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Continuous Improvement or Quality Control

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Is continuous improvement or quality control more critical to success in an organization?

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Solution Summary

This solution explains whether continuous improvement or quality control is more critical to success in an organization. Supplemented with a relevant and supporting article.

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Please see response attached, which is also presented below. I attached a relevant article as well. Good luck with your continued studies and take care.

RESPONSE:

They are both important to the success of an organization, mainly because both terms are concerned about quality of services provided to the customers; only the terms are rooted in different perspectives of management.

The concept "Quality control" comes from a quantitative perspective - methods and techniques used to meet certain standards measure of quality to measure if their objectives and goals are being realized. Continuous improvement is a process concept that comes from various approaches, including the systems approach (see attachment of "Quality Management").

Continuous improvement, in regard to organizational quality and performance, focuses on improving customer satisfaction through continuous and incremental improvements to processes, including by removing unnecessary activities and variations. However, both deal with quality. And in fact, one could go so far as saying that continuous improvement is indeed one form of quality control. Quality control measures are important so the organization can have a way of measuring their performance; however, (continuous) process improvement is also important, as it has often been said that process accounts for 80% of all problems while people account for the remaining 20% (http://www.eagle.ca/~mikehick/quality.html). In this sense, then, continuous improvement would be considered more critical to the success of the organization. However, as we look at the various definitions below, there is a large overlap in how these terms are used in the management literature.

In fact, in today's world of globalization, communication and continued with quality being defined as that of meeting the customers needs, the latter is also very important in today's type of organizations.

So let's look at how quality control is defined by various people. Sony says this:

Quality control is an important management challenge that has a direct impact on Sony's brand strength. We are engaged in a group-wide effort to improve not only the quality of our products and services, but also the management quality of all corporate activities that create these products and services.

Obviously, "quality control" used in this sense is very important to the success of the Sony business - improving the quality of the products and services and also improving the management of the corporate activities that create the products and services. Other definitions of quality control are listed below - the web had many definitions to explore. However, the definitions have some things in common: quality control is more about methods and techniques used to measure performance to see if a certain standard has been met, and to eliminate potential problems to meeting the goals. Thus, for some organizations, such as Sony, this is imperative to the success of their company. However, as mentioned above, (continuous) process improvement is also important, as it has often been said that process accounts for 80% of all problems while people account for the remaining 20% (http://www.eagle.ca/~mikehick/quality.html). In this sense, then, continuous improvement, which deals with process, could be considered more critical to the success of the organization.

Definitions of Quality Control to consider:

· The operational techniques and activities that are used to fulfill the requirements for quality.
strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/instco-levc.nsf/en/h_qw00037e.html

· Inspection, analysis and action required to ensure quality of output.
www.angelfire.com/pa/baconbacon/page4.html

· The examination of output data to ensure that it has been properly processed and meets ...

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