The answer to it is quite difficult for me. In some areas the quality of the products have improved a lot like the health care center.

But in some other fields the quality has really decreased in some aspects. But the problem is the quality guys only look at on aspect and ignore the other. For example in 70's and 80's the quality of the vehicles in terms of durability and crash resistance was quite high (but higher fuel consumption) and now a days impact resistance so low that hit by a bike causes a bump in the car. So here the quality in terms of luxury has improved on the expense of durability.

There may be many definitions of "quality management", but I like that one: quality management is "the act of overseeing all activities and tasks needed to maintain a desired level of excellence."

The word "desired" is very important. The "desired level of excellence" might be: "our product should break after 24 months, so the customer will buy another one". And the quality management systems are really working - the manufacturers are succesful at maintaining the desired level of excellence, aren't they? ;-)

Witold - i like your definition of desired quality - the problem is the perspective taken - as you rightly said, the perspective of the company is taken and not the one of the customer - those who value the customer's perspective of quality are the winners in the long term, i believe.

Dear Ravi,

ASQ Studies have shown that accordingly to 50% of the respondents there is no universal definition of Quality (ASQ Global State of Quality, 2013 Survey).

For some TQM is applying the Gurus teachings, for others is Business Excellence Models and for others is ISO 9000 International Standards Series and certification.

In some (or many) organizations the focus might be more on getting the certificate than really applying improvement process supported by proper quality tools. This might explain some recent product recalls in the high quality perceived Automotive Industry using ISO/TS 16949.

Also sometimes is hard to generalize since there are some control factors like industry sector and company size that must be taken in consideration. However, according to most rankings that I am aware the trend is positive, but as you say specially in B2C customer perception is key (In B2B conformity to specification stills applies many times).

As per scientific research there is no universal consensus, but most researchers that I am aware would agree that when internal factors are the main motivators for improvement Quality will really improves.

Good look with your interesting question.

Best Regards

Luis Fonseca

The answer can have 2 bases:

-          Certain QMS certifications roots can be considered not appropriate …

-          The product / service quality cannot be considered to be directly linked to the QMS, 100% … The QMS (real) implementation at the level of basic requirements for the it certification vs. ISO 9001 takes in consideration the scrap management , despite the scrap sell to the final customer…

LM

I think that most of the company has made quality management improvement because of the certification but forgot about the technical/scientific management witch should be one of the basis of quality management.

"Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them."  Henry Ford