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The ten commandments of quality: A

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 International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management
The ten commandments of quality: a performance perspective
Jiju Antony
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Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 64 Iss 5 pp. 723 - 735
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REFLECTIVE PRACTICE The ten

commandments
The ten commandments of of quality
quality: a performance perspective
Jiju Antony 723
Department of Business and Management,
School of Management and Languages, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK Received 30 October 2014
Revised 30 October 2014
Accepted 31 October 2014
Abstract
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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide quality professionals of tomorrow with ten
commandments of quality.
Design/methodology/approach The ten commandments are based on the 20 years experience
of the author as an academic, researcher, consultant and a practitioner in the field of quality
management (QM).
Findings The ten commandments of quality in my perspective include: leadership for quality,
customer advocacy, emphasis on teaching applied statistical methods to quality professionals, creating
a culture of continuous improvement or incremental innovation, employee empowerment, ownership
and engagement, training and education for quality, extending quality into supply chain, quality and
environment, learning organization and sustaining issues of quality.
Research limitations/implications The key features outlined in this viewpoint paper is based
on a single perspective. However, the author is currently pursuing a study looking into the viewpoints
of ten QM experts around the globe.
Originality/value The paper provides an excellent resource for many researchers and practitioners
in the field of QM who can use the key features expressed in the paper as a guide for achieving and
sustaining quality in their businesses.
Keywords Quality management, Quality, Quality profession
Paper type Viewpoint

Introduction
Quality has been an elusive concept in many organisations today. Many people view
quality as the degree of innate excellence and some others view it as a lack of defects or
mistakes or errors in business processes. However, quality is no longer viewed as the
degree of excellence of a product or service in the twenty-first century. For instance, we
take two cars such as Mini Cooper and Rolls-Royce. If you perceive quality is about
excellence, then obviously you would conclude Rolls-Royce is a higher quality car.
However, you could equally argue that if both products satisfy the purpose for which
they were purchased for, both of them can be treated as quality products. As long as
both products meet or exceed customer expectations, it would fit well with Jurans view
on quality. The importance of quality in services cannot be underestimated due to the
growth of service industries in many countries around the world. Quality in services is
however viewed differently compared to manufacturing as it depends upon a number
of dimensions such as timeliness, completeness, consistency, responsiveness, empathy,
accessibility and convenience, courtesy, etc. Moreover, it is very difficult to define what International Journal of
Productivity and Performance
the customer wants in the context services compared to manufacturing. For example, Management
the speed of service can be a critical quality characteristic for customers; however, the Vol. 64 No. 5, 2015
pp. 723-735
perceptions of speed vary significantly for different customers as well as across many Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1741-0401
service organisations provide the same service. DOI 10.1108/IJPPM-10-2014-0167
 IJPPM Although the importance of quality has been a well-recognised topic and a top
64,5 strategic priority for all modern businesses today, many organisations are not sustaining
quality over a period of time due to a myriad number of factors. Many organisations
do have a quality department and people view quality is the responsibility of this
department. The Quality Guru, Dr William Edwards Deming, tells us, Quality is
everyones responsibility, but of course, it needs leadership and example-setting from the
724 top as nothing will undermine a quality improvement, a continuous improvement (CI) or a
business process improvement initiative more than management paying lip-service to the
initiative while not following it themselves.
Research has indicated that there are virtually no studies carried out in the UK
industry to evaluate the necessary attributes and skills set required for our future quality
engineers and managers. My experience with a large number of companies is that many of
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our quality managers and engineers received training in the quality area only after they
start a career in the industry. Very few had taken quality-related courses at the university
level and view quality as a topic just confined to production or manufacturing discipline.
This is a pure misconception and this needs to be demystified when engineers and
managers receive their education on quality-related topics at universities and colleges.
Dr Joseph Juran gave the quality community in the world a compelling prophecy.
He stated clearly that the twenty-first century would be the century of quality. Quality
in the last century was defined by control and improvement; however, it is clear they
are not sufficient for the twenty-first century. Change and transformation as the emerging
tools of quality and we need to invest more time and energy to obtain skills related to them.
In this paper, I would like to offer my personal thoughts and views which I believe to
be the key ingredients for achieving and sustaining quality in organisations of the
twenty-first century. These ingredients can act as a practical guide for developing
best-in-class practices of quality management (QM). It is important to note that the
following ten commandments are not presented in any sort of ranking order.
However, the author argues that these commandments can be very useful for
organisations who want to sustain quality for establishing a competitive advantage.

