QUALITY CULTURE: CHARACTERISTICS, DEVELOPMENT AND EXAMPLE - JOB - 2024

A quality culture is an environment in which employees not only follow quality guidelines, but also view others consistently, take quality-focused action, listen to others talk about quality, and feel quality in their wake. around.

With the reduction of geographic barriers and the pressure to compete in the global marketplace, operational excellence has become a necessity for companies to remain globally competitive.

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Quality culture naturally emphasizes continuous process improvement and results in a healthy workplace, satisfied customers, and a profitable and growing company.

However, how can you ensure that all employees are focused on delivering a quality product or service?

Fundamentals

The basis for any quality improvement is to develop a quality culture within the organization, incorporating it throughout the company. A culture focused on quality creates a healthy work environment and also generates satisfied customers.

In a healthy corporate culture, what is good for the company and what is good for the customer unites, becoming the driving force behind what everyone does.

The culture of quality begins with a leadership that understands and believes in the implications of the systems vision, and knows the need to serve customers to be successful.

The result of that understanding is a culture where a positive internal environment goes hand in hand with creating satisfied customers.

characteristics

A quality culture results when all stakeholders, from top management to the grassroots worker, seamlessly incorporate improvements into their daily activities.

Adequate systems and structures

It is essential to have adequate systems and structures to support quality improvements. The processes must be established with clear performance criteria focused on the client. This means:

- Have a solid command structure that drives quality initiatives and thus ensures that the organization is responsible for meeting the objectives.

- Ensure that the data is analyzed and reported efficiently.

- Use the data to provoke decision-making and improvements.

Quality advocates leaders

Leaders' commitment is the engine of a quality culture. Therefore, leaders must be clearly visible and firm in their support to improve quality. This means:

- Proactively provide all the necessary resources to sustain the quality culture.

- Clearly articulate the vision and values ​​of the company.

- Recognize efforts to improve quality with a reward system.

Trained employees

- Staff must be trained to incorporate quality improvements into their daily work. This means supporting change and facing tradition.

- Employees must be confident of introducing quality improvements related to their roles.

- There must be open and honest communication at all levels.

- Employees must be able to evaluate their own performance.

Customer-centric operation

- The needs and values ​​of customers are essential for decision making and for daily operations.

- Employees must perceive that the organization is truly customer-oriented.

- The company must be seen from the outside that it is focused on the client, in the sense that it not only meets their expectations, but usually exceeds them.

Teamwork is the norm

All staff must understand why quality is important and work together to solve problems. This means:

- Teams should meet routinely to exchange ideas, implement quality improvement projects, and share lessons learned.

- Project teams charged with improving quality must be made up of capable people.

Continuous improvement is a fact

The organization must never be happy with its operational performance, but must constantly strive to be better.

Employees should routinely use quality improvement tools and methods to solve problems and deliver improvements.

How do you develop a quality culture?

Developing a culture of quality requires sustainable habits that provide a platform for long-term change.

Walk and chat about quality

Change is only possible when leaders participate at all levels, consistently showing quality principles in action. This means that leaders must:

- Make frequent and highly visible appearances on the plant floor.

- Be curious and participate without prejudice in conversations about quality.

- Roll up your sleeves to help when needed.

- Avoid actions that put cost, production or schedule above quality. If quality is said to be the top priority, but management indicates otherwise, credibility is lost.

Make quality everyone's job

Immature quality cultures isolate quality, relegating it only to clerical work. Mature companies involve cross-functional teams in quality improvements, recognizing that quality impacts all areas of the business.

A good example is implementing a layered process audit program. This involves frequently checking high-risk processes, avoiding defects through multiple layers of verification.

Being conducted at all levels and departments, these audits also provide a structured framework to hold everyone accountable for quality.

Energize the team

Not everyone will be excited about the quality or doing extra activities. However, leaders will find ways to energize staff and get them involved. The strategies are:

Take advantage of the competitive spirit

Instead of expressing how quality stimulates savings, one must take advantage of the competitive nature of people.

For example, talking about baffling the competition, or about preventing the company from failing to launch a product.

Share expectations and results

Everyone should know their role in improving quality. Equally, they need to see the results.

Monthly management reports are a key tool to show staff that their work has a measurable impact.

Focus on processes

A proactive approach should be required aimed at preventing problems, rather than putting out fires.

This is made difficult when quality people only perform inspections of already damaged products. A quality culture also analyzes the previous processes.

Checking the areas linked to quality problems encourages the standardization of the process and reduces variations. Thus, this consistency is a hallmark of the quality culture.

Track and Measure

Time and resources must be invested in proactive reviews and measurements. Beyond just looking at the costs of a failure, organizations must develop indicators that provide early warning of problems.

When leading indicators are seen to be deviating, action can be taken before customers are affected.

Support the opening

Businesses should not walk away from trouble. Finding them before they leave the plant is much better than having the customer discover them. This means:

Keep calm when discovering errors

If you lose control, people will simply hide the problems and not show them.

Involve management

When leaders participate in audits, they show a commitment to quality at the highest level. That instills people to open up with their own observations and suggestions for improvement.

Quick troubleshooting

When someone identifies a problem, it should be followed up with timely corrective action. Otherwise, people will have no interest in sharing it.

Encourage innovation

Companies that treat quality as a cost rather than an investment, watch the pennies while losing a lot of money.

Mature quality cultures give your work teams the time and budget to undertake quality improvement projects.

Mature companies reward these successes with recognition and even monetary incentives.

When employees have the initiative to invest their energy in these projects, it can be ensured that the culture of quality is working.

Example

Quality culture refers to the awareness, commitment, attitude, and behavior of the entire organization regarding quality. Corporate leadership must communicate effectively and, more importantly, demonstrate that quality is an inherent value of the organization.

This is the case of the Toyota company, the classic example of a quality culture. Everyone in the organization accepted their responsibility for quality. This was communicated and demonstrated at all levels of the organization.

Change of objectives

However, in the 1990s the objectives of the company changed. His number one priority became growth. His new goal: to become the largest automotive company in the world.

This change meant that employees did not focus on quality as before, and defects went undetected or underreported, ultimately resulting in the recall of 9 million vehicles in 2009, which cost billions of dollars.

Toyota's culture of growth replaced quality in the first place, and therefore the culture of continuous improvement.

However, Toyota rectified and is not alone in its fight for a quality culture. In today's economy, everyone is expected to do more with less, which may seem diametrically opposed to what a quality culture should be, but is not.

Organizations that take quality first by putting the customer first and striving for continuous improvement will be able to do more with less while delivering quality.

References

1. Eric Stoop (2017). 7 Habits of a Mature Quality Culture. Beacon Quality. Taken from: beaconquality.com.
2. Shady El Safty (2012). Five essential ingredients for a quality culture. PEX. Taken from: processexcellencenetwork.com.
3. Emily Hill (2018). 6 critical building blocks of a quality culture. Qualsys. Taken from: quality.eqms.co.uk.
4. Ashwin Srinivasan and Bryan Kurey (2014). How to build a culture of quality for your organization. Leadership Review. Taken from: leadershipreview.net.
5. Pilgrim (2013). Crafting a Quality Culture. Taken from: blog.pilgrimquality.com.