Quality

What’s the meaning of quality?

A definition among many is:

“Quality means: doing the right things, at the right moment, in the right way, succeeding in meeting the customer’s expectations”.

This means that the ultimate goal of the quality department is customer satisfaction and therefore, at this point, we might wonder what’s the meaning of customer in the language of quality?

According to the current interpretation, there are two kinds of customer:
– the external customer
– the internal customer

So, we can define the meaning of customer as a fundamental principle of Quality, together with a steady improvement. Steady improvement actually forms the basis of the PDCA cycle, conceived by William Deming, a guru of Quality, who, in the aftermath of World War II, theorized the process that our business too automatically has adopted, since we have decided to implement “quality processes”.

In fact, Quality Management systems are based on processes and on identifying, understanding, managing (just like in an actual system) processes that ae connected to each other, they contribute to the strength and the efficiency of the organization in achieving its goals.

As you can see in this picture, the cycle includes several steps:

Step 1

Planning. It makes it possible for the organization to meet a certain need and thus to plan a solution to a problem.

Step 2

Putting it into practice. Once it has been planned, the project is executed.

Step 3

Checking. In order to understand if the project is performing the desired results, a monitoring and data collecting phase is necessary.

Step 4

Acting. If during the monitoring phase the process turns out not to be flowing smooth, you must understand where’s the origin of the problem and carry out the necessary corrective actions. If everything’s “running smooth”, instead, it’s time to implement the improved process permanently in the organization.

The whole system works only if each component knows what are the expectations and the needs of the other components that follow in the assistance “cycle” and can meet them at best (internal and external customer).

So, for the monitoring phase, the creation of the product quality control lab in Corman was crucial as this checks all the products coming from our production plants. The lab has adopted its own methodologies to identify product specifications and monitorar their compliance on a daily basis. The lab is also the heart of our research and development activity, when it comes to testing new materials and the products of competitors.