《Project Management, Planning and Control》 17 Quality management
17 Quality management
“Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten”
Gucci
Quality (or performance) forms the third corner of the ime–cost–quality triangle which is thebasis of project management.
A project may be completed on time and within the set budget, but if it does not meetthe specified quality or performance criteria it wll at best attract criticism and at worst beconsidered a failure. Striking a balance between meeting the three essential criteria of time, costand quality is one of the most onerous tasks of a project manager, but in practice usually onewill be paramount. Where quality is synonymous with safety, as with aircraft or nuclear design,there is no question which point of the project management triangle is the most important.However, even if the choice is not so obvious, a failure in quality can be expensive, dangerousand can destroy an organization’s reputation far quicker than it took to build up.
Quality management is therefore an essential part of project management and as with anyother attribute, it does not just happen without a systematic approach. To ensure a quality productit has to be defined, planned, designed, specified, manufactured, constructed (or erected) and
commissioned to an agreed set of standards which involve every department of the organizationfrom top management to dispatch.
It is not possible to build quality into a product. If a product meets the specified performancecriteria for a specified minimum time, it can be said to be a quality product. Whether the costof achieving these criteria is high or low is immaterial, but to ensure that the criteria are metwill almost certainly require additional expenditure. If these costs are then added to the normalproduction costs, a quality assured product will normally cost more than an equivalent one thathas not gone through a quality control pocess.
Quality is an attitude of mind and to be most effective, every level of an organization shouldbe involved and be committed to achieving the required performance standards by settingand operating procedures and systems which ensure this. It should permeate right through an organization from the board of directors down to the operatives on the shop floor.
Ideally everyone should be responsible for ensuring that his or her work meets the qualitystandards set down by management. To ensure that these standards are met, quality assurancerequires checks and audits to be carried out on a regular basis.
However, producing a product which has not undergone a series of quality checks and testsand therefore not met customers’ expectations could be very much more expensive, since therewill be more returns of faulty goods and fewer returns of customers. In other words, quality assurance is good business. It is far better