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Quality is the degree to which a product or service meets requirements and customer expectations. It is often defined as “fitness for purpose” or “conformance to requirements.”

Goods are tangible and their quality dimensions include durability, functionality, and reliability, while services are intangible and their quality dimensions include friendliness, speed, accessibility, and individualization.

1. Inspection: Detecting and rejecting defects. 2. Quality Control: Preventing defects through process monitoring. 3. Quality Assurance: Systematic process design and documentation. 4. Total Quality Management (TQM): Involving everyone in continuous improvement.

The cornerstones are customer focus, leadership and commitment from top management, employee involvement, and systematic improvement and process orientation.

Treat others as you would wish to be treated as a customer—quality awareness through perspective taking.

QC Tools: 1. Check sheet, 2. Histogram, 3. Control chart, 4. Cause-and-effect diagram, 5. Pareto chart, 6. Scatter diagram, 7. Flowchart. QM Tools: 1. Relationship diagram, 2. Tree diagram, 3. Matrix diagram, 4. Portfolio analysis, 5. Network plan, 6. Force field analysis, 7. Process decision program chart.

A business excellence model is a framework for assessing and improving an organization’s processes and results. It is used for self-assessment and continuous improvement, e.g., the EFQM model.

A quality management system like ISO 9001 sets minimum standards and documentation requirements, whereas an excellence model is a broader framework for assessing organizational performance and maturity.

QM drives efficient resource use, reduction of errors and waste, and increased transparency, supporting sustainable, environmentally friendly, and socially responsible strategies.

A customer is a person or organization that receives a product or service and claims its value in exchange for payment or other consideration.

Basic needs (must-be), performance needs (one-dimensional), excitement needs (attractive), indifferent attributes, and reverse attributes.

Example: WiFi in hotels used to be an excitement need (bonus), today it is a basic need.

Quantitative: Advantages – objective, comparable, large sample sizes. Disadvantages – less depth, may not uncover motivations. Qualitative: Advantages – deeper insight, flexible interviewing. Disadvantages – difficult to compare, higher analysis effort.

1. Systematic implementation of customer requirements, 2. Improving product development, 3. Fostering cross-functional collaboration.

A sequence of activities that transforms input into a desired output.

Planning, controlling, monitoring and continuously improving processes; acting as the interface to other areas.

In a functionally organized company, departments are central; in a process-oriented organization, processes are optimized across departments with the customer in focus.

To make workflows transparent, identify optimization potential, and document processes.

They make processes understandable and repeatable, serving as the basis for systematic improvement.

Increased efficiency, improved quality, faster response, better customer satisfaction, clearer responsibilities.

They enable objective measurement, control, and improvement of processes and company objectives.

The histogram provides statistical information about the distribution of samples.

A statistically controlled process shows only random variation; an out-of-control process shows systematic errors or trends.

The goal is to assess if a process can meet specified requirements; the process must be stable and normally distributed.

Cp measures the potential capability of the process, Cpk includes centering toward the target value. Cpk is always less than or equal to Cp.

SPC also includes process capability studies, root cause analysis, and systematic data collection.

Tolerance limits reflect customer requirements, while control limits reflect the actual process variation — mixing them leads to misinterpretation.

Set goals, motivate, provide resources, serve as a role model, monitor, and provide feedback.

Urgency, shared vision, and support from key people.

“Little q”: quality management only in production; “Big Q”: quality mindset across the entire organization and all processes.

A hygiene factor is a condition whose absence causes dissatisfaction, but whose presence does not necessarily lead to satisfaction (Herzberg’s model).

It may cause resistance, ignore individual circumstances, and undermine employee engagement.

Exhaustion and resistance among employees due to too many or poorly communicated change initiatives.

A structured collection of policies, processes, and procedures aimed at achieving an organization’s quality goals (e.g., ISO 9001).

It ensures consistent quality, customer trust, efficiency, and continuous improvement.

The quality policy defines the company’s quality ideals, and quality objectives define the target level of quality. Together, they guide and steer quality management.

An international standard specifying requirements for an effective quality management system.

ISO 9001 defines minimum requirements; ISO 9004 provides guidelines for sustained success and continuous improvement.

Customer focus, leadership, engagement of people, process approach, improvement, evidence-based decision making, relationship management.

A systematic, independent review of whether a QMS meets its intended requirements.

Through an external audit by a recognized certification body confirming that the standards are met.