International Journal for Quality Research 9(1) 1–8

ISSN 1800-6450

Goran Putnik 1
Paulo Ávila MECHANISMS TO PROMOTE
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT IN
QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
Article info:
Editorial

1. Introduction1 were selected, extended and improved, from

which twelve papers were selected for
The quality management systems (QMS) publication.
should be designed, operated and improved The objective of this special issue is to
according with the eight quality management communicate and to present the research,
principles that are defined in ISO 9000:2005, and corresponding research results, carried
Quality management systems – out in the area that came from the BS’13
Fundamentals and vocabulary, and in ISO communications. Firstly, in this Editorial, we
9004:2009, Managing for the sustained will begin with a discussion on the relevance
success of an organization – A quality and the actuality of the theme as well as their
management approach. The title of this implications for the organizations. After that,
special Issue “Mechanisms to Promote we follow with a global view on the special
Continuous Improvement in Quality issue’s contents. The papers included in this
Management Systems” is aligned with the Special Issue represent contributions in three
sixth quality management principle main fields: the first field is related to the
(Continual improvement), from the eight quality control; the second is related to
principles on which the quality management appraisal activities for decision making; and
system standards of the ISO 9000 series are the third one is related to the performance
based. improvement of the processes. Within this
Because the main purpose of many framework, a short description of each paper
companies is to be competitive in the global included in this issue is given, and the each
market and seeing in the continuous paper’s main contribution is highlighted.
improvement a mechanism to promote it, on Finally, a brief summary and
the third international conference Business acknowledgments are presented.
Sustainability 2013 (BS’13) (held in
November 2013), a set of papers were 2. Importance of the theme and its
presented, addressing the theme of this
implications for the
Special Issue, and after that, a number of
them, covering different approaches and organizations
research results about mechanisms to
promote continuous improvement in QMS, The relevance of this special issue theme is
quite perceived by the most important
international organizations, several CEO
1
Corresponding author: Goran Putnik companies, principally in the multinational
email: [email protected] ones and for that that belongs to their

1
stakeholders, for the researchers, and of 3. Volume’s contribution
course for the organizations’ collaborators
that understand that their individual In this section we summarize the
proactive contribution is very important for contribution of the eleven papers of this
the whole organization improvement. ISO volume along the context in which they fall.
(2012) in the book of quality management The papers’ contributions, with exception of
principles, about the sixth principle already Stadnicka and Antosz (2015), could be
referred in the introduction, says even that classified in three main fields: the first
continual improvement of the organization’s related to the quality control; the second
overall performance should be a permanent related to appraisal activities for decision
objective of the organization. The same making; and third one related to the
reference stresses as the key benefits the performance improvement.
following: performance advantage through
The contribution of Dias et al. (2015), Sousa
improved organizational capabilities;
et al. (2015) and Costa et al. (2015), are
alignment of improvement activities at all
classified within the first field (quality
levels to an organization’s strategic intent;
control), the papers of Morte et al. (2015),
and flexibility to react quickly to
Subramaniam et al. (2015), Nicola et al.
opportunities.
(2015) and Ávila et al. (2015) are classified
Given what has been said, it is quite within the second field (appraisal activities
acceptable that organizations should follow for decision making), and the remaining
the way of the continuous improvement of papers, Nogueira et al. (2015), Moutinho and
the QMS, but the well-known “Plan-Do- Oliveira (2015), Putnik et al. (2015) and
Check-Act” (PDCA) methodology, or Fonseca. (2015) are classified within the
Deming cycle, in honour of William Eduard third field (performance improvement of the
Deming that disseminated its use, has to be processes).
applied to all organization’s processes. The
The first field, quality control, is more
model of a process-based quality
directed to new studies that can bring and
management system presented in ISO 2001:
influence new forms to perform quality
2008, since the version of 2001, links the
control in a manufacturing process. Of
PDCA methodology with the process
course that quality control should be an
approach to express how continual
option if a process did not guarantee the
improvement of the QMS should be applied
conformity by itself. However, when a
in an organization. However, it is not an easy
process did not guarantee the desired
way, but we believe that for ISO 9001: 2008
percentage of quality and/or there are still
certified organizations, with the necessity of
not means to update this processes and/or the
improving all their processes, through
cost/benefit is too much high, the solution is
quantitative performance measuring, see
to integrate control activities into the
possible examples in Ávila et al. (2004), the
production process as much as possible
effectiveness of continuous improvement
without additional costs. The three papers
can be much better.
framed in this field show a contribution in
This Special Issue intends to give a continuous improvement in the quality
contribution in the fields of quality control, control, a part of QMS.
appraisal activities for decision making, and
The second field, appraisal activities for
for the performance improvement of the
decision making, is associated with new
processes, framed as mechanisms for
contributions for three different assessment
continuous improvement, not merely
activities that should take place in a QMS.
academic, but applicable and useful for the
The papers of Morte et al. (2015) and
organisations, as we will expose about the
Subramaniam et al. (2015) contributes for
contents of the papers in the next section.

