| The Excellence Model and 'Quality' |
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'Quality', or 'quality improvement', has always been regarded as a rather woolly descriptive term used to try to convey a positive message when referring to a business or organisation, and in particular to its services or products. Quality, as a business aim, rose to prominence after the Second World War when in conjunction with major rebuilding programmes, and the rise of consumerism, governments both here and in the US sought to improve the quality of products, albeit mostly then in the manufacturing sector. Arguably of considerable relevance to the Excellence Model of today was the work of W Edwards Deming, one of the most influential of a number of quality gurus that rose to prominence since the 50s and 60s. Deming was an American statistician who was sent by the US government to Japan after the war in order to help with the rebuilding program. His (then revolutionary), ideas were based on the now well known principle of 'Plan, Do, Check, Act', (the PDCA cycle), and he also set out his '14 points' on quality improvement which are still very relevant even today, and some of them are still clearly reflected in the aims of the Excellence Model. Deming's work and his vision for quality improvement in business was received rather more warmly in Japan than back in the west, and goes a long way to explaining the eventual dominance of Japan as a producer of high quality goods. The fact that these key quality principles were not taken up in the UK resulted in, for example, the spectacular demise of UK motorcycle industry, and to a large degree in the automotive industries in general. So Deming's early work on quality improvement was one of a number of forerunners to the Excellence Model with its key emphases on constancy of purpose and continuous improvement. Summary :-
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