An organization focused on quality promotes a culture that results in the behaviour, attitutes, activities and processes that deliver value through fulfilling the needs and expectations of customers and other relevant interested parties.
The quality of an organization’s products and services is determined by the ability to satisfy customers and the intended and unintended impact on relevant interested parties.
The quality of products and services includes not only their intended function and performance, but also the perceived value and benefit to the customer.
But how can we recognize the quality of organizations? Paraphrasing the standard ISO 9000:2015 (2015), quality is the ability to fulfil different types of requirements — e.g., productive, economical, social ones—with tangible and measurable actions. Quality is a basic element to differentiate an organization with respect to its competitors. To make quality tangible, it is firstly necessary to identify stakeholders’ needs. Then it is necessary to fulfil these needs effectively, using the available assets (i.e., processes and resources). This requires a careful analysis if the evolution of processes; performance indicators are suitable tools to achieve this purpose.
