Quality Drives Performance

Quality Drives Performance

Germin G. Espino

Every other company attempts to put quality as the cornerstone of their strategy. Each one claims quality ‘as a way of life’. Yet despite claims of high quality products and services, many businesses fail. A common reason why this happens can be manifested in how quality was ingrained in the organization as a driving force of performance and not a mere company slogan.

Quality is the not the end all and be all of success. It’s a key enabler that will help organization meet their objectives. There are critical elements that will make quality a key success factor in our organization. Here are three key thoughts on how our team will make quality a driving force of success.

QUALITY IS A MEANS NOT JUST A RESULT

Having quality systems and procedures as a tool in every aspect of company activities provide for a high level of quality output. Every process, policy and practice must be defined with specific quality expectations.

·      Reports are to be expected on a specific date and time with clearly defined contents and objectives.

·      Meetings are held in short but productive sessions with well-defined agenda and properly assigned action plans and expectations. They start on time and end on time in order to eliminate wasted time of all participants.

·      Job processing strictly follows the approved workflow with complete and accurate information that leave very little chances for confusion.

·      Work environment is consistently maintained to allow a productive flow of work. Remember the Four R’s – Reduce Steps, Reduce Clutter, Reduce Cross-over, Reduce Chances of making mistakes.

The TMC – Toyota Motors Corporation quality systems are legendary in the business and quality circles around the world. Every single company activity is well defined and all employees are mandated to follow consistently.

QUALITY IS A RESPONSIBILITY OF ALL

“Quality begins with me”.  It’s a personal commitment to self, team and company. Every report, work output or tasks performed by all employees are expected to conform to specific levels of quality.  I call it an ACT of Quality. This means work output that is always Accurate, Complete and Timely.

Being conscious that our output is another person’s or department’s input should put everyone on their toes to always do their best in providing quality products and services.

The best technology company in the world – Apple expects a high degree of quality from each employee. Their most iconic CEO Steve Jobs, himself a hard-core quality practitioner was said to have cancelled an order of millions of packaging materials for the new IPod only because the inner casing was a few millimeters bigger than the box. He said, he can’t allow customers dropping the product when un-boxing the IPod.

QUALITY IS NOT AN OPTION

Having a mindset that quality is a pre-requisite to success defines each person’s work ethics. Being consistently mindful of the immediate and ultimate customer’s acceptance of one’s work will heighten the level of quality in each of us. Quality is not just a customer demand, it’s a basic requirement.

One world-class pizza delivery company lives by the rule “if its not a 10, ill do it again”.  This pertains to the company strict rule in making and delivering only perfect ten pizzas. Any pie that does not meet their clearly defined 10-point criteria, another pie is made. This policy and practice is translated to customer satisfaction guarantee - “if you are not satisfied with your pizza, we will replace it, no questions asked”.

These were the rules created by Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan more than 40 years ago. It’s the same quality policy being followed by more than 7,000 Domino’s Pizza outlets around the world.

World-class companies like the Toyota Motor Corporation, Apple and Domino’s Pizza all from different industries with a common platform of success driver – QUALITY. Its no wonder these companies have survived countless internal and external disasters and have managed to stay healthy and on top of their respective industries. Like these big players, our company can succeed using quality as a driver for success. For that to happen, all members of the organization must believe that quality is a means to success that is a responsibility of all of us.