Commandment 1: leadership for quality

Although the importance of quality as a priority in any business setting has been
recognised by everyone despite of the size and nature of the organisation, the leadership
for achieving and sustaining quality has been a constant problem over the years.
Feigenbaum (2007) stated that, quality today has become the foundation for constant
management innovation and leadership. Juran et al. in one of his articles published in
1995 stated that, attaining quality leadership requires that senior managers personally
take charge of the quality initiative. The best example for this is explicitly demonstrated
by the former CEO of Motorola, Robert Galvin, who has made a habit of making quality
the very first item on the agenda of executive staff meetings. So the next question to be
asked is, What sort of leadership is required for an organisation to achieve and sustain
quality?. In my personal opinion, the following traits, characteristics or roles should be
required in a leader for an organisation to sustain quality:
Setting Strategic and Visionary leadership (Setting strategic and visionary
leadership) or should the first letter of each word be capitalised?
Defining and communicating the strategy adopted by the organisation to achieve
and maintain quality.
 Empowering employees and make them accountable for maintaining quality of The ten
their own work processes. commandments
Creating the power of an environment of trust, openness and honest communication. of quality
Creating an environment that promotes creativity, innovation and continual
improvement.
Inspiring, motivating and recognising employee contributions. 725
Developing challenging goals and targets through goal setting, leaders are
able to foster constant growth and development across the organisation, by
continually setting realistic and measurable goals within each department.
Creating quality improvement projects across the organisation and ensuring that
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all employees actively participate in CI projects. I would recommend some good

coaching and mentoring of projects with the help of team leaders and quality
improvement specialists within each business function in an organisation.
Perhaps the leadership style that most relates to quality leadership is transformational
leadership which searches for ways to help motivate followers by satisfying high
order needs and more fully engaging them in the process of the work (Horner, 1997).
Moreover, transformational leaders encourage quality improvement by creating a
culture of trust, creating an inspirational vision focusing on quality, developing
a culture that supports a paradigm shift in quality, etc. Deming (1986) made a
statement that the required transformation of the Western style of management
requires that managers be leaders. Although I have provided above with the roles
or characteristics of leaders for sustaining quality in an organisation, I would argue
that we still have not done much research on the skills that are required for creating
quality leaders of tomorrow in organisations.

Commandment 2: customer advocacy

Customer advocacy must be the heart of any successful and growing businesses
of tomorrow. It should be integrated into a companys strategic goals and measured
through customer satisfaction, retention and profitability. Customer advocacy is a
customer-oriented organisational approach to engage in satisfying customer needs as a
means to empower customers in the market place. The underlying premise of customer
advocacy is that if a company serves the best interests of its customers, the customers
will reciprocate with their trust and enduring loyalty, transforming the relationship
between the company and its customers.
Advocacy strategies have been emerging in a range of industries, including
the financial, automotive, industrial and high-tech sectors. The key to an advocacy
strategy is that a company must become trustworthy in the eyes of its customers.
One of the core principles of QM is to create a customer-focused organisation.
This means organisations should fully understand the current and future customer
needs and strive continuously to not only meet customer expectations but also to
delight customers. So how do we create customer advocates in our organisations? Some
of the key elements organisations should take into account for creating customer
advocacy are as follows:
transparency of information provided to customers;
superior quality of products/services to gain customer trust;
 IJPPM collaborative work with the customers for instance, in the software industry,
64,5 user groups routinely help manufacturers by identifying bugs and thereby
creating lists of desired features would help the software industry to develop
future successful versions of the software product; and
supply chain quality due to the growing importance of supply chain today, we
need a new supply chain paradigm one that looks at designing the supply chain
726 both from the customer looking back and forward from the supplier.

