culture in an organisation.

Quality Standards
In order to develop quality effectively it is necessary to be able to describe quality unambiguously. This means, quite simply, to determine levels, norms or standards for quality which are conceived in the same way by everybody who is involved in the quality process. The work on "quality standards" makes it possible to:

• Define what is understood by good, mediocre or inferior quality
• Goal-focus the quality performance
• Measure quality performance
• Compare an individual or team's quality with the quality performance of other individuals or teams
• Improve quality performance
• Communicate quality deficiencies to individuals/groups of people who are supposed to check, ensure and develop quality
• Inform customers and other external stakeholders (e.g. business press) of quality improvements
• Obtain a quality certification

IP and AP levels
For any kind of quality development, two kinds of quality standards need to be defined:

• The IP level (Ideal Performance level)
• The AP level (Actual Performance level)

The IP level
This is the quality development goal. That is to say the level to be achieved or the situation desired at a certain time.

The AP level
The AP level is the quality level at any given measuring time. The norms determining what is good, mediocre or inferior quality change all the time. In order to ensure that demands and expectations are met, it is necessary to keep working on quality development, i.e.:

• to evaluate and adjust the IP level at regular intervals
• measure the AP level regularly
• assess the difference between the AP level and IP level and make quality improvement a natural part of day-to-day life in your company

In the next post in this series about quality, I'll give more insight into the main areas of quality development.

Quality - A Subject Close to My Heart

For the past 40 years I have been actually involved in quality development and improvement, and it is one of the topics for which I have received most acclaim for my management innovations. In 1990, the then Department of Trade and Industry in Britain named me as one of the world's "quality gurus" for my work on developing an understanding of the need for taking into account the human factor in quality: the "Human Side of Quality", and, in particular, for my concept "Personal Quality". The idea behind it is that quality starts at the individual level and without good personal quality, you cannot have good team or organisational quality. This was probably one of the finest accolades of my career, particularly as only three people are mentioned in the new wave: Philip Crosby, Tom Peters and Claus Møller. If you would like to find out more about all of the quality gurus and an overview of their quality concepts, you can read the full article by Professor Tony Bendell here (PDF format). Over the next few weeks, I will start sharing some of the ideas about my various quality concepts with you in a series of blog posts about quality at all levels of the organisation. If you would like to find out more about these concepts after reading the blogs, please contact Lis Touborg (lt@clausmoller.com) on+45 48 22 51 00 to find out more about how I can help your organisation and teams develop their quality through seminars and consultancy. Soon you will also be able to purchase eBook versions of all of my publications on quality for instant download. I hope you enjoy the article series and, as always, I look forward to receiving your feedback and comments.