Quality Outcomes require Quality Systems
Here is what we have established in previous editions of this blog:
• The entire world of business, government, and not-for-profit organizations faces the same major problem today: reducing costs while maintaining customer satisfaction.
• Quality Assurance, checking only outputs without regard to cost, won’t do the trick.
• Neither will traditional Quality Control, which just keeps outside problems from creeping in.
In order to improve customer satisfaction while reducing costs, and keep on improving for years, you must improve your entire system. And here’s why.
Even the simplest business is really a system with many moving parts. Let’s take a lunch wagon that sells sandwiches on a construction site. There are inputs: bread, meat, coffee pot, the truck to get to the construction site. And there are outputs: sandwiches, coffee, and so forth. In between, the inputs turn into a product in some organized way. Buy the food, make the sandwiches, drive to the site, etc.
Inputs, process, and outputs resulting in either a profit or a loss — that’s a business system. Of course, the owner, driver, salesman and sandwich-maker-in-chief also manages this system, from buying the bread to handing over the finished product. So a system includes management as well.
As long as the owner is a one man band, he can increase profit by buying more carefully and working harder. But at some point, if he wants to grow, he must add inventory, and people, and products and trucks. And now the system he uses to manage all that – and produce customer satisfaction while holding down costs – becomes critical to his success.
More about achieving quality and success next time on Quality Matters.
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