Example Of Quality Management Critical Thinking

Quality management is the act of overseeing all tasks and activities required to maintain a desired level of excellence. It does not aim at assuring good quality but rather to ensure that a product or organization is consistent. It is also referred as Total Quality Management (TQM). Quality management is composed of four main factors namely; quality assurance, quality planning, quality improvement and quality control. TQM ensures consistency of the business, maintaining customer satisfaction and improves employees’ participation. Quality improvement, assurance, planning and control are relatively similar. However, there are various differences between them. Below are some of the differences between quality improvement and quality assurance (QA).
Quality is viewed as conformance to specifications. Therefore, a high quality product or service is one that meets customer’s specifications. The production process should be closely monitored to ensure that the products or services produced and supplied are of high quality.
Quality improvement is a continuous improvement process while QA measures compliance based on some specific standards. Quality improvement focuses on improving systems and processes while focuses on individuals. The measures and standards developed for QA can inform the quality improvement process. Quality improvement is attained by means of prevention while quality assurance is achieved by means of inspection. Quality improvement involves all responsibilities. However quality assurance involves only a few responsibilities.
Despite the above differences, quality improvement and quality assurance has the following similarities. Both quality improvement and QA are efforts directed towards provision of quality services or products. Both are within an organization’s capacity thus the organization can improve the quality of its output and also assure the customers that they will be getting quality goods or services. Quality management is therefore a practice that needs to be undertaken on a day-to-basis in an organization.