The one word that we fall back to when describing satisfaction or delight after having consumed a product, is the buzz word ‘Quality’. Many efforts took place throughout the world by countries, societies, organizations or even individuals in making sure that whatever produced, tangible or intangible (products) has its level of required Qualities. Different products will have its unique set of attributes that will measure the Quality. Well, with that in mind, Quality thinking certainly has evolved over time from Quality Inspection (QI) to Quality Control (QC) then to Quality Assurance (QA), from QA to Quality Management System (QMS) and of course with the hope one day we have Total Quality Management (TQM) or Manage Quality in Total (MQT) or even Quality of Management in Total (QMT). Whichever way we want it, one should realize that while we are moving, the dynamism of Quality still takes place. While it took longer time those days but the implementation phase of any new ideas has certainly become more rapid with time. This inevitable movement must be understood as the evolution of the human mind which in return makes things that was slow before to be done much faster today. Having said that, we should start looking at Quality beyond the attributes that are measuring it. Time has come, where we must stop being satisfied with producing products that merely meets the specifications of output but go further into outcome that creates an experience to the end user.
Experience Based Outcome (EBO) is what we should focus on. This is because everything we do in our daily life whether for the first time or numerous times again all depends on the past and present experience that we have gained. Which means, for us to do something again and again, a particular experience, has touched our Belief System in some way. So, Quality should not be just defined by meeting specifications or reducing variations, but further into creating experiences that changes the Belief System to say that some level Quality certainly exist. In order to do so, we should not be always thinking about reducing variation, but rather understand where variation is needed to create the right experience for Quality. Only then variations must be kept under Sustainable Controlled Condition (SCC), where the dynamism is known and captured at all times.
Looking at the notion “Prevention is better than detection” and “Build Quality into the Product”, well it’s easier said than done. While we have numerous workshops creating various manuals, procedures or work instruction to have a process under control, we still tend to fail in building Quality into the process. What does it actually mean to build Quality into a process? One should realize that creating such documents is not a problem but getting people to use it is what matters. At this point, we must look at the type of experiences gained by the user of the document and also the recipients of the product. If the experiences are positive it will touch their Belief System in a positive manner or otherwise. So, building Quality means developing an experience for the interested parties of a system which is embedded in way we do things.
“Quality is achieved when the experience rocks the Belief System of an Individual and not just by attaining the specifications of its attributes”
