8 QUALITY MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES

Principle 1 Principle 2 Principle 3 Principle 4 Principle 5

Customer Focus Leadership Involvement Of People Process Approach System Approach to Management Continual Improvement Factual Approach to Decision Making Mutually beneficial Supplier Relationship

Principle 6
Principle 7

Principle 8

INTRODUCTION Quality means different things to different people, depending on their focus, values, and responsibilities. Hunt (1992) in Quality In America, discusses quality in two contexts: quality in perception and quality in fact. Examples of quality in perception include: Delivering the right services(s). Identifying and satisfying customers needs. Meeting customers expectations. Treating all customers with integrity, courtesy, and respect

Hunt (1992) define quality in fact as doing the right thing, doing it the right way, doing it right the first time, and doing it on time.

Quality management principles are a comprehensive and fundamental set of rules or beliefs for leading and operating an organization aimed at continually improving performance over the long term by focusing on customers while addressing the needs of all stakeholders. The quality management principles will improve the foundation of the ISO 9000 family. They provide a clear relationship of a company's quality system to its management system and place quality management in a business management framework. A quality system is a management system that uses quality management principles and quality management standards (i.e. ISO 9000) to guide planning, operating, and improving all that must be done to lead and manage an organization. This approach to a new foundation defines quality management and the quality system in a management language and thus makes it operational.

FACTUAL APPROACH TO DECISION MAKING Effective decisions are made based on the analysis of data and information. Facts and data are used in the quality management system to make decisions related to the systems operations. The information is gained from analysis of audit results, corrective actions, process performance, customer complaints and other sources. Analysis tends to be focused on data that can be used to improve customer satisfaction and the efficiency and effectiveness of the quality management system.

MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL SUPPLIER RELATIONSHIP An organization and its suppliers are interdependent; therefore they need to have a good mutually beneficial relationship to enhance the ability of both to create value. With development of a quality management system, an organization will have defined processes and document requirements supplier must meet, there will also be processes in place to review and evaluate suppliers abilities to meet those requirements and assess the congruence of organization and supplier objectives.