5. Find the odd word.

1. Compliance difference rebellion disagreement

2. Reliability accuracy honesty unsteadiness

3. Processing remaining converting dealing with

4. Acceptance exclusion certification recognition

5. Standardization difference regularity similarity

6. Quality condition parameter character

7. Supervision freedom control management

Reading 1

1. Read the text and discuss the following questions:

   1. Are quality standards bureaucratic? Why?

   2. Some professionals think that the term of quality is vague. How do you understand it?

   3. Why do customers prefer tailored products?

   4. What are the results of a good reputation of a company?

   5. What are the risks of bespoke responses?

   6. How can one ensure consistency and compliance across the whole supply chain?

   7. How do performance support tools work? How can a company benefit from them? Give examples of the tools from the text.

2. Complete the text with the sentences:

1. When companies get it wrong they often now find there are fewer places to hide.

2. They can provide easy paths through material and incorporate quality and other checks.

3. Yet customers retain high expectations of quality and will punish a supplier for any slipping of standards.

4. Given the growing need for bespoke responses, organisations are finding it difficult to get it right first time in changing and novel situations.

5. Importantly, support tools can be used to capture and disseminate best practice.

6. They and public service users increasingly desire individually tailored products and services.

7. Too often quality stops at the boundary of an organisation and does not extend to business partners.

8. They are ripe and ready for wider adoption.

9. Devices such as traffic lighting can be used to prevent people from progressing along a course of action if data entered is incomplete or suggests a possible risk.

10. Statistical tools were used to increase the quality of physical products.

Is Quality Still Relevant? New Solutions to Classic Dilemmas20

Customers continue to become ever more demanding. 1.__Many of them want to stand out and feel that what they are acquiring is distinctive, if not special or unique. In the aftermath of various corporate scandals, and the failures and bailouts of financial institutions, the good standing of an organisation, or quality of reputation, continues to be a priority. When buying from an online source over the Internet customers seek to purchase from organisations they feel they can trust.

Corporate reputation and brand image can both be compromised by poor quality. Similarly, consistency and driving errors out of what people do, particularly those in direct contact with customers, clients and citizens, can enhance an image and standing, and help to justify a price premium. 2.__Because the media, and other interested parties, can reach larger audiences more quickly companies are keener than ever to avoid risks. Yet quality procedures and the requirements for retaining a quality kitemark can still be a costly and bureaucratic burden. We need cost effective ways of ensuring consistency and compliance.

Early traditional quality sought to reduce variation through standard offerings and prescribed processes. 3. __In relation to services, feelings and values have become more important. Retreating into a world of norms and standards can lead rapidly to low margin commodity supplier status. Increasingly, quality needs to be built into the daily tools that people use to craft bespoke offerings. Ways need to be found of boosting productivity, preserving quality and ensuring compliance while allowing faster, more flexible and tailored responses.

Many directors and managers feel trapped on the horns of a dilemma. People for whom they are responsible may require the discretion to respond to individual requirements if they are to create new options and choices. 4.__There is a need to delegate and empower whilst still maintaining quality control.

5.__The time it takes to put separate quality checks in place to cope with each new requirement means that approaches adopted may lag behind an evolving need. The variety demanded by customers has to be reconciled with the requirement to also keep a grip on quality. People worry about the risk of compromising quality when bespoking responses. Quality procedures may cover standard products, and a restricted set of responses, but may not cover departure from standard procedures, i.e. tailored offerings. Reviewing each case can incur costs and result in delays.

Product proliferation, extra channels to market, globalisation and innovation create new risks that require additional responses. The sheer quantity of quality procedures and standards makes it increasingly difficult to keep people up to date with quality documentation, especially those working in the field and up and down a supply chain. 6.__It may now need to embrace the activities of people who directly influence a reputation and the quality of what is delivered to customers, yet over whom one has little direct control. How does one ensure consistency and compliance across different organisations?

Anticipation and prevention is preferable to reaction to quality problems. Too often quality is a self-contained activity rather than an integral part of how work is done. We need to ensure quality considerations are properly addressed as and when risks arise. Quality must become an automatic and integral element of a bespoke response.

One solution is to use performance or job support tools to increase workgroup productivity and corporate performance, by making it easier for people to do difficult jobs. 7.__Building quality into ways of working and performance support tools ensures control is still exercised in delegated situations. Responses are based upon core principles such as forcing a focus on customer requirements and stopping errors happening in the first place.

8.__ Within most workgroups there are superstars and the essence of their success can now be expressed in better ways of doing things for others. At the time of the first World Congress on Total Quality while the importance of learning from high performers was recognised, there was less awareness of how the differing approaches of superstars could be cost effectively captured and shared. The automation of more routine and repetitive tasks can significantly improve productivity and allow more time for activities such as differentiation and tailoring. Decision trees can be included to help ensure all aspects are considered. Performance support tools can be made tamperproof, which significantly reduces risks to quality.

Learning support can also be provided to improve the general level of appreciation of important issues affecting performance, quality, relevant policies and other considerations. Tools can be programmed to prevent outputs that conflict with laws, rules, regulations, guidelines or ethical and other codes. Self-assessment diagnostics can also be included which can identify development and updating requirements.

Equipping workgroups with performance support tools offers various advantages over traditional approaches to quality and compliance. Building in quality makes it possible to give more discretion to people whilst maintaining control. Organisations benefit from lower overheads, a reduced cost of errors and faster adoption of change. By encouraging or forcing particular routes and preventing others, tools can have direct impact on behaviour. 9.__When situations and circumstances change tools can be quickly updated in ways that allow new or changed material to be identified.

Companies such as Cisco Systems have achieved large returns on investment by using performance support tools to boost productivity, speed up bespoke responses, ensure compliance, cut costs, reduce stress and improve quality. The approach has matured and is well tested in various sectors, including finance, manufacturing, IT, telecoms, professional services, printing and packaging, and retail. Many past concerns about a gulf between board aspiration and corporate reality can now be addressed. Expensive and bureaucratic approaches are no longer necessary. Much more practical and cost effective ways of boosting performance, and ensuring compliance, quality relationships and quality behaviours now exist. 10.__ Quality has come of age, and could have a promising future.