Misconception about the term “quality”

Quality is bad in Cameroon in particular and in Africa CIMA zone in general. Both in its theory, but also in its practice. Everyone knows that when we launch a new product or service, we must rely on a need, which makes it possible to develop a set of requirements allowing, thanks to its respect, to return to the funds in terms of costs and time invested.

Unfortunately, too many new products, services and business creations are doomed to failure in our Central Africa sub-region in particular.

Quality is starting to annoy business leaders and that’s understandable. They see what their investments in finance, production, information technology and even purchasing bring them, but not in Quality Management.

Quality is supposed to dictate, or at least inspire, company strategy. Quality consists of identifying human and social needs, then responding to them, with solutions that provide value to all stakeholders.

The problem is that the notion of Quality remains a terribly unknown subject in business circles and in the minds of the French-speaking African public.

SOME THINK THAT QUALITY EXISTS ONLY FOR PRODUCTION INDUSTRIES

The term “quality” is most often erroneously emphasized as applying only to manufactured products. This is a common perception among various consumers around the world, but particularly among residents of the Central African sub-region where, due to its high level of poverty and low level of manufacturing or industrial activities , quality was until recently more of a rhetorical question than a problem rather than a tool to measure the acceptability of products and services by the respective stakeholders (sponsor, customers, regulators, consumers/end users, etc.)

The beginning of the use of the term “quality” actually has its origins in its use and application in the manufacturing sector. This is probably the reason why, in most cases and in most parts of the West African sub-region, quality is still today misinterpreted by most people as being only applicable or referring to only to the manufacturing industry and the products that emanate from it.

In the manufacturing environment, it has been found over the years to contribute to the improvement of products and services, the reliability of products and processes, and to lead to an increase in productivity and product performance.

It is also true that the effective application of an appropriate quality management system (QMS) or quality concept in manufacturing and other processes often results in improved productivity, measurable in terms of some appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs). Basic examples of some KPIs are:

Number of defective products compared to the number of products manufactured
Percentage of production losses, both in terms of acceptable products and total materials (inputs) consumed
Efficiency (e.g. process, labor, materials and machine)
Downtime, including breakdown time (unplanned)

The truth is, the manufacturing industry exists to support Quality. Industry only begins when you have a product to make intensively and extensively. Quality begins before the product exists. Quality is the work your company does to identify people’s needs and what the company should offer to fill that need. Quality determines what to recommend as a solution, how to achieve the solution, what performance objective to expect, how to launch the solution, distribute it on the market. Quality then monitors the results and evaluates the proposed solution over time. »

A long time ago, the ASQ (American Society for Quality) defined quality as: “all the characteristics of a product or service that influence its ability to satisfy given needs” .

Quality is both a “management” science and an “engineering” science, since it involves finding a balance between problem-solving skills and analytical methods.

OTHERS THINK THAT QUALITY EXISTS TO CERTIFY COMPANIES

On the other hand, companies think that Quality exists to enforce standards. They say “quality helps to obtain ISO certification” or “forces companies to respect standards”. NO !

Quality does not exist because of standards, it is the opposite. It is because Quality exists that standards have emerged. On the other hand, in concert with other social forces, Quality influences final results. For example, she explains to the company that compliance with the Town Planning Act will save it from paying penalties. It does not force compliance with this law, but it offers a way to avoid being penalized.

I will not touch on all the erroneous ideas that companies have about Quality. But I will come back to this later in another article. Today I want to say a word about the definition of Quality.

Quality in Business Analysis

The effective implementation of specific or tailored quality management systems (QMS) or concepts in the manufacturing and service sectors is now more important than ever in the current globalization of the economy. For an organization to be on top of the competition in terms of value and performance of products and services, current and future levels of competitiveness in the global market increasingly require improved dynamism in the following areas:

Developing new avenues for business performance and improvement
Methods and ways of designing products and services
Marketing and sales mechanisms
The provision of products and services that meet and exceed customer specifications, needs and requirements as well as environmental requirements (i.e. stated, usually implied, in accordance with market demands and mandatory/statutory guidelines ), without forgetting the requirements of the regulator and shareholders.
Evolution with technological advances/developments
Differentiation of products/services (and even the organization) through innovation

An important means of achieving this is the proper implementation, application and maintenance of an appropriate quality management and/or improvement concept/system or integrated quality management systems. The use of an integrated management system is necessary, depending on the type of business situation, and for this, business analysts and architects are therefore essential.

Need to redefine quality

Quality is a subjective term for which each person or sector has their own definition. In technical usage, quality can have two meanings:

The characteristics of a product or service that influence its ability to satisfy expressed or implied needs;
A product or service free from defects. According to Joseph Juran, quality means “fitness for use”; according to Philip Crosby, this means “compliance with requirements”.

Growing needs for quality or the widespread application of quality call for or require in themselves a redefinition of quality. Considering quality in terms of its twentieth-century evolution and application then reveals much about the extent of quality’s growth in the universality of its use and application. Therefore, quality is more universal today than in the days of our “quality gurus” and will become more universal with each passing year.

As we move forward into the first half of the 21st century, quality will most certainly become a global culture of not only organizational sustainability, but also human existential sustainability. This is especially true in our world today, where the intertwining of nature, wildlife and humans is accelerating the risks of disruptive diseases spreading across the globe and threatening the quality of human life.

It is very interesting to note that the dynamism of quality will be continually redefined by the envisaged economic changes that we may experience in the 21st century.

The dynamism of quality management will be dictated by changes in the business environment and their interrelationships. This will, in turn, require the attention of quality professionals to address the resulting gaps in quality management skills.

It therefore follows that the concept of quality becomes not only more and more universal in its use and application, but also a phenomenon of value available on a global scale, of extreme values for individuals and entities, in the because any organization that fails to adopt quality at all operational levels does so at its own risk. Well, that depends on whether survival is mandatory or not. Quality is the path to value creation and the sustainability of relationships.

Over the next decade, Quality will be rethought from A to Z, as human and social needs evolve over time.