Quality and qualitique

Quality is the subject of a socio-economic approach often referred to as qualitism, which is a science – or at least a technique – known as qualitique.

Today, the notion of quality has taken on universal proportions, to the point of appearing everywhere, in newspapers, on walls and screens, in factories and in the words of some – economists – as well as in those of others – politicians.

There are many reasons for this sometimes overwhelming success. For the most part, they boil down to these:

• The rise of quality was driven by the rapid expansion of Japanese industry, which made it its watchword, at least in the 1970s and 1980s;

• In today's socio-economic world, quality implies an almost exclusive focus on the end-users of all products and services. In simpler terms, we're talking about the "customer-king", an idea that is still widely accepted;

• The notion of quality is a rewarding and dynamic one; those who have put it into practice in the field know it well: it's hard not to embrace the desire to "do better" and keep customers happy;

• Finally, and perhaps most importantly, quality is the subject of a worldwide consensus, reflected in the famous ISO 9000 series of standards:

• • we have a universal definition of the vocabularies used in the field of quality, making dialogue in the field no less universal;

  • we have universal rules for managing organizations and companies and, consequently, for assessing their compliance with these rules.

These features, which are essential and define the face of quality today, must not be blown out of proportion. Quality has its limits. No one necessarily wants to be reminded of them in the future, but we won't forget:

• that the current socio-economic situation reveals an excess of supply over demand, hence the strength of the latter. (This was not always the case. There is no certainty that shortages will never return, in which the notion of quality finds it hard to move);

• after having absorbed costs and deadlines, quality is now integrating the new demands of society (health, environment, etc.), to mention only the latest developments. It's a lot to take in, and quality doesn't deserve to end up like the frog in the fable;

• Finally, the customer-king principle is both common sense and, more often than not, validated by experience. But it's only a principle; we'll call it the 1 ^er postulate...