Perspectives on quality
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Perspectives on quality A number of paradigms with a communication theme promise help for the quality auditor
Roger Stewart channels are also important to the auditor, as it may be more appropriate to formalize them in order to effect a "quality' communication.
"It was a wine-jar that was tobe moulded: as the wheel runs round why does it come outa pitcher?' (Horace).
If Horace (65-8 BC) had been a quality auditor, he would have rated this a major non-conformance to
The customer-supplier relationship
quality, with quality assurance producing a large amount
The essence of this relationship is outlined by Ralph Barra (1983): "Giving the customer - or next person in
of re-work and a terminal breakdown in the customersupplier relationship.
the process - what is required, namely a product or
Over the past two decades, emphasis by companies on quality, both to remain cost-effective and to maintain a competitive edge in highly-competitive markets, has
sen/ice fit for use, and in doing this in such a way that each task is done right the first time.".
At one level of analysis, the relationship is defined by
ensured that "quality" is not only a process but has become a strategic issue. The growth of awareness
a company and its end-customers for products or
discrete areas of quality operation through to total quality management (TQM) has been parallelled by the growth in quality standards from bodies such as BSI, ISO and
supporting services such as maintenance, training,
services. In a quality system, the supplier must provide a product to the customer's requirements. This may involve, in addition to a product with specified attributes,
throughout organizations and the progression from
ANSI.
documentation and advice on how to use, all of these, provided in a quality manner - possibly by different areas of the company. In order for this to happen, it may be that the supplier needs to examine its own position as a customer with its own suppliers. In other words, a supplier-customer/supplier-customer chain exists.
As the spread of areas treating quality as an
essential attribute grows, there is a corresponding growth in the complexity to be evaluated by quality auditors. This article aims to examine one of the basic concepts
in a quality system - that of the customer-supplier
relationship - together with its associated
paradigms. Two types of paradigm will be applied: those
At another level of analysis, this supplier-customer chain can be applied to a department or an individual
existence of components in the process must be in place
department or individual's processes (tasks).
communication networks, and to apply a selection of
where the output of the process is input to another
of an essentially "structuralist" nature (whereby the for a quality operation); and those of an "interpretMst"
Figure 1 shows the chain of departments/individuals,
nature (which examine the effectiveness of the operation
of the process). The article will suggest that these paradigms, useful in systemic analysis, will ass
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