Quality Organization

Quality Organization

In classical organizations, particularly in manufacturing industries, people are grouped into departments based functions. Hence, we observe departments such as marketing, design, manufacturing, and sales. Following the same reasoning, quality-related activities have been focused in a "quality department". Such a department would be responsible for assuring the quality of products through activities such as inspection, and statistical process control. In the last two decades, a major trend in many organizations has been assigning quality management tasks to all departments rather than the quality departments only.

A classical organization structure is hierarchic with many levels from top management to workforce.

Again a major trend has been towards lean organizations where a few layers exist in the organization structure, and people at all levels work together in teams. In such organizations, managers, often in teams, monitor performance of the organization and plan for quality. They identify processes or problems that need improvement, and organize and lead people to find solutions. More and more organizations tend to delegate authority to make decisions to lower levels (empowered teams).

lean.gif (44709 bytes)

A lean organization

A classical organization structure