TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT
ECONOMIC CASE FOR QUALITY
What Do CEOs
Think About
Quality?
by Greg Weiler, ASQ project leader
I
n today’s highly competitive global marketplace, quality practitioners must justify the cost of quality.
Making the economic case for quality by creating materials quality professionals can use to specifically demonstrate that quality pays rather than costs has accordingly become a priority for ASQ.
In 50 Words
Or Less
• ASQ plans to help quality professionals make the economic case for quality.
• We surveyed executives to learn what they currently think.
• The surprising results included almost all believing quality helps the bottom line but fewer viewing it as a management tool or its practitioners as professionals.
52
I MAY 2004 I www.asq.org
The effort calls for three primary activities:
1. Conduct a survey to identify the current level of thinking about the economics of quality among CEOs and other top executives in four markets: manufacturing, service, healthcare and education (see “Survey Demographics,”
p. 56). This will allow ASQ to create and focus materials to prove the economic case.
2. Engage volunteers in two target markets to contact top executives and deliver the economic case for quality message.
3. Provide members and other quality professionals with information and materials they can use in their own organizations.
The survey was conducted in January and
February, and its results provided valuable information in the following areas:
• Awareness and use of specific quality techniques.
• Definition of the word “quality.”
• Quality’s contribution to the bottom line.
• Quality as a management technique or product attribute. • Measuring the economic impact of quality improvements. • The perceptions of quality as a profession.
• The attributes associated with people who practice quality.
• Sources of information that would influence executives to use quality.
Awareness
Interviewers read a
What Do CEOs
Think About
Quality?
by Greg Weiler, ASQ project leader
I
n today’s highly competitive global marketplace, quality practitioners must justify the cost of quality.
Making the economic case for quality by creating materials quality professionals can use to specifically demonstrate that quality pays rather than costs has accordingly become a priority for ASQ.
In 50 Words
Or Less
• ASQ plans to help quality professionals make the economic case for quality.
• We surveyed executives to learn what they currently think.
• The surprising results included almost all believing quality helps the bottom line but fewer viewing it as a management tool or its practitioners as professionals.
52
I MAY 2004 I www.asq.org
The effort calls for three primary activities:
1. Conduct a survey to identify the current level of thinking about the economics of quality among CEOs and other top executives in four markets: manufacturing, service, healthcare and education (see “Survey Demographics,”
p. 56). This will allow ASQ to create and focus materials to prove the economic case.
2. Engage volunteers in two target markets to contact top executives and deliver the economic case for quality message.
3. Provide members and other quality professionals with information and materials they can use in their own organizations.
The survey was conducted in January and
February, and its results provided valuable information in the following areas:
• Awareness and use of specific quality techniques.
• Definition of the word “quality.”
• Quality’s contribution to the bottom line.
• Quality as a management technique or product attribute. • Measuring the economic impact of quality improvements. • The perceptions of quality as a profession.
• The attributes associated with people who practice quality.
• Sources of information that would influence executives to use quality.
Awareness
Interviewers read a