Title: GOING FOR HIGH QUALITY STANDARDS - REFLECTIONS FROM EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE
Abstract: The term quality is widely used in different sectors of society, and even within each sector also at different levels. However, despite is common use, quality is a rather subjective concept as it depend on individual perceptions, which in turn change with specific needs of each individual at a given moment. In addition, individual needs tend to change and different individuals will have different needs. This unstable process means that quality of a service is defined by its utility in satisfying the needs of a specific customer or set of customers at a given moment. From the economic point of view quality is not a less movable target. Suppliers of products and services are expected to establish the optimum balance between the level of quality they need to provide in order to achieve customers' satisfaction, the cost of that provision, and the price that will be considered as acceptable by the customers for the quality delivered. Some decades ago quality was considered almost as a philosophical concept of difficult applicability to the business world. Today the growing awareness of the importance of this concept, a direct consequence of the competitive pressure caused by the globalization of the economies, has widened its application to practically all sectors of the society, from defense to health care, as a new of doing business. However, some sectors are still far from having achieved a homogeneous quality approach. This is clearly the case of the Urban Mobility System (UMS). In the 50's the first stones of what is today known as Total Quality Management (TQM) were laid with the finding that the determinant factor of quality was not the production process itself, but the organization supporting the process and providing the product or service. That is, quality was upgraded to a management approach instead of a production control technique.
Publication Year: 1999
Publication Date: 1999-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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