Commandment 3: emphasis on teaching applied statistical methods to quality

professionals
It is a fact that not many quality engineers and managers in organisations enjoy the
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power of applied statistical methods. My research over the last 20 years has explicitly
shown that less than 10 per cent of our quality professionals understand the importance
of variability reduction in business processes. Most companies are unnecessarily relying
on mean-based performance for critical-to-quality characteristics and very little emphasis
has been paid on variance-based performance. Customers today feel the variance in
performance and not the mean performance.
My experience with a large number of companies is that many of our quality
managers and engineers received training in the quality area only after they started
a career in industry. Very few had taken quality-related courses at the university
level and view quality as a topic only confined to production or manufacturing
discipline. This is a pure misconception and this needs to be demystified when
engineers and managers receive their education on quality-related topics at
universities and colleges. I have also noticed that very few quality engineers and
managers are dealing with Lean and Six Sigma topics. They view that process
efficiency and effectiveness problems in organisations must be tackled by Lean
practitioners or Six Sigma Black Belts or Green Belts. I would argue that the future
quality professionals should be viewed as process improvement specialists or
change agents. They should be familiar with both Lean and Six Sigma topics and it
is high time for our future quality professionals to embrace such methods through
continuing professional development courses. Alternative to this is that the future
Six Sigma Black Belts or Lean managers/champions could drive QM discipline in
organisations. It would be a great achievement if we can get our future quality
professionals to be trained based on the statistical engineering (SE) principles which
have been around in literature for more than 60 years. SE encompasses the
appropriate selection and use of statistical tools, integrated with other relevant tools
from other disciplines (operations management, operations research, finance,
marketing, etc.) into a comprehensive and disciplined approach to tackling complex
problems. However in order to make this a reality, I would argue that academic
institutions have a crucial role to play especially in providing the right education on
such statistical tools and techniques with practical exercises, case studies and
interactive fun games.

Commandment 4: creating a culture of CI or incremental innovation (II)

It is argued that it is not possible for an organisation to be a high-performing quality
organisation without the key component of CI or II. As organisations develop their
CI programmes, changes occur in the way the organisation operates. For example,
working closer with suppliers and customers, viewing mistakes as opportunities for
 improvement and a formalised problem-solving process. So what is CI? The concept The ten
of CI comes from the Japanese term Kaizen that was initially developed and propagated commandments
by Masaaki Imai who is recognised as the father of CI. Kaizen is a compound word in
Japanese that includes two concepts: Kai (change) and Zen (to improve). Boer and
of quality
Gertsen (2003) has provided us with a very meaningful definition of CI and defined CI
as the planned, organised and systematic process of ongoing, incremental and company-
wide change of existing practices aimed at improving company performance. It is 727
important to note that all employees must participate in a CI initiative and senior
management must be totally engaged with the initiative right from the outset.
CI does not happen overnight it is a never-ending journey that requires long-term
vision and uncompromising commitment from the senior management team across
the organisation early in the process. Senior management team should convey the
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message that CI is not just a cost-cutting exercise rather it is about changing the
culture of the organisation. In order to weave CI into the DNA, organisations should
focus on some key principles of CI such as: leadership, employee engagement, process
improvement metrics for CI, a data-driven approach to improvement and robust
governance. In my personal experience, successful organisations start out with CI
pilot projects in one or two process areas (preferably process areas which are critical
to customers), learn from this experience, and then adapt accordingly to manage
success and relevance before rolling out to remaining areas. It is very interesting to
note that about 60 per cent of CI initiatives fail in organisations today. This would
lead to enormous waste of energy from various people in your organisation, waste of
time and costs associated with it and most of all employee morale. How do we make
sure that a corporate culture is ready for CI initiative? First of all, leaders in an
organisation should understand that CI is a philosophy and not a set of tools
and techniques for problem solving. Many senior managers are often demanding a
quick-fix solution to their problems which can deliver short-term results. Moreover,
to successfully build a culture for CI and other change initiatives, people in the
organisation need to be engaged and a part of the change process. Leaders should
work with the CI team to set clear goals but they should give their team the freedom
to make their own decisions to achieve the objectives. It is important that each team
member feels valued and respected, even when their point of view or approach is not
adopted. In addition to the above, it is strongly recommended for leaders to link the
work of the team to business goals, by being decisive and clear in prioritising which
CI projects will deliver the greatest value.
Organisations can measure the maturity of CI based on a number of the so called
critical success factors (CSFs). Some of the CSFs include:
teamwork formation for the CI (includes employee involvement);
communication (communicate the motivations and expectations);
leadership (involvement of leaders through active participation in the CI initiative);
training and learning (focus must be on the execution of projects, management of
projects and how to sustain the performance); and
organisation-wide reward and recognition systems.

