A quality management system (QMS) is a collection of business processes focused on consistently meeting customer requirements and enhancing their satisfaction. It is aligned with an organization's purpose and strategic direction (ISO9001:2015). It is expressed as the organizational goals and aspirations, policies, processes, documented information and resources needed to implement and maintain it. Early quality management systems emphasized predictable outcomes of an industrial product production line, using simple statistics and random sampling. By the 20th century, labor inputs were typically the most costly inputs in most industrialized societies, so focus shifted to team cooperation and dynamics, especially the early signaling of problems via a continual improvement cycle. In the 21st century, QMS has tended to converge with sustainability and transparency initiatives, as both investor and customer satisfaction and perceived quality is increasingly tied to these factors. Of QMS regimes, the ISO 9000 family of standards is probably the most widely implemented worldwide – the ISO 19011 audit regime applies to both, and deals with quality and sustainability and their integration.
The European Quality Award is now referred to as the EFQM Excellence Award.
Total quality management (TQM) consists of organization-wide efforts to "install and make permanent climate where employees continuously improve their ability to provide on demand products and services that customers will find of particular value." "Total" emphasizes that departments in addition to production are obligated to improve their operations; "management" emphasizes that executives are obligated to actively manage quality through funding, training, staffing, and goal setting. While there is no widely agreed-upon approach, TQM efforts typically draw heavily on the previously developed tools and techniques of quality control. TQM enjoyed widespread attention during the late 1980s and early 1990s before being overshadowed by ISO 9000, Lean manufacturing, and Six Sigma.
ISO 14000 is a family of standards related to environmental management that exists to help organizations (a) minimize how their operations negatively affect the environment ; (b) comply with applicable laws, regulations, and other environmentally oriented requirements; and (c) continually improve in the above.
The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recognizes U.S. organizations in the business, health care, education, and nonprofit sectors for performance excellence. The Baldrige Award is the only formal recognition of the performance excellence of both public and private U.S. organizations given by the President of the United States. It is administered by the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, which is based at and managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
TickIT is a certification program for companies in the software development and computer industries, supported primarily by the United Kingdom and Swedish industries through UKAS and SWEDAC respectively. Its general objective is to improve software quality.
Quality management ensures that an organization, product or service is consistent. It has four main components: quality planning, quality assurance, quality control and quality improvement. Quality management is focused not only on product and service quality, but also on the means to achieve it. Quality management, therefore, uses quality assurance and control of processes as well as products to achieve more consistent quality. What a customer wants and is willing to pay for it determines quality. It is a written or unwritten commitment to a known or unknown consumer in the market. Thus, quality can be defined as fitness for intended use or, in other words, how well the product performs its intended function.
Clinical audit is a process that has been defined as "a quality improvement process that seeks to improve patient care and outcomes through systematic review of care against explicit criteria and the implementation of change".
EFQM is a not-for-profit membership foundation in Brussels, established in 1989 to increase the competitiveness of the European economy. The initial impetus for forming EFQM was a response to the work of W. Edwards Deming and the development of the concepts of Total Quality Management.
The European Practice Assessment is a pan-European development for quality management in primary health care. The scaffolding is a set of indicators, that EPA instrument enables general practitioners to compare and to improve the organisation and management of their practices. It is based on an extended review of the international literature on assessment models for primary care, with special attention to the Dutch model of practice visits.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to management:
The EFQM Excellence Award is a transnational quality award that recognises European businesses with "excellent and sustainable results" across all areas of the EFQM Excellence Model. It was established in October 1991 as the European Quality Award by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM). The assessment process is one of the most robust of any award, with a team of independent assessors spending an average of 500 hours per applicant reviewing documentation and conducting interviews on-site.
BQF is an independent, not-for-profit corporate membership organisation and was founded by the DTI and UK business leaders in 1993.
In software engineering, a software development process is the process of dividing software development work into distinct phases to improve design, product management, and project management. It is also known as a software development life cycle (SDLC). The methodology may include the pre-definition of specific deliverables and artifacts that are created and completed by a project team to develop or maintain an application.
Co-production is a practice in the delivery of public services in which citizens are involved in the creation of public policies and services. It is contrasted with a transaction based method of service delivery in which citizens consume public services which are conceived of and provided by governments. Co-production is possible in the private and non-profit sectors in addition to the public sector. In contrast with traditional citizen involvement, citizens are not only consulted, but are part of the conception, design, steering, and management of services.
Team service management (TSM) is an open-source management framework that uses and integrates existing management methods and techniques to help teams deliver ever improving services. TSM is designed to be used by any and all teams within an enterprise including sales, production, administration, IT, finance and management teams.
Control self-assessment is a technique developed in 1987 that is used by a range of organisations including corporations, charities and government departments, to assess the effectiveness of their risk management and control processes.
IASME Governance is an Information Assurance standard that is designed to be simple and affordable to help improve the cyber security of Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The European Quality in Social Services (EQUASS) is an integrated sector-specific quality certification system that certifies compliance of social services with European quality principles and criteria. EQUASS aims to enhance the social sector by engaging service providers in quality and continuous improvement and by guaranteeing service users quality of services throughout Europe.
The State Agency for the Evaluation of Public Policies and Quality of Services (AEVAL), commonly known as The Evaluation and Quality Agency, was a Spanish public agency responsible for the promotion, performance evaluation, and impact analysis of public policies and programs. The agency handled service quality management, promoted the rational use of resources, and ensured accountability to the public.