2 G. Putnik, P. Ávila
the collaborators appraisal, the paper of 3.1 Quality control
Nicola et al. (2015) for the value for the
customer, and the paper of Ávila et al. The paper of Dias et al. (2015) develops an
(2015) for the suppliers. It could be said that artificial vision inspection application with
a significant part of the stakeholders is the aim at performing the detection and the
considered in the contribution of this special quality control of a dot on a tire. Two
issue in order to improve the QMS. different techniques, namely Background
The third field, processes performance Subtraction and Hough Transform, were
improvement, as the name suggests, is more tested to process the images acquired to
dedicated to the contribution to some implement the solution. The tests results
processes improvement that normally belong demonstrate good performance of both
to the enterprises QMS. The process methods: processing time was low and,
improvement should be made and appraised simultaneous, the achieved accuracy was
through key performance indicators, high. This application is a real life example
normally defined by each enterprise, and as continuous improvement can be applied to
through the values obtained new goals repetitive inspection tasks, transforming
should be defined for the next assessment them from manual to automatic inspection,
period. The papers of this field give us some which can be adapted for another kind of
ideas to promote such improvement. industries.
Moreover, the paper of Fonseca (2015), The paper of Sousa et al. (2015) applies the
closing the list of the papers of this special graph theory approach to quantify
issue, highlights for the new version of ISO uncertainty of performance measures. To
9001 that will brings new contributions in that end, the causes of uncertainty are
order to promote improvement of the whole identified and a quantitative methodology,
of the processes in an enterprise. based on graph theory, is used to calculate an
As was sad before the paper’s contribution uncertainty index to evaluate the level of
of Stadnicka and Antosz (2015) was not uncertainty of a given performance measure
directly framed with the three fields above or key performance indicator. The
defined. Purposely we left it out because this quantification of performance measures
paper is considered as an interesting one to uncertainty could contribute to better
open the theme of this special issue. The represent the risk associated with a given
paper presents the results of a study, decision, which means an improvement tool
conducted in large production enterprises in to be used by decision-makers. In spite of the
Poland, concerning the assessment of the methodology developed by the authors could
implementation of continuous improvement. be applied to any performance measure, i.e.,
The study was conducted with the use of a besides of the quality control, this paper was
questionnaire about employees’ involvement framed in this field because presents an
in the problem identification and in reporting application example for a performance
improvements, as well as the way of indicator (reflow soldering process: number
motivating employees to involve themselves. of soldering defects per million
Several hypotheses were formulated and opportunities) used in the final quality
tested to justify the results according to the control test of printed circuit boards.
enterprise type. Several conclusions are quite The paper of Costa et al. (2015) is one more
important to be used by enterprises that contribution of this special issue in the area
pretend to improve the practice of of automatic control. The authors establish
continuous improvement. an algorithm to automatically recognize
basic functional geometries: planes,
cylinders, spheres and cones without
operator intervention. Shape and position

3
recognition of these geometries is essential and other institutions as well.
for dimensional characterization of most The paper of Nicola et al. (2015) presents a
components, which could be useful for many new conceptual model decomposing value
quality control tasks. An application of the for the customer and its quantitative model
algorithm on real parts is shown and the of benefits and sacrifices, using the Fuzzy
analysis of the results obtained validated the AHP method. The application of the model
suitability and the potential of the algorithm was done in a footwear industry case study,
and allowed concluding that the robustness to ascertain the usefulness of this approach
of the model depends on the quality of the and as a part of its validation, because the
data acquisition. authors pretend to develop a set of case
studies. Value for the Customer is one of the
3.2 Appraisal Activities for Decision most important factors of a success of an
Making enterprise and should be the centre of any
QMS. So, this model represents an important
The paper of Morte et al. (2015) presents a contribution tool to analyse how customers
performance appraisal model for truck assess and perceived the actual
drivers, based on multi-criteria decision aid product/service offer. Assessing the desires,
methodologies: the PROMETHEE, and the needs of the customer, the companies would
MMASSI, with a case study in a Portuguese increase a competitive advantage, as well as
trucking company. From the more accurate new innovations on the quality of their
knowledge that appraisals provides, now the products or services.
company may plan their activities more
The paper of Ávila et al. (2015) focuses the
appropriately and more accordingly to their
problem of suppliers/partners selection, that
strategic objectives. It can adjust its training
normally is a time and resource-consuming
programmes to different drivers' needs and
task that involves data collection and a
profiles, and allocate drivers to the each haul
careful analysis of the criteria that can
service according with their ranking based
positively or negatively influence the choice.
on social and technical criteria. This paper is
In order to contribute for the problem
a good contribution in how multi-criteria
resolution, the authors purpose a model for
decision aid methodologies can be applied
the selection of suppliers, whose criteria
by the enterprises in order to improve the
were obtained from the literature review and
collaborators assessment and induce the
their weights through the survey results from
practice of continuous improvement.
the companies. The model has a hierarchical
The paper of Subramaniam et al. (2015) structure and can be applied with the
focuses on issue of clinical decision making Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method
in nursing care. or with Simple Multi-Attribute Rating
The research objective was to determine the Technique (SMART), two of the most
nurses’ knowledge, attitude, practice towards utilised and simple multi-attribute methods.
EBP and barriers to use EBP in four (4) Because each company follows its own
Government Hospitals in Malaysia. The method usually without benchmarking, the
presented study covered about 600 nurses in positive contribution of the paper is that now
selected hospitals. This survey has shown the decision-makers can make use of this
that nurses in selected government hospitals new reference selection model for the
are not familiar with the term of Evidence suppliers, which can represent an
Based Nursing Practice (EBNP). The orientation/pattern for a decision making on
research presented gaps in knowledge, the suppliers/partners selection process.
attitude and practice and the barriers on one
side and provides valuable basis for
increasing EBP practice in selected hospitals

