"The higher and stronger species will devour the small and defenseless one in the course of evolution." And it happens that the strongest species on the market today is usually the one that has an ISO certificate, but above this, the one that produces to meet the needs of customers, taking into account all the requirements that they have.
Quality is a matter of survival, achieving it becomes a long-term vitality strategy. It is about quality of life, work, people, the institution, its objectives, its processes and in general all the components of the company. The quality is appreciated from the attention that the guards pay at the entrance of the establishment, to the effectiveness of the preventive signs. Nothing should escape the process, with a view to achieving excellence. Quality is profitability, productivity, market share; It is a series of elements that are combined in a coordinated way and that together mean business success.
Achieving total quality is no longer a goal, it is a minimum requirement of existence, a company that does not direct its objectives to the search and achievement of it, it is a company that will inevitably lag behind and will leave the market, since, currently there is room for "dinosaur" producers. Only with efficient operations, knowledge and market positioning, reaching the core of the client's needs and with absolute coordination, will it be possible to continue coexisting with equal opportunities in the market.
Issues such as market opening, global competition, high technology, process efficiency, can only be addressed by organizations that have a sense of what quality means, since the competition rules of the market and the demands of consumers, force producers to ensure that their product is of high certified quality.
Quality should be understood as a responsibility of all those involved in the process, but especially of management. The task of this consists then of leading the process, taking into account that quality is not simply eliminating possible product defects, it is more than that, it is entering the organization's system, not limiting itself to the simple production process, but entering to the entire corporate scheme of the company, based on the fact that the person who best knows the possible deficiencies is who participates directly in each process, and detects if there are things that are being done in the wrong way (if there is a lack of coordination between departments, if the employees are comfortable carrying out their work, if the client we know or not is being reached, etc.) and not staying there, in the supervision,to later correct; rather, take actions that lead to the prevention of this type of errors.
Management must move towards this point, towards the improvement of the system as a whole, not only to the optimization of isolated aspects, which may contribute in part to improvements, but which do not constitute the adequate solution to general problems.
To really achieve quality, it is necessary, extremely necessary, to listen to the customer, take into account their complaints, claims, returns, suggestions, etc., that they have regarding the product and its quality, understood as what that he was looking for when consuming and using the product, if this aspect is not taken into account, he is not going anywhere, the hackneyed phrase "the customer is always right" becomes more important than ever if you really want to consolidate excellence in the organization.
For this reason, we now see that most companies have suggestion boxes, customer service lines, with exclusive departments to deal with complaints and claims, as well as returns. Why? because they realized the importance of what the customer thinks of the product, after all it is produced for him, for his satisfaction, and if his needs are not met, then what is being done, produce because yes, because my company is the "first" and the client has to buy my products because I offer them, because I know what HE needs, because I have what HE is looking for; without knowing for sure if this is actually true, without ever asking you if you are satisfied with the product, ignoring everything that happens around me,ignoring the growing threat of international competition (which with the opening has become more and more dangerous for this type of company). This has happened to many national companies that have had different fates, some have succumbed to the competition, but others realized in time (so as not to capsize) how wrong they were to leave the customer aside. An example that is worth bringing up, touching on this issue, is that of financial institutions; These were in a market in which they all "made a step", they all moved by inertia with the current, without worrying about the client, until the competition arrived, with Banco Bilbao Vizcaya (most of them bought from Banco Ganadero) and with Banco Santander (which became Bancoquia), both Spanish, and others such as City Bank,which entered the market with new services, raffles, raffles, motivating customers, taking them into account. This forced the institutions to move quickly to keep up with these multinational banks, what have they had to do? they have had to merge, strategically ally, adapt and offer similar services and benefits to those of the new entrants; If they had not moved in this way and remained seated on their laurels, trusting that they knew the needs and expectations of savers, they would already be doomed to disappear or be just a memory. This example illustrates a bit what happened to other national industries, although as this is a strong sector, there were no major deaths, if they were in another weaker sector.the losses would have been many.
The quality problem is not short-term or immediate solutions, that is, we cannot say that by obtaining a quality seal or ISO certification, one is already exempt from the problem. Achieving success in terms of quality is a commitment that is developed every day, excellence is only achieved through commitment, worth the redundancy, which implies giving more and more of the best to the client.
Quality is more than certificates and compliance with requirements, it is a philosophy that is lived day by day and that involves all the elements of the organization, guiding them to the achievement of the same objective or ideal that is nothing more than the full satisfaction of the customer with the product. When this happens and we can fully identify it we can say that we will recognize it when they (clients) see it.