Commandment 5: employee empowerment, ownership and engagement

Due to the enormous challenge of new competition arising from globalisation,
deregulation and technological advances, organisations of the twenty-first century are
 IJPPM forced to be more responsive than ever to their customers. To accomplish this
64,5 challenging goal, organisations should develop more effective decision-making
strategies via employee empowerment. Empowerment refers to making people feel
valued by involving them in decisions, asking them to participate in the CI and quality
improvement activities across the organisation, praising them, and continually providing
adequate training and support. It is about giving your employees the opportunity to
728 contribute to the companys business goals and objectives.
Under the empowerment approach, the employee is held responsible for
accomplishing a whole (not a specific) task, from the beginning to the end, which is
part of a broader process aiming at continuous quality improvement; that is, the
employees traditional role is enhanced as he or she becomes a process-owner. As process-
owner, the employee is now both individually and collectively responsible and
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accountable, along with fellow team members participating in the same process, for
accomplishing desired outcomes. The following pointers could be very useful to employee
empowerment in any quality improvement initiatives:
Involve your employees in the decision-making processes it is very important
that decision making should be left to the employees and managers closer to the
customer experience and not to the CEO and senior management team. You can
keep morale high and empower your employees by involving them in business
decisions that directly relate to them.
Allow for mistakes support employees even after they have made mistakes.
The importance of learning from mistakes must be emphasised.
Create a non-threatening environment employees must be given the freedom to
pursue their interests and supported by senior management.
Offer praise freely in order to empower your employees and develop a sense of
competence and confidence, praise them for their performance, encourage them
to take risks and acknowledge their accomplishments, no matter how small.
Never ignore employee suggestions for quality improvement the senior
management team should create a culture within the organisation for employees
to come up with ideas for improving process and service quality. If an idea is not
appropriate, discuss the rationale with the employee.
Employee ownership, on the other hand, is more about psychological ownership
and feeling part of the organisation. The employee sees a link between what they do
on a daily basis and helping the company to achieve its goals. According to a US
Department of Labor (DOL) study, the high-performance workplace provides workers
with incentives, information, skills, and responsibility to make decisions essential for
innovation, quality improvement, and rapid response to change. Moreover it was
reported that only 4 per cent of US businesses qualify as high-performance workplaces.
The following are some of the benefits of employee ownership:
Employee ownership creates more sustainable companies, as decision-making is
focused on promoting longer term success over short-term risk-taking to the
benefit of external shareholders.
Employee ownership creates higher levels of employee engagement and a culture
of genuine participation in the running of the organisation, which in turn creates
extremely high employee satisfaction and reduce absenteeism.
 Companies which promote Employee Ownership Culture (EOC) are performing The ten
far better than those which do not. In fact, a report from Cass Business School commandments
of the City University, London, has showed that productivity levels are 10-19
per cent higher in those companies which have created EOC compared to those
of quality
which do not have such culture.
Employees within EOC companies are more innovative and committed to the
company and hence are better in sustaining continuous and quality-related 729
initiatives.
Employee engagement is the extent to which employees feel passionate about their
jobs, are committed to the organisation, and put discretionary effort into their work.
Truly engaged employees are attracted to and inspired by their work, committed and
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fascinated. Engaged employees care about the future of the company and are willing
to invest their effort to see that the organisation succeeds. It is important to note that
employee engagement is not same as employee satisfaction. Employee satisfaction does
not address employees level of motivation, involvement or emotional commitment.
So what are the components of employee engagement? Research has indicated that
employee engagement is driven by two factors which are:
(1) Engagement with the manager this is a measure of how employees feel about
their line managers at the workplace. One may have to look into how employees
have treated by line managers; are their contributions being acknowledged,
valued and appreciated by the line managers or supervisors? Do they receive
constructive feedback and direction from their line managers, etc.?
(2) Engagement with the organisation this is a measure of how employees feel
about their organisations and senior management. This has to do with
confidence in organisational leadership as well as trust, fairness, values and
respect.
For organisations to deliver quality, it is essential to create a culture of ownership,
empowerment and making sure that employees are engaged across the various
business functions for quality and process-related activities. Research has shown that
an engaged workforce would result in increased organisational performance. It is up
to business leaders in an organisation to create a culture that enables employees to
unleash their potential.

