FREE online courses on Quality Management System - Quality Control - Quality Improvement

 

Quality improvement is defined as “actions taken throughout the organization to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of activities and processes in order to provide added benefits to both the organization and its customers”.

 

Continuous quality improvement is one of the most crucial aspects of quality management. For quality management, objective quality is a moving target, which is continuously changing.  Quality expectations of customers and other stakeholders are continuously rising with supply of better products and competitive prices by competitors.   Therefore, it is essential for every organization to establish a quality improvement system, which continuously checks and analyses the current performance of processes and products and prepares an improvement plan.

 

Quality improvement cycle

 

A four-part quality improvement cycle is followed for continuous improvement:

 

Check: Check the current status of the activities and outputs.  Collect all relevant facts and data.  Try to understand the system comprehensively.

 

Act: Compare the data with predetermined standards or goals.  Evaluate the deviations from the desired goals; analyze the causes of deviations.

 

Plan: Based on the analysis, set revised improved quality goals.  Determine      the methods to reach those goals.

 

Do: Educate and train the people about the new improved goals and plans. Implement the plan, monitor it and take corrective action to ensure that the plan is implemented as decided.

 

Repeat the process of Check-Act-Plan-Do for continuous improvement.