Managing Quality: The Future

This concluding chapter of Managing Quality pulls together the main themes and strands running through the book and identifies issues to which organizations will need to give particular attention in the future. It opens by examining what quality means to different people and its importance in business transactions. The case is made that improvement is a continuous process which is systematic, incremental and cyclic. It is argued that the senior management of an organization are always keen to know both where they are positioned in relation to the competition and also their perceived status within the industry and the marketplace. The means of carrying out such an assessment are explored. The chapter (and the book) is concluded by outlining a number of issues to which organizations will need to give more attention if they are to achieve world-class quality status