Discussing Quality

Many people say that clothes bought at a market is not necessarily worse in quality than the more expensive brands they buy in high street shops. Clothes, as well as many other products, are notoriously variable and the quality in many cases does not reflect the price. Customers definitely recognize that quality is an important attribute in products and services. But it seems that the so-called quality perception is constantly changing, partly due to the outsourcing of manufacture to the Far Eastern countries and the internationalization of trade and competition, while the price gap remains. The bottom line is, people want quality but they do not want to pay too high a price. And how do companies ensure quality in times of mass production?

Since 1980s, various methods have been developed to improve the quality of products or services worldwide, after it was discovered that the secret of the competitive success of the then world-dominating Japanese manufacturers lay in quality. The Japanese had a quality system that allowed them to produce better products than their US and European rivals. After the World War II, Japan decided to make quality improvement a national priority as part of rebuilding their economy and asked some American experts for help. By implementing American ideas in their management policies and manufacturing processes, Japanese companies soon came to dominate the world market. They have contributed a number of successful quality methods later adopted by Western companies, the best known among them being TQM (Total Quality Management) which requires that a company maintains its quality standards in all aspects of its business, not just the production. Although TQM as well as some other Japanese methods went out of fashion in the late 1990s, the fundamental ideas behind them are still very valuable.

ISO 9000 is a family of standards. While ISO 9000:2000 is a guidance document, covering the basics of quality management systems, ISO 9001:2000 is used for certification purposes. It provides a number of requirements which an organisation needs to fulfill in order to achieve customer satisfaction. In many of its aspects, ISO builds on the TQM system. It is maintained by the International Organisation for Standardization, based in Geneva. The organisation does not issue certifications – this is done by national bodies which most countries form on a national level. These bodies further authorize external bodies to audit organizations applying for ISO 9001 compliance certification. They assess the quality management of an applying company by inspecting an extensive sample of sites, functions, products, services and processes.

Once earned, an ISO certificate must be renewed at regular intervals. Of course, both the accreditation and certification bodies charge fees for their services. It is important to stress that an ISO 9001 standard certification does not guarantee the quality of the end-product or service; rather, it certifies that consistent business processes are being applied throughout.

Of course, if implementing ISO is just a marketing tool (ISO 9001 certified), the standard is likely to lead to failure. Quality should always come first, and the organization advises that its standards can be implemented even without the certification process.