Please inform us on your book “Quality into the 21st century: Perspectives on Quality and Competitiveness for Sustained Performance”? What is the subject of the book, and can you also give information about your most recent book?
This book was created with the contributions and efforts of a group of members of the international academy for quality, to introduce the worldwide trends about “Quality in 21st century”, and the outlook at the present situation. The book presents in a multiple and integral manner, the deep chaos in the evolution of quality management, with the perspective of a group of international actor. Various aspects regarding competition and sustainable improvement are considered and the following are discussed: how can the company shares be measured for a high quality competition, how to ensure customer loyalty in a highly competitive market; the role of leadership and human resources management on sustainable quality, moving from continuous improvement to continuous innovation, policy deployment and six sigma. The book offers today’s issues and future trends in quality management, offering an additional perspective with the contribution of T. Conti, G. Watson, and Y. Condo. My last book that I wrote in Italian, “Quality: A Missed Opportunity?” is inspired by the situation that prevails in several countries in the West currently. At the end of 1990’s, the new economy attracted the management’s attention, and the importance placed in quality decreased. Finally, the finance balloon ruptured, and the quality worsened more. Most establishments gave up the TQM model, and returned to the ISO 9000 standards and certification, interpreting them in the lowest extent possible. The book examines the reasons behind the decline and the mistakes that were made during the re-evaluation as well as allowing room for the misinformed interpretations regarding the concept of quality management and various approaches along with suggestions of the writers in this matter. Some of the chapters are, Wrong interpretations within the management and responsibilities, undiscovered ties between value and quality, ISO 9000 and the right expectations from the documentation, what to expect from the model of perfection, learning to go to the beginning from the end (meaning, to start from the customer), Customer focus: Just a motto, or a way to renovate the institutions? Appropriate strategic management of company stock, how to execute a strategic self-assessment, ongoing change, renovations, etc.
In you opinion, what will be the basic difficulties that the quality professionals will have to face in the 21st century?
The main difficulties are the cultural difficulties that the quality professionals face in the 21st century. The quality of the goods and the services is among the factors that determine the quality of the institution. These being very good would be the basic characteristic, and furthermore, more specialisation in management and in the establishment is necessary in order to ensure the satisfaction of the management, and the expectations of the employees. Some specialists believe that an intellectual stagnation is experienced in quality management, for example, it is observed that they have innovations as well after the Malcolm Baldrige and EFQM models. Do you agree with this approach? I do not have any doubts about an intellectual stagnation prevailing. I, on my behalf, am fighting this. I am against the approach that rose in the 1980’s to maximise the profits, and not to heed the requirements for innovations. In 1990, after creating the EFQM Model, I continued researching the models with the purpose of corporate development. The probability model and the end-to-start finding emphasized in my Corporate Self Assessment book of 1997, was a step taken towards this end. My current study emphasized on the combination of system and quality concepts in order for the establishments to acquire more advanced approaches in modelling their improvement and innovation activities.
Is the TQM model getting old? Can TQM renew itself faced with global problems?
Whether TQM gets old or not depends on us; if we utilise the quality management only for money, yes. Or if we wish to polish old concepts, these will render TQM unusable. However, if we are determined to continue with development and innovation, we would develop and enhance the concept TQM. TQM is not a special and a fixed method, but it constitutes the heading for global strategy in order to ensure the continuation of corporations. We have to see it as an upper level tool box (which includes technical tools as well as corporal and managerial tools), and we have to update it regularly.
Is the EFQM Model sufficient to model TQM? What can be done to improve the model more?
EFQM Model is only one of the methods used, however the most important one. As one of the creators of European Quality for Award and the founders of the EFQM Model, I can say that we have designed the award in order to suggest new models to help develop and exceed TQM. The award is a European standard to measure corporate quality and a very good model. However, as I have said since the beginning (Please see the articles “Company Quality Assessments” of the magazine Total Quality Management, July and August 1991.) Self assessment is an improvement tool, and has to comply with the improvement requirement of businesses to the best possible extent. Therefore, the model used for self assessment is derived from EFQM. Weights and global imaging is not only useless but also harmful. Here the criteria can be changed and adapted depending on the characteristics of an organisation. (This is the meaning of the possibility model) Indeed, in my book “Corporate Self Assessment” I have used a model derived from EFQM. This model varies significantly compared to EFQM, and offers a basic model that can be tailored to an organisation’s character. My current work targets concept models involving better improvement to ensure corporate improvement. In this work, the systems are taken into consideration in a more consistent manner. Accordingly; the EFQM is an excellent model to measure the level of corporate quality. Measuring the level of corporate quality (in a traditional and standard way) enables a comparison between organisations. It is possible to use this model outside this, however, the results would be lower than expected, and would damage the image of the model in the long run.
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