Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL

Chapter 2.3 Quality Assurance
The British guru of quality, John S. Oakland, defines quality control as “essentially the activities
and techniques to achieve and maintain the quality of a product. It includes a monitoring activity,
but is also concerned with finding and eliminating causes of quality problems so that the
requirements of the customer are continually met. Quality assurance is broadly the prevention of
quality problems through planned and systematic activities (including documentation). These will
include the establishment of a good quality management system and the assessment of its
adequacy, the audit of the operation of the system, and the review of the system itself.” (Oakland,
1995) The most recent version of International Standard ISO9000:2000 gives us a bit more laconic
definition: quality assurance is the “part of quality management focused on increasing the ability to
fulfil quality requirements.”
Quality and failure costs
Quality is not only right, it is free
And it is not only free; it is the most profitable product we have.
Harold S. Geneen
Of course it costs something to create conditions within an organization that would ensure that
each product or service comes without defects. John Oakland called it the ‘costs of doing it right
the first time’.
Quality costs related to the proper determination of customer requirements, establishing and
inspection of appropriate processes and procedures, creation and maintenance of the quality
system, design and development of necessary equipment, preparation and implementation of
training programs for the staff, and so on. Whatever is done for the sake of quality may require
additional expenses. However, as a rule, it repays very well - mistakes cost much more.
Failure costs may be divided into internal and external ones. Internal failures relate to cases when
the result of work fails to reach necessary quality requirements and this is detected before transfer
to the customer takes place. External failure costs occur when defects are detected after product
transfer to the customer, or in the course of service provision when a fault becomes obvious.
These ideas were developed since 1960s by Joseph Juran, Rowland Caplen, John S. Oakland,
and others.
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