Fundamentals of Quality Management

This book has been written to provide both students and industrial man- agers with a comprehensive description of the tools and techniques of Quality Management and also to provide a framework for understanding Quality Development. Central to the theme of this book is the idea that quality management is a developmental process which requires an understanding of the techniques, the people and the systems issues. The aims of quality development are to produce greater organizational consistency, to improve customer satisfac- tion and to reduce the business process costs. In order to achieve these aims, managers are required to have an understanding of both the underlying the- ories and the methodologies for implementation. The aim of this book is to provide a coherent description of both the theoretical and implementation aspects of quality management. Since the halcyon days of the quality 'revolution' of the 1970s and 1980s, many organizations have realized that quality development represents an enormous management challenge. This challenge for continuous improve- ment requires the continuous development of systems, of techniques and of people. Like most serious business strategies, competitive improvement through quality development can only be achieved if the organization understands not only what the various quality 'options' are but also when a particular technique or approach is applicable. Quality development has no single blueprint but requires a learning organization which understands key concepts and methods of implementation.