Quality management: Encyclopedia II - Quality management - Quality Improvement

Quality management - Quality Improvement

W. Edwards Deming is best known for his management philosophy establishing quality, productivity, and competitive position. He has formulated 14 points of attention for managers, some of these points are more appropriate for service management:

• Break down barriers between departments;
• Management should learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership;
• Improve constantly;
• Institute a programme of education and self-improvement.

The following diagram is the Deming cycle (PDCA) for quality improvement.

The philosophy is to keep improving the quality of an organization. It is defined by four keys:

• Plan: Design or revise business process components to improve results
• Do: Implement the plan and measure its performance
• Check: Assess the measurements and report the results to decision makers
• Act: Decide on changes needed to improve the process

The consolidation phase enables the organization to take stock of what has been taking place and to ensure made to processes that require documentation (both to allow processes to be repeatable and to facilitate recognition of the achievement of some form of quality standard).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Quality Improvement", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki