The Death of Quality
Is quality and quality management dead? The early 1980’s saw the resurgence of quality as a survival issue in the manufacturing sector, primarily automotive. Later in the same decade saw the emergence of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) in other sectors, most notably healthcare.
But quality advocates have fallen on hard times. Even the much-hyped six sigma, brought to the attention of|used in [/spin] the corporate world by Motorola, and later also implemented by GE, has not done a whole lot to revive the movement. Skeptics abound, and with good reason.
One notable proponent of quality recently reported that quality improvement has fallen out of favor amongst senior leaders as a strategic issue, noting that many leaders have grown weary of the movement, and are rejecting many of it’s mantras. It seems that quality improvement has lost its luster…and is struggling very hard to regain it.
There are many reasons why this has happened, but I would like to focus on two major ones:
• Governance models incorporating pay for performance drive short-term thinking and behaviors, which work against quality; and
• Rigid adherence to manufacturing logic is an inappropriate strategy for improving quality in the service sector, and even for services in the manufacturing sector.
Environmental Management: Saving the Environment
ISO 14000 is a set of international standards for improving the environmental performance of organizations. It includes the new standard for environmental management systems (EMS) called ISO 14001. This standard was published October1, 1996, so it is new on the international scene. Some countries and companies are quickly embracing it, while others, including the United States and most American companies, are waiting to see if it becomes a requirement for doing international business and if there are benefits to adopting it. Many American companies already have EMSs that may differ from ISO 14000, so their reluctance is understandable since they have invested in their existing systems. For those companies who have no system, their reluctance is also understandable, since they have no experience with the benefits such a system can provide.
Auditing Health and Safety Management Systems: A Regulator’s View
HSE’s publication ‘Successful Health and Safety Management’ (HSG65) talks about important elements of successful health and safety management systems. A three level model is described and one of the elements, auditing, is explored thoroughly by the regulator. The term auditing in the occupational health and safety context is defined and the use of proprietary and in-house systems compared. The process of auditing is described and the regulator concludes by encouraging organizations to use auditing schemes, without endorsing any particular one, as they can be a powerful tool for checking the adequacy of health and safety management systems.
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