MJP Project Management

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During my working life, I’ve heard this word a lot – always struggled to understand what it means to me and the organisations I worked for.

Now that I am running my own project management company (MJP Project Management Consultants Ltd), looking to offer project management services to small, medium and large organisations, I am much more interested. I am also working through a MSc in Operations & Supply Chain Management – which covers TQM and quality management extensively, so I believe I have gained a very good understanding of quality.

So the original question was – quality  – what is it?

If we look at the Oxford English Dictionary, it talks about a degree of business excellence. I would be worried that this focuses to much on the supplier and not on the customer. In today’s global economy with markets and competition across the globe, it is important that organisations focus on the customer and their needs. So for me a better definition of quality would be “to meet the customer expectations and needs“.

Of course for different customers, quality would mean different things to them … look at flying – a business class passenger would expect a flat bed, top notch service, as well as reliability and safety – but an economy passenger would want a cheap ticket, comfortable seat, as well as reliability and safety – different customers, with different ideas of quality and requirements.

So – how does this affect your organisation?

It is important that you understand your customer and market you sit in. If you can exceed your customer needs on a regular basis, then the chances are you will built up customer loyalty and be seen as excellent business performing organisation. Take John Lewis in the UK – they have built an excellent reputation for customer service, which in turn has created a loyal bunch of customers. If we look at low budget airlines, their order winner is price, so for them quality is all about achieving cost savings, so they can offer the lowest prices – so no free luggage, credit card fees, etc – but their model seems to work – just look at EasyJet & RyanAir.

Finally I would say that quality is very important to an organisation and should be at the forefront of an organisation’s strategic objectives. Deming stated that “quality starts in the boardroom” and I do not disagree – senior management need to drive any quality improvement plan.

Do provide feedback – this is my first company blog … I will be doing more on a range of topics.