Quality in higher education

Quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement

The quality arena is full of jargon, but there are some basic terms/ideas that are important.

Quality: an assessment of the degree to which service or product meets the expectations of a user based on an identified set of attributes. The relative importance of particular attributes depends on the individual user and their context.

Quality Control (QC): a process based on measuring identified quality attributes to ensure that the product or service delivered to users is of a defined/agreed quality standard. For products, QC is normally applied following production, and defective items have to be scrapped or re-worked. QC often incorporates statistical sampling from batches, such that only a comparatively small proportion of all items need be tested to ensure a low level of defective items reach the user.

Quality Assurance (QA): a set of procedures (system) designed to ensure that a product or service meets a specified minimum level of quality. While a QA system would normally incorporate some form of QC, rather than relying on 'inspecting in' quality using QC, QA systems typically seek to implement delivery systems that do not produce defective items. A QA system would use QC data to identify quality problems and rectify them to maintain the required level of quality.

Quality Improvement (QI): encompasses a wide range of techniques for attaining improved levels of quality. Changes in user/customer demands and/or developments in competing products/services mean that there is likely to be a need to improve quality over time. The most appropriate QI techniques depend on the service or product in question, the organisational context and the nature of the improvement sought.

Quality Management System (QMS): a system for managing all aspects of quality in an organisation. A QMS would normally encompass QC, QA and QI processes.

These terms are sometimes confused, for example, QC and QA are not the same. What represents quality in a particular service or product is generally an individual assessment; QC/QA are simply methods for ensuring that a specified level of quality (low or high) is achieved.

There are a number of standard QMSs, the most widely used of which is the International Organization for Standardization standard ISO 9001:2000 Quality management systems - Requirements. Many national standards bodies (including Standards Australia) have adopted ISO 9001 as their equivalent national standard. ISO 9001 specifies the requirements for a QMS under five main categories:

1. quality management system - what it must contain and how it must be documented;
2. management responsibility -confirming that quality is a management issue;
3. resource management - to achieve quality we must have appropriately trained people, appropriate processes, equipment capable of producing quality, and raw materials of an appropriate level of quality;
4. product realisation - how all the steps from design through to manufacturing and/or service delivery contribute to quality; and
5. measurement, analysis and improvement - how quality will be measured, how products/services that do not meet quality standards will be rectified, and what quality improvement processes will be used.

The question is often asked, "How can a single standard specify the requirements of a quality system for all types of organisations?" The answer is that ISO 9001 is not concerned with the details of what is done by an organisation, but only how it is managed. It identifies those generic processes in an organisation that must be controlled to achieve quality, without prescribing the details of the controls. The details of the quality system actually implemented need to be determined by each organisation, taking into account the expectations of their users, their range of products and/or services, their processes, their quality goals, and their own unique circumstances. The use of terms such as 'product' and 'customer' reveal the development of approaches to quality that are rooted in the manufacturing of physical goods, however there is an extensive literature on the application of these same quality principles to the development and delivery of services. ISO 9001 employs the term 'product' to mean both service and product.

A QMS can be viewed as an unwanted administrative burden. However, the basic requirements for even an ISO 9001 QMS do not have to be onerous. It requires an organisation to articulate a quality philosophy that defines quality and identifies what aspects of the operation will be covered by the QMS, formalise existing operating procedures, implement a small number of mandatory procedures, provide any necessary staff training and keep records to demonstrate the operation of the QMS. Of course, like other management functions, such as planning and budgeting, quality management can appear to take on a life of its own, creating busywork for its own sake, but this is not an inevitable by-product of having a QMS. A QMS system can be viewed as a barrier to innovation that will lead to homogeneity, the lowest common denominator and stagnation. However there are a range of well-known innovative organisations (including Apple, 3M and Hewlett-Packard) that have ISO 9001 QMSs in operation. An organisation with a QMS that is suffering from an inability to innovate would do better to look for policies that penalise, neglect or do not provide the resources required to innovate. A QMS itself is no barrier to innovation.

An idea arising from the existence of QMSs is 'certification'. If we have a QMS and believe that it is functioning well, we can declare this fact - this is referred to as first-party certification. If we have an important customer, they may wish to audit our QMS - a successful audit of this type is referred to as second-party certification. If we wish to demonstrate to a wider audience that we have an effective QMS, we may seek an appropriately qualified/accredited independent organisation to conduct the audit of our QMS - this is referred to as third-party certification.

Activity

Try to identify activities in your work area that are related to quality in some way.  Which ones are related to quality assurance?  Which ones are related to quality improvement?

Forward to: Quality and higher education