Quality management ensures that an organization, product or service is consistent.

It has four
main components: quality planning, quality assurance, quality
controland quality improvement.

Principles of Quality Management

1. Costumer Focus
The primary focus of quality management is to meet customer requirements and to strive to
exceed customer expectations.

What’s the importance:

- Sustained success is achieved when an organization attracts and retains the confidence of
customers and other interested parties. Every aspect of customer interaction provides an
opportunity to create more value for the customer. Understanding current and future needs
of customers and other interested parties contributes to sustained success of the
organization.

What are the Benefits

• Increased customer value

• Increased customer satisfaction

• Improved customer loyalty

• Enhanced repeat business

• Enhanced reputation of the organization

• Expanded customer base

• Increased revenue and market share

Actions we can take

• Understand customers’ current and future needs and expectations

• Communicate customer needs and expectations throughout the organization.

• Plan, design, develop, produce, deliver and support goods and services to meet customer
needs and expectations.

• Measure and monitor customer satisfaction and take appropriate actions.

• Determine and take actions on interested parties’ needs and expectations that can affect
customer satisfaction.

• Actively manage relationships with customers to achieve sustained success.

2. Leadership
- Leaders at all levels establish unity of purpose and direction and create conditions in which
people are engaged in achieving the organization’s quality objectives.

What’s the importance:

o Creation of unity of purpose and direction and engagement of people enable an
organization to align its strategies, policies, processes and resources to achieve its
objectives.

What are the Benefits

• Increased effectiveness and efficiency in meeting the organization’s quality objectives
• Better coordination of the organization’s processes
• Improved communication between levels and functions of the organization
• Development and improvement of the capability of the organization and its people to
deliver desired results

Actions we can take

• Increased effectiveness and efficiency in meeting the organization’s quality objectives
• Better coordination of the organization’s processes
• Improved communication between levels and functions of the organization
• Development and improvement of the capability of the organization and its people to
deliver desired results

3. Engagement of People
- Competent, empowered and engaged people at all levels throughout the organization are
essential to enhance its capability to create and deliver value

What’s the importance:

- To manage an organization effectively and efficiently, it is important to involve all people at
all levels and to respect them as individuals. Recognition, empowerment and enhancement
of competence facilitate the engagement of people in achieving the organization’s quality
objectives

What are the Benefits

• Improved understanding of the organization’s quality objectives by people in the organization

and increased motivation to achieve them

• Enhanced involvement of people in improvement activities

• Enhanced personal development, initiatives and creativity

• Enhanced people satisfaction

 • Enhanced trust and collaboration throughout the organization

• Increased attention to shared values and culture throughout the organization

Actions we can take

• Communicate with people to promote understanding of the importance of their individual

contribution. • Promote collaboration throughout the organization. • Facilitate open discussion
and sharing of knowledge and experience. • Empower people to determine constraints to
performance and to take initiatives without fear. • Recognize and acknowledge people’s
contribution, learning and improvement. • Enable self-evaluation of performance against
personal objectives. • Conduct surveys to assess people’s satisfaction, communicate the results,
and take appropriate actions.

4. Process approach
Consistent and predictable results are achieved more effectively and efficiently when activities
are understood and managed as interrelated processes that function as a coherent system.

What’s the importance:

The quality management system consists of interrelated processes. Understanding how results
are produced by this system enables an organization to optimize the system and its
performance.

What are the Benefits

• Enhanced ability to focus effort on key processes and opportunities for improvement •
Consistent and predictable outcomes through a system of aligned processes • Optimized
performance through effective process management, efficient use of resources, and reduced
cross-functional barriers • Enabling the organization to provide confidence to interested parties
as to its consistency, effectiveness and efficiency

Actions we can take

• Define objectives of the system and processes necessary to achieve them. • Establish
authority, responsibility and accountability for managing processes. • Understand the
organization’s capabilities and determine resource constraints prior to action. • Determine
process interdependencies and analyse the effect of modifications to individual processes on
the system as a whole. • Manage processes and their interrelations as a system to achieve the
organization’s quality objectives effectively and efficiently. • Ensure the necessary information is
available to operate and improve the processes and to monitor, analyse and evaluate the
 performance of the overall system. • Manage risks that can affect outputs of the processes and
overall outcomes of the quality management system.

5. Improvement
Successful organizations have an ongoing focus on improvement.

What’s the importance:

Improvement is essential for an organization to maintain current levels of performance, to react

to changes in its internal and external conditions and to create new opportunities.

What are the Benefits

• Improved process performance, organizational capabilities and customer satisfaction •

Enhanced focus on root-cause investigation and determination, followed by prevention and
corrective actions • Enhanced ability to anticipate and react to internal and external risks and
opportunities • Enhanced consideration of both incremental and breakthrough improvement •
Improved use of learning for improvement • Enhanced drive for innovation

Actions we can take

• Promote establishment of improvement objectives at all levels of the organization. • Educate

and train people at all levels on how to apply basic tools and methodologies to achieve
improvement objectives. • Ensure people are competent to successfully promote and complete
improvement projects. • Develop and deploy processes to implement improvement projects
throughout the organization. • Track, review and audit the planning, implementation,
completion and results of improvement projects. • Integrate improvement considerations into
the development of new or modified goods, services and processes. • Recognize and
acknowledge improvement.

6. Evidence-based decision making

Decisions based on the analysis and evaluation of data and information are more likely to
produce desired results.

What’s the importance:

Decision making can be a complex process, and it always involves some uncertainty. It often
involves multiple types and sources of inputs, as well as their interpretation, which can be
subjective. It is important to understand cause-and-effect relationships and potential
unintended consequences. Facts, evidence and data analysis lead to greater objectivity and
confidence in decision making.
 What are the Benefits

• Improved decision-making processes • Improved assessment of process performance and

ability to achieve objectives • Improved operational effectiveness and efficiency • Increased
ability to review, challenge and change opinions and decisions • Increased ability to
demonstrate the effectiveness of past decisions

Actions we can take

• Determine, measure and monitor key indicators to demonstrate the organization’s

performance. • Make all data needed available to the relevant people. • Ensure that data and
information are sufficiently accurate, reliable and secure. • Analyse and evaluate data and
information using suitable methods. • Ensure people are competent to analyse and evaluate
data as needed. • Make decisions and take actions based on evidence, balanced with experience
and intuition.

7. Relationship management

For sustained success, an organization manages its relationships with interested parties, such as
suppliers.

What’s the importance:

Interested parties influence the performance of an organization. Sustained success is more likely
to be achieved when the organization manages relationships with all of its interested parties to
optimize their impact on its performance. Relationship management with its supplier and
partner networks is of particular importance.

What are the Benefits

• Enhanced performance of the organization and its interested parties through responding to
the opportunities and constraints related to each interested party • Common understanding of
goals and values among interested parties • Increased capability to create value for interested
parties by sharing resources and competence and managing quality-related risks • A well-
managed supply chain that provides a stable flow of goods and services

Actions we can take

• Determine relevant interested parties (such as suppliers, partners, customers, investors,

employees, and society as a whole) and their relationship with the organization. • Determine
and prioritize interested party relationships that need to be managed. • Establish relationships
that balance short-term gains with long-term considerations. • Pool and share information,
expertise and resources with relevant interested parties. • Measure performance and provide
performance feedback to interested parties, as appropriate, to enhance improvement
initiatives. • Establish collaborative development and improvement activities with suppliers,
partners and other interested parties. • Encourage and recognize improvements and
achievements by suppliers and partners.