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1. American Society for Quality: "A subjective term for which each person has his or her own definition. In technical usage, quality can have two meanings: a. The characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs; b. A product or service free of deficiencies."[1] 2. Subir Chowdhury: "Quality combines people power and process power."[2] 3. Philip B. Crosby: "Conformance to requirements."[3][1] The requirements may not fully represent customer expectations; Crosby treats this as a separate problem. 4. W. Edwards Deming: concentrating on "the efficient production of the quality that the market expects,"[4] and he linked quality and management: "Costs go down and productivity goes up as improvement of quality is accomplished by better management of design, engineering, testing and by improvement of processes."[5] 5. Peter Drucker: "Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for."[6] 6. ISO 9000: "Degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements."[7] The standard defines requirement as need or expectation. 7. Joseph M. Juran: "Fitness for use."[1] Fitness is defined by the customer. 8. Noriaki Kano and others, present a two-dimensional model of quality: "must-be quality" and "attractive quality."[8] The former is near to "fitness for use" and the latter is what the customer would love, but has not yet thought about. Supporters characterize this model more succinctly as: "Products and services that meet or exceed customers' expectations." 9. Robert Pirsig: "The result of care."[9] 10. Six Sigma: "Number of defects per million opportunities."[10] 11. Genichi Taguchi, with two definitions: a. "Uniformity around a target value."[11] The idea is to lower the standard deviation in outcomes, and to keep the range of outcomes to a certain number of standard deviations, with rare exceptions. b. "The loss a product imposes on society after it is shipped."[12] This definition of quality is based on a more comprehensive view of the production system. 12. Gerald M. Weinberg: "Value to some person".[13]

A quality management system (QMS) can be expressed as the organizational structure, procedures, processes and resources needed to implement quality management. Early systems emphasized predictable outcomes of an industrial product production line, using simple statistics and random sampling. By the 20th century, labour inputs were typically the most costly inputs in most industrialized societies, so focus shifted to team cooperation and dynamics, especially the early signalling of problems via a continuous improvementcycle. In the 21st century, QMS has tended to converge with sustainability and transparency initiatives, as both investor and customer satisfaction and perceived quality is increasingly tied to these factors. Of all QMS regimes the ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 series are probably the most widely implemented worldwide - the ISO 19011 audit regime applies to both, and deals with quality and sustainability and their integration.

Elements of a Quality Management System 1. Organizational structure 2. Responsibilities 3. Methods 4. Data Management 5. Processes - including purchasing 6. Resources - including natural resources and human capital 7. Customer Satisfaction 8. Continuous Improvement 9. Product Quality 10. Maintenance 11. Sustainability - including efficient resource use and responsible environmental operations 12. Transparency and independent audit

Continual improvement process A continual improvement process (CIP or CI), also often called a continuous improvement process (usage preference discussed below), is an ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes. These efforts can seek "incremental" improvement over time or "breakthrough" improvement all at once.[1] Delivery (customer valued) processes are constantly evaluated and improved in the light of their efficiency, effectiveness and flexibility. Some see CIPs as a meta-process for most management systems (such as business process management, quality management, project management, and program management). W. Edwards Deming, a pioneer of the field, saw it as part of the 'system' whereby feedback from the process and customer were evaluated against organisational goals. The fact that it can be called a management process does not mean that it needs to be executed by 'management'; but rather merely that it makes decisions about the implementation of the delivery process and the design of the delivery process itself. Some successful implementations use the approach known as Kaizen (the translation of kai (“change”) zen (“good”) is “improvement”). This method became famous by the book of Masaaki Imai “Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success.”  The core principle of CIP is the (self) reflection of processes. (Feedback)  The purpose of CIP is the identification, reduction, and elimination of suboptimal processes. (Efficiency)  The emphasis of CIP is on incremental, continual steps rather than giant leaps. (Evolution) "Continuous" versus "continual" In English-language linguistic prescription there is a common piece of usage advice that the word "continuous" should be used for things that are continuous in a way literally or figuratively equal to the mathematical sense of the word, whereas the word "continual" should be used for things that continue in discrete jumps (that is, quantum-wise). When this distinction is enforced, it is more accurate to speak of "continual improvement" and "continual improvement processes" than of "continuous improvement" or "continuous improvement processes". Meanwhile, for several decades it has been common usage in the linguistic corpus of business management to use the one set term, "continuous improvement", to cover both of those graph shapes in umbrella fashion. It is merely the way the word has been conventionally used in this context, in a common understanding that existed regardless of prescriptive preferences. However, ISO has chosen the more careful usage for its standards including ISO 9000 and ISO 14000; so it may be reasonable to expect that usage among business managers will evolve in coming decades to conform to the preferred usage (and in some cases, already has). Benchmarking From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about the business term. For the geolocating activity, see Benchmarking (geolocating). For other uses of the term, see Benchmark. Benchmarking is the process of comparing one's business processes and performance metrics to industry bests or best practices from other industries. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time and cost. In the process of benchmarking, management identifies the best firms in their industry, or in another industry where similar processes exist, and compare the results and processes of those studied (the "targets") to one's own results and processes. In this way, they learn how well the targets perform and, more importantly, the business processes that explain why these firms are successful. The term benchmarking was first used by cobblers to measure people's feet for shoes. They would place someone's foot on a "bench" and mark it out to make the pattern for the shoes. Benchmarking is used to measure performance using a specific indicator (cost per unit of measure, productivity per unit of measure, cycle time of x per unit of measure or defects per unit of measure) resulting in a metric of performance that is then compared to others.[citation needed] Also referred to as "best practice benchmarking" or "process benchmarking", this process is used in management and particularly strategic management, in which organizations evaluate various aspects of their processes in relation to best practice companies' processes, usually within a peer group defined for the purposes of comparison. This then allows organizations to develop plans on how to make improvements or adapt specific best practices, usually with the aim of increasing some aspect of performance. Benchmarking may be a one-off event, but is often treated as a continuous process in which organizations continually seek to improve their practices.

