ABSTRACT
Whatever type of organization you work in – a hospital, a university, a bank, an insurance company, local government, an airline, a factory – competition is rife: competition for customers, for students, for patients, for resources, for funds. Any organization basically competes on its reputation – for quality, reliability, price and delivery – and most people now recognize that quality is the most important of these competitive weapons. If you doubt that, just look at the way some organizations, even whole industries in certain countries, have used quality to take the heads off their competitors. American, British, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Swiss, Swedish organizations, and organizations from other countries have used quality strategically to win customers, steal business resources or funding, and be competitive. Moreover, this sort of attention to quality improves performance in reliability, delivery, and price.
