Quality Areas and Quality Factors

Last week, I shared some quick thoughts with you about quality development. Following on from that, in this my fourth blog on the topical quality series, I will discuss quality areas and quality factors. To get the full benefit from reading this, please ensure that you read the previous three posts first.

In order to be able to define the Ideal level of Performance (IP level) and measure the Actual level of Performance (AP level) respectively, it is necessary to determine what is to be measured, evaluated and improved regularly.

For this purpose I introduced the concepts of "quality areas" and "quality factors"

Quality Areas
A quality area can be defined as:

"An area within which measurements must be made in order to determine the quality level and ensure that the quality performed meets the demands and expectations of internal and external stakeholders"

Within each quality area there is at least one,and usually more than one, quality factor.

Quality Factors
A quality factor can be defined as:

"An element - a measuring point - whose quality level helps to determine whether the total quality within a quality area is experienced as good or bad"

In order to work specifically on quality development, the quality factors within each quality area need to be formulated unambiguously and to be measurable.

For each quality factor:

• The IP level needs to be defined
• The AP level needs to be measured

and, if there is a difference:

• quality development should be initiated

Quality on Several Levels
Quality areas and quality factors are determined on various levels depending on where in the quality process you are, and on which level within the company the quality is to be measured.

An example: The year end result is a quality area, which ought to be of interest to top management. Profitability would be a quality factor within this area. If the profitability is unsatisfactory, this may be due to quality deficiencies on a lower level, for example customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction can be measured by the number of customers who stay and those who leave the organisation, i.e. the churn rate. If the churn rate is too high, this may be due to quality deficiencies on a lower level, e.g. complaint handling. The quality of complaint handling can be measured by the number of customers who remain customers after having complained. If these customers are too few, this may be due to quality deficiencies in e.g. the way a complaining customer is received and treated. The quality of that treatment can be measured e.g. by the degree with which the complaining customer feels welcome with their written or oral complain. If the customer does not feel welcome with their telephone, email or in-person complaint this may be due to the "time waiting on the telephone", or the "delay in email response times", or even the lack of "commitment" from the person with whom the customer is dealing.

Quality Hierarchy
As becomes quite clear from the example given above, in order to meet the quality demands and expectations from the external stakeholders, it is imperative to deal with quality factors at the lowest level. For this reason, it is necessary to work your way downwards in the "quality hierarchy". This way the causes of quality problems are cured, not just the symptoms!

In the next post I will discuss the 5 different kinds of quality that make up the overall quality concept.

The Main Elements of Quality Development

This is the third blog post about the quality concepts and programmes that I have developed over the last 3 decades. Over the years I have helped a wide range of service organisations (including British Airways, SAS, Hilton Hotels); governments in Russia, India, the EU and Mexico; and manufacturing companies all over the world improve their quality. In this series I'm giving a brief insight into some of the concepts that have been implemented in these companies and organisations to give you a better understanding of the concepts as well as the process you have to go through in order to improve your quality at all levels.

Please read the previous posts The Human Side of Quality and Quality Standards for the introduction to the topic of quality management and for definitions of the IP and AP levels, which I will describe in more detail in this post on quality development.

There may be a great difference between the IP level (Ideal Performance level) and the AP level (Actual Performance level), whether at individual, team or organisational level. The goal of the quality development process is to eliminiate this difference between the IP and the AP levels.

There are three main elements in the quality development process:

1. Definition of the IP level
2. Measuring the AP level
3. Quality development

1. Definition of the IP level
Determining the ideal/desired level of performance, i.e. the quality objective

2. Measuring the AP level
Clarifying the actual level of performance - the present standard

3. Quality development
Assessing the difference that has been ascertained between the IP level and the AP level and, if necessary, to establish and implement a plan for quality development in order to achieve the desired level.

I know that this all sounds straight forward, but in practice it isn't necessarily so. There might be many reasons why it is impossible to measure the AP level accurately (employees fearing for the loss of their jobs, area managers wanting to report higher numbers to the head office etc.).

In the next instalment of the series (available on Wednesday), I will give an insight into Quality Areas and Quality Factors, which are the basis for identifying and communicating the overall objectives, i.e. the IP level you want to achieve. Understanding these topics will allow you to work more specifically with your quality development and foster a quality culture in your company.

If you would like to find out more about how I can help your organisation measure its AP level, identify its IP level and develop a quality development programme, please contact Lis Touborg on +45 4822 5100 or by email: lt@clausmoller.com.

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.

The Human Side of Quality

Following on from my first couple of posts about quality, this is the first in a series of small introductions to the various quality management concepts I have developed.

It gives a short introduction to the "Human Side of Quality", which was the basis for the quality concepts and programmes I developed over several years at each level in the organisation: personal, team and organisational.

Most quality programmes and concepts are based on concrete and rational elements: systems, methods, physical products, etc. These elements are both valuable and relevant. It has, however, been emphasised that an important shortcoming in many quality concepts and programmes is the fact that the importance of the human factor, the emotional aspects of quality, is underestimated. Even though most quality experts today recognise the importance of the human factor in the quality process, very few of them offer concrete methods for quality development within the human side of quality. When I developed my quality concept it was unique in that it takes people as its starting point. The quality concept and the quality training programmes I developed:

• Focus precisely on the human factor in connection with the overall quality of work


• Offer concrete methods to develop the human side of quality, i.e. your personal quality and those parts of team quality; product quality; service quality; and organisational quality, where the quality level is determined by the attitude, commitment and behaviour of the employees in a specific situation.


• Make the quality concept acceptable and easy to understand for everybody in the organisation.


• Point out the individual employee's advantages in performing at a high quality level.


• Involve all employees in the quality process.


• Make quality development a natural and integral part of the day-to-day life and future of the organisation

The underlying principles and concepts address one of the key failures of e.g. the ISO certification process in that they can help you to measure your current levels of quality as well as develop ways of improving quality at all levels of the organisation. ISO only helps an organisation certify whether the quality that is delivered is standardised - not whether the quality being delivered is actually good or bad!

Read an interview from Gestion about "The Human Side of Quality" (hosted on Mediafire as a PDF file), which explains a lot more about my thoughts on this topic. Later on this week I will release the next instalment in the series, where I will be looking at quality standards.

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.