Keep Calm and Let the Quality Manager Handle It

Yeah, that will work. While a creative idea in the “Keep Calm” series and probably something many of experience this is completely the wrong idea.

Quality is not something we can rely on a single person or group to perform. We cannot add it at the end of the line or inspect it into the product. At best that is only a false sense of security. If we want a quality product it must be made with quality processes by quality minded people. A focus on quality must be intrinsic to the company culture and practices for the customer to take notice.

The responsibility of delivering quality products and services to customers lies on the shoulders of every single individual who is even remotely associated with the organization. It is not only the management but also employees irrespective of their designation, suppliers, clients, customers who need to come up with improvement ideas to make foolproof systems and processes to deliver quality products which meet and exceed the expectations of end- users.

Generally the most effective way to achieve quality is to avoid having defects in the first place. It is much less costly to prevent a problem from ever happening than it is to find and correct the problem after it has occurred. Focusing on prevention activities whose purpose is to reduce the number of defects is better. Companies employ many techniques to prevent defects for example statistical process control, quality engineering, training, and a variety of tools from the Lean and Six Sigma tool kit.

Quality is everyone’s job. Each individual can influence some parts of the manufacturing process of a product or service they provide, therefore, effecting the quality of its output and ultimately the customer’s satisfaction. Quality directives should be compulsory to everyone in the corporation.

Perhaps the shirt should say “Keep Calm and Let Me Handle It”.