Quality these days means more than checking goods before they leave the factory to make sure they are free from defects.
It means a total commitment that starts with top management and works its way down. Though leaders provide the vision, everyone at a company has to be involved in making it happen. That means an entrenched system of total quality management, or TQM. 'It's not just an issue of quality inspection,' said John Lo, chairman of the Hong Kong Quality Assurance Agency.
'It entails both products and services as well as how to operate more efficiently and effectively. That would include the behaviour and the commitment of each worker in the company to provide clients - both internal and external - with quality products and services. That means a company must inculcate quality into its culture.' In other words, more than a temporary driving force was needed to achieve a specific goal, such as ISO 9000 certification. TQM must become second nature, he said. Policies had to be implemented in such a way that standards were enforced, no matter what happened. A perennial problem in Hong Kong was rapid staff turnover. With TQM firmly in place, procedures would be carried out despite staff changes.
But that did not mean that once quality systems were effectively established a company could rest on its laurels. The world was changing and markets were becoming increasingly interdependent.
Customers were also becoming more sophisticated, more demanding and less tolerant of shoddy workmanship and lousy service, he said.
Firms wishing to survive and prosper would have to constantly look for improvements and that was one of the beauties of ISO 9000. Through its on-going appraisal system, it encouraged companies to keep getting better.
