Quality giants like Joseph M. Juran, W. Edwards Deming and Armand V. Feigenbaum ushered in the era of total quality management (TQM) movement about seven decades ago. However, their lessons, while seemingly obvious to some, are difficult to learn.

Companies are still being dogged by high-profile quality issues. The list of infractions doesn’t seem to be getting shorter, and crosses about every industry. At least a token “quality program” is required for companies who wish to remain in the marketplace; however, many are still at the lip-service level agreement without the means required to reach the necessary ends. Bottom line, talk is cheap -- recalls are not.

From lead-painted toys to contaminated foods, from tainted medicines to malfunctioning medical devices, and numerous defective automobiles components, the list seems endless. The costs of scrapped products, consumer lawsuits and lost brand equity from defects and recalls are huge!

Persistent, expensive and well-publicized recalls are affecting companies with even the most stellar quality reputations. Automobile companies who have been held up as models of excellence have suffered a rash of serious quality infractions.

With the outsourcing strategy organizations have been implementing for decades, it has become increasingly difficult to manage process and product quality. Therefore, it shouldn’t be surprising that many quality problems are coming from global supply chains.

Organizations must view these failures as much the part of management oversight failures as it is the defective products themselves. As Juran and other experts have widely demonstrated, 85-94% of all the problems reside with management because they own the system and are ultimately responsible.

However bleak the situation has been, all may not be lost. For instance, it is encouraging that many companies are resourcing processes and products back to where they retain more oversight for quality performance. Hopefully, this is a by-product of managers finally understanding that quality just doesn’t happen if you have state-of-the-art equipment. It has as much to do with committed and motivated personnel. Also, the responsibility for quality may finally be taking hold across all levels of the enterprise.

Talk to the manufacturing community about quality’s place in today’s environment and a pattern appears to be emerging – organizations may be finally grasping the “shared responsibility” aspect of Juran, Deming, and Feigenbaum’s teachings. If quality is truly everyone’s responsibility, then the idea must go far beyond the factory floor and into the front office, the service department, and everywhere else that provides value to customers and shareholders.   

Concepts crucial to establishing top-quality manufacturing must be driven upstream and expanded to become part of an overall continuous improvement strategy. Quality has to become a systems approach, rather than focusing on one part at a time and whether it’s dimensionally correct. The journey to better quality, after all, is about continuous improvement and many, other than the quality professional, must get the message.

As the manufacturing industry shifts with the rest of the economy and becomes increasingly service-and-customer-centric, executives and experts alike seem to be seeing the need for spreading the quality message across the enterprise. Quality appears to be expanding to all aspects of an organization.

We recently finished quality training for several HR professionals at a smaller company. The focus was on process quality improvement so they could provide better service support internally and externally. After completing their training course and passing the ASQ Certified Quality Improvement Associate’s certification exam this group reported significant improvement of their processes.

If organizations want to accomplish their mission of spreading their quality initiatives, they need only to recall the gospel of Juran, Deming, Feigenbaum and Crosby. These giants preached a hybrid approach of quality control methods and employee empowerment. For organizations who have adopted their approaches, the outcomes have been no less than stellar.

Improvements are being made across many sectors but much is left to do, especially in the human aspect. Organizational management needs to give more than lip-service to their line that “people are our greatest asset” and have their actions serve as proof of this motto because employee-engagement part of the quality equation is still trailing defect-prevention.

Standard processes are needed to improve quality but, at the end of the day, we need people that can catch the ball whenever something happens out of the ordinary. While the idea of quality is still mostly stuck in the defect-reduction paradigm, there needs to be a shift toward a people-centric view.   

A people-centric organization requires sustaining a motivated, engaged workforce which is a challenge and requires constant nurturing, but the reward is there. Quality has as much to do with talent and human capital as it does with product design, engineering or equipment tolerances.

Quality truly is everyone’s responsibility, and everyone appreciates a job well done. This appreciation leads to people feeling empowered and becoming more engaged. When this happens individuals at all levels accept ownership and accountability which results in better efficiency and effectiveness – a great recipe for quality.

Bottom line, organizations maybe beginning to understand that morale is everything in quality. People want to do a good job, and organizations must enable that culture. The search for better quality is certainly a journey and not a destination.

Quality professionals must continue serious discussions with people in the corner office to influence the next steps in the quest for better, preventive, quality measures. This is not easy as these conversations might be intense, but the rewards will be significant! This is a winning proposition.