Commandment 6: training and education for quality

The Oxford English Dictionary defines education as the process of educating or being
educated, the theory and practice of teaching whereas training is defined as teaching
a particular skill or type of behaviour through regular practice and instruction.
Education is a learning process that deals with unknown outcomes and circumstances
which require a complex synthesis of knowledge, skills and experience to solve
problems. Education refers its questions and actions to principles and values rather
than merely standards and criteria. The concept of training, on the other hand, has
application when: there is some identifiable performance and/or skill that has to be
mastered; and practice is required for the mastery of it. I would say the objectives of
education are more on non-performance or knowledge based whereas the objectives of
training are more application or performance based. It is important that we need both
education and training for the implementation of any quality or CI initiative. As an
engineer, I would say you can be trained on the use of tools and techniques of quality
 IJPPM improvement to a particular process. However, a greater understanding of the process
64,5 requires education from various perspectives.
Training is a CSF in the success of any quality or CI initiative in organisations
today. Quality training programmes are a must for organisations if they are to reach
their goal of CI. Commitment of top management is a pre-requisite to quality training.
Interesting enough, lack of training on quality-related topics is a major reason for
730 failure of major quality improvement initiatives in organisations today. Training can
be a powerful building-block for a foundation of understanding and skills that will help
the organisation to reach its business goals.
A recent study carried out by Burcher et al. (2008) have shown that quality
managers utilise a very limited range of quality tools and moreover they have shown
little awareness across quality managers in terms of their development needs for a
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broader background in quality. It was also found that quality managers are more
concerned with the maintenance of ISO 9001 quality management system (QMS)
standard rather than taking a more proactive approach to quality embracing the key
principles of process excellence methodologies such as Lean and Six Sigma.
The ability of organisations to succeed in a globalised market will depend to a
significant extent on the capabilities of the quality managers in terms of knowledge,
skills, problem solving and teamwork (Goetsch and Davis, 2006). Do we have enough
higher education institutions in the UK offering courses with a focus on quality?
I believe we have a very limited number of universities in the UK offering QM courses.
Many universities teach QM as a subject or topic within the subset of operations/
production management. The biggest question now springs to my mind is, Is a 24 to
36 hour course on Quality Management sufficient to provide the required skills and
knowledge for our future Quality Managers?. If we scrutinise the existing curriculum
of QM courses, it is surprising to see that many of these courses focus on the traditional
quality control and assurance methods and very little emphasis is given to process
excellence methodologies such as Lean and Six Sigma. Moreover, such courses focus
too much on the technical aspects and very little attention being given to change
management and cultural transformation of organisations.
I was surprised to see that the most important role of quality managers in the UK
industry has appeared to be improving procedures and work instructions
(Burcher et al., 2008). The counter question to ask here is, Do we need our Quality
Managers in the future to spend their time on the improvement of procedures and work
instructions?. I would argue that what we need is our quality managers to identify and
prioritise processes across the business, carry out quality improvement or CI projects
and reduce waste and variation in core and supporting business processes. It seems our
quality managers are unnecessarily spending their energy and time on the
maintenance of QMS standards and the accreditation process. It was also observed
from a recent study that quality managers of UK industries have little awareness on the
range of quality tools and techniques for problem solving. In one of my recent training
sessions, I have asked one of the attendees (who works as a service quality manager
for a UK-based service organisation) if he is familiar with SERVQUAL for measuring
service quality. The response from the attendee was rather astonishing as he never
heard of the tool SERVQUAL and his organisation currently uses customer satisfaction
surveys to measure service quality. This is a common problem I have been personally
witnessing in many of my training sessions over the last ten or more years. I would
blame the current curriculum of many courses we offer today at the UK higher
education institutions.
 In a world of increasing global competition, it is imperative that senior management The ten
team in organisations should invest more to enable quality professionals of the future commandments
to update their professional knowledge and capabilities regularly. Moreover, I also view
that quality managers in organisations are very little involved in the strategic issues
of quality
of QM. Perhaps it is high time to pursue a research project to evaluate the future skills,
roles and responsibilities of quality managers in organisations of the twenty-first
century. Based on the results of this study, professional quality bodies can design the 731
curriculum which caters the needs of tomorrow.