SWOT analysis From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia For other uses, see SWOT.

SWOT analysis, with its four elements in a 2x2 matrix. SWOT analysis (alternately SLOT analysis) is a strategic planning method used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses/Limitations,Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or in a business venture. It involves specifying the objective of the business venture or project and identifying the internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieve that objective. The technique is credited to Albert Humphrey, who led a convention at Stanford University in the 1960s and 1970s using data from Fortune 500companies. Setting the objective should be done after the SWOT analysis has been performed. This would allow achievable goals or objectives to be set for the organization.  Strengths: characteristics of the business, or project team that give it an advantage over others  Weaknesses (or Limitations): are characteristics that place the team at a disadvantage relative to others  Opportunities: external chances to improve performance (e.g. make greater profits) in the environment  Threats: external elements in the environment that could cause trouble for the business or project Identification of SWOTs is essential because subsequent steps in the process of planning for achievement of the selected objective may be derived from the SWOTs. First, the decision makers have to determine whether the objective is attainable, given the SWOTs. If the objective is NOT attainable a different objective must be selected and the process repeated. Users of SWOT analysis need to ask and answer questions that generate meaningful information for each category (strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, and threats) in order to maximize the benefits of this evaluation and find their competitive advantage.[1] Use of SWOT analysis The usefulness of SWOT analysis is not limited to profit-seeking organizations. SWOT analysis may be used in any decision-making situation when a desired end-state (objective) has been defined. Examples include: non-profit organizations, governmental units, and individuals. SWOT analysis may also be used in pre-crisis planning and preventive crisis management. SWOT analysis may also be used in creating a recommendation during a viability study/survey. Quality control From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about the project management process. For other uses, see Quality control (disambiguation).

Maintenance check of electronic equipment on a U.S. Navy aircraft.

X-ray zoom series of a network adapter card. Quality control, or QC for short, is a process by which entities review the quality of all factors involved in production. This approach places an emphasis on three aspects:[citation needed] 1. Elements such as controls, job management, defined and well managed processes,[1][2] performance and integrity criteria, and identification of records 2. Competence, such as knowledge, skills, experience, and qualifications 3. Soft elements, such as personnel integrity, confidence, organizational culture, motivation, team spirit, and quality relationships. Controls include product inspection, where every product is examined visually, and often using a stereo microscope for fine detail before the product is sold into the external market. Inspectors will be provided with lists and descriptions of unacceptable product defects such as cracks or surface blemishes for example. The quality of the outputs is at risk if any of these three aspects is deficient in any way. Quality control emphasizes testing of products to uncover defects and reporting to management who make the decision to allow or deny product release, whereas quality assurance attempts to improve and stabilize production (and associated processes) to avoid, or at least minimize, issues which led to the defect(s) in the first place.[citation needed] For contract work, particularly work awarded by government agencies, quality control issues are among the top reasons for not renewing a contract.[3] Analytical quality control From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Analytical quality control, commonly shortened to AQC refers to all those processes and procedures designed to ensure that the results of laboratory analysis are consistent, comparable, accurate and within specified limits of precision.[1] AQC processes are of particular importance in Laboratories analysing environmental samples where the concentration of chemical species present may be extremely low and close to the detection limit of the analytical method. Very low concentrations of potentially harmful materials in a very large flow of a major river can equate to a considerable environmental load even at concentrations in the parts per billion range.[2] In well managed laboratories, AQC processes are built into the routine operations of the laboratory often by the random introduction of known standards in to the sample stream or by the use of spiked samples.

Quality assurance From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Quality assurance (QA) refers to the planned and systematic activities implemented in a quality system so that quality requirements for a product or service will be fulfilled.[1] It is the systematic measurement, comparison with a standard, monitoring of processes and an associated feedback loop that confers error prevention. This can be contrasted with Quality "Control". which is focused on process outputs. Two principles included in QA are: "Fit for purpose", the product should be suitable for the intended purpose; and "Right first time", mistakes should be eliminated. QA includes management of the quality of raw materials, assemblies, products and components, services related to production, and management, production and inspection processes. Suitable Quality is determined by product users, clients or customers, not by society in general. It is not related to cost and adjectives or descriptors such "High" and "Poor" are not applicable. For example, a low priced product may be viewed as having high quality because it is disposable where another may be viewed as having poor quality because it is not disposable.