Busting the myth on Quality tools and Quality culture . .

More often than not, organisations think having a culture of quality usually translates to having quality tools in place, having a quality dept with quality inspectors and plotting QC charts on the shop floor.

What exactly is Quality Culture ??

But in reality, is this the true meaning of having a culture of quality in your organisation ? 

Quality culture is a set of group values that guide how improvements are made to everyday working practices and consequent outputs. A quality culture is, arguably, a set of taken-for-granted practices that encapsulate the ideology of the group or organisation
- www.qualityresearchinternational.com

The 7 tips to creating the right quality culture mindset are given below.

1. Define and outline company values 
2. Train employees in quality culture
3. Seriously Pursue Quality instead of chasing compliance
4. Implement document control Early On
5. Communicate Clearly With Regulators
6. Seek End-User Feedback
7. Use the right tools in the Quality Management System (QMS)
8. Ensuring continual process improvements, housekeeping and safety                                                                    - www.greenlight.guru

In recent research by Ashwin Sinivasan and Brian Kuey and reported in HBR, (click here) April 2014, based on a study on almost 60 MNCs and it's 850 employees, it was found that companies that take a grassroots, peer-driven approach, develop a culture of quality, where employees make fewer mistakes and incur less quality related costs. The distinguishing traits of such an organisation are as given below.

1. Maintaining Leadership emphasis on quality - In the study it was found that in a medium sized company with an employee base of 26,000 employees, a culture of quality results in $350 million less expenditure than a company that does not have one.  

2. Ensuring message credibility - most of the oganisations talk big about the quality culture, most often their actions are opposite to what they preach. Ensuring message credibility increases the commitment from the employees to the quality culture

3. Encouraging peer involvement - taking a leaf from the Toyota Quality revolution, this is understanding that quality is not a top-down concept, it has to come up from the workers directly involved with the work and quality aspects at the bottom, and from peers involved in the work

4. Increasing employee ownership and empowerment - leaving a small and focused set of initially approved quality guidelines, leaving the rest of quality standards adoption and implementation with the employees, helps increase the employee ownership and empowerment to ensure the success of the quality culture.

Taking cue from the Japanese Kanban in terms of continuous process improvements and ensuring high safety and environmental quality standards in the work floor and environment definitely help to instill the quality mindset in the employees.

What organisations need to understand finally is that an organisation should have the quality commitment from the top management, down to the last rung of workers, irrespective of whatever tools, exercises and people it has, it can then put a quality culture in place.  

George..