4 G. Putnik, P. Ávila
3.3 Performance Improvement of the et al. (2015), the smart object is the "final
Processes product" of the implementation of ICT in
existing manufacturing physical resources,
The paper of Nogueira et al. (2015) presents such as products or machines. The functions
a case study related to the implementation of proposed by the authors pretend to
a work safety program in a Brazilian contribute for different kind of problems
chemical industry, in order to decrease the solving in production and quality
number of accidents in spite of the company management, such as production planning
to be certified at OHSAS 18001. Based on and control, scheduling, factory supervision,
the world best practices for the chemical real-time data acquisition and processing,
industry, a safety program was designed and and real-time decision making, were
implemented, whose positive results validated positively in a large manufacturing
demonstrate the effectiveness of the program company. As referred by the authors, the
inside the company. Because the labour topic of smart object is not quite new but the
accidents are a problem for the performance smart objects technology and
of the organization’s processes and implementations are still not in their mature
consequently for the competitiveness of the phase and has been gaining strength in
organizations, bringing financial and social industrial environment. Therefore, the topic
damage, so the reader has in this study a of this paper belongs to the applied research
guideline to implement a safety program and contributes to the further performance
with the target of controlling the accidents in improvement of the processes.
a chemical industry. The paper of Fonseca (2015) reviews several
The paper of Moutinho and Oliveira (2015) quality paths including the Quality Gurus
explores the improvement of a maintenance and Total Quality Management (TQM)
process service on customer site with a approaches, the Business Excellence Models
decentralized organization based on multi- and the ISO 9000 International Standards
site teams. The authors present a case study series, ending with an analysis and
where were identified the principal barriers considerations of the expected outcomes of
of their maintenance chain service and the the ISO 9001:2015 revision process.
respectively improvements. Results of the According to the author, major benefits are
performance variation in the last 36 months expected such as less emphasis on
show that it was possible to support an documentation and new/reinforced
increase of 18% of customer’s equipment approaches: consideration of organizational
market maintaining the equipment context and (relevant) stakeholders, risk
availability constant and reduce the total based thinking and knowledge management.
costs in 7%, while a significant cost This paper was purposely left to the end
reduction of the working and traveling time because the principal topic concerns what
per maintenance action, took place. Once will be the structure of the next version
any organization has to perform maintenance (2015) of ISO 9001, which will surely
and/or to supply maintenance service, this contribute to promote continuous
case study can contribute by validating improvement in quality management
effectiveness of some practical actions for systems of the 1.3 million certified
improvement of the maintenance service. organizations and for those for which the
The paper of Putnik et al. (2015) defines the certification process will begin.
set of smart objects embedded production
and quality management functions for 4. Summary
supporting production and quality
management decision-making. According to To summarize this Editorial, it is attempted
Ruhanen et al. (2008) and referred by Putnik to chart out briefly some developments in

5
related areas of mechanisms to promote learning, theoretical insight and practical
continuous improvement in quality applications, and to incentive further
management systems. As this field looks for scientific development and creation of new
permanent improvement in order to achieve research and technical papers.
the goal of the total quality, i.e., a “never Acknowledgments: We thank the papers
ending story”, novel questions and problems authors for their positive contribution and
stem requiring equally novel solutions. the reviewers for their useful and timely
At the end, the Guest Editors hope, and comments on the papers submitted to this
would like, that this Special Issue will be Special Issue. We would also like to express
useful, meeting the expectations of the a sincere thank to the Editors-in-Chief of the
authors and wider readership and serving for Journal, for this kind opportunity.
enhancing the individual and collective

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Goran Putnik Paulo Ávila

University of Minho, Polytechnic of Porto,
School of Engineering School of Engineering
Research Center Algoritmi Portugal
Portugal [email protected]
[email protected]

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8 G. Putnik, P. Ávila