Commandment 7: extending quality into the supply chain

QM should be extended to the supply chain context because most products are
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designed, produced and delivered through complex supply chain networks, with partner
organisations located in different geographical regions (Flynn and Flynn, 2005). Supply
chain quality management is a systems-based approach to performance improvement
that integrates supply chain partners and leverages opportunities created by upstream
and downstream linkages with a focus on creating value and achieving satisfaction of
intermediate and final customers (Foster, 2008; Robinson and Malhotra, 2005).
Supply chains compete based upon cost, quality, time and responsiveness. Moreover,
QM improvements in reducing process variation and waste directly impact on several
supply chain performance measures such as consistency in the supply chain, on-time
delivery times and so on. Reduction of process variation will lead to more quality units
and fewer defective units moving through the supply chain. With fewer defective
units moving through the supply chain, delivery dependability improves. Similarly, cycle
time improvements result in less inventory in the way of supply chain movement as
there is less need for safety and cycle stock inventory, and fewer defective items or units
need to be scrapped or replaced. In a nut shell, organisations of the twenty-first century
should foster a QM culture in which employees and managers take the responsibility to
work together with each other and with their suppliers and customers.
Developed by the not-for-profit Supply-Chain Council, Supply Chain Operations
Reference (SCOR) is a model that links process elements, metrics, best practices and
features associated with supply chain execution. It helps to identify and quantify
critical opportunities for improvements not only within the supply chains of a single
company but also between multiple trading partners. SCOR model can be used to
identify projects in the supply chain based on various metrics which are directly linked
to quality and reliability (e.g. cycle time, lead time, delivery time, defect rate, first time
yield, etc.).

Commandment 8: quality and environment

Many organisations today face increased scrutiny of both their quality improvement
efforts and their environmental activities. As the market place moves towards
heightened environmental awareness at a global level, a number of organisations have
embraced environmental management systems (EMS) as part of their corporate
strategy. This is to make sure that companies comply with the requirements of ISO
14001 EMS standard.
Implementing QMSs and EMS within an organisation is likely to be quite a strategy
towards sustainable business. ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 fulfil the requirement of
QMS and EMS, respectively. An EMS based on the requirements of ISO 14001 is a
management tool that enables an organisation of any type or size in identifying and
 IJPPM controlling the environmental impacts of its activities, continually improving its
64,5 environmental performance, implementing a systematic approach in setting environmental
objectives and demonstrating that such objectives have been successfully achieved
(ISO, 2010).
The latest version of both standards, ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 14001:2004 have been
developed with the specific intent to be compatible with each other. The degree of
732 integration of quality and EMS into a single integrated management system must be
based on the specific needs and values of business and should be carried out as long as
it is functional to the organisation (Renzi and Cappelli, 2000). Even if some of the
requirements of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 standards are somewhat different and specific
to each management standards, they are not mutually exclusive and can fit into the
integrated management system to achieve both quality and environmental
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performance (Hartstern, 1997). So the question to be asked now is, What are the
benefits of an integrated management system which takes into account of both quality
and environmental management aspects?. Some of the fundamental benefits of
integrated management system in my opinion include:
duplication of management tasks (written procedures, checking, etc.) can be
significantly reduced;
higher efficiency (less mistakes or errors made by people who are operating the
system); and
less paperwork and resources required.

Commandment 9: learning organisation (LO)

Senges (1990) notion of the LO and the concept of the knowledge-based organisation
has received significant attention in the LO literature during the past two decades
(Drucker, 1997; Easterby-Smith and Araujo, 1999). A LO is defined as an organisation
skilled at creating, acquiring and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its
behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights (Garvin, 1993). LOs are skilled at five
main activities: systematic problem solving, experimentation with new approaches,
learning from their own experience and past history, learning from the best practices of
others and transferring knowledge quickly and efficiently throughout the organisation.
So how do we build a LO? Garvin (1993) suggests the following steps to build a LO:
(1) foster an environment within your organisation which is conducive to learning;
(2) commitment from top management to make sure that sufficient time is
dedicated for learning;
(3) training in brainstorming, problem solving, evaluating experiments and other
core learning skills must be in place;
(4) establish boundaryless collaboration across the various business units to make
sure that people can exchange ideas freely; and
(5) execute benchmarking exercises with other leading organisations so that best
practices can be identified and we learn our strengths and weaknesses.
Organisational research over the last two decades has shown that three broad factors
are essential for LO and adaptability. These factors include: a supportive learning
environment, concrete learning processes and practices and finally, leadership
behaviour that reinforces learning (Garvin et al., 2008). Garvin et al. (2008) have
 developed a survey instrument based on the above three building blocks of LO. The The ten
purpose of this survey tool is to understand the strengths and weaknesses across the commandments
three building blocks so that you can initiate an improvement effort in a particular area.
You can also carry out a simple benchmarking exercise on the three building blocks
of quality
across various business units within an organisation. This would help various business
units to understand their strengths and weaknesses so that you can devise strategies
for enhancing the areas of weaknesses. 733
So how many organisations around us are integrating the core principles of QM and
LO? In my opinion, if an organisation needs to go through business transformation,
it will have to embrace the key principles of quality and CI as well as LO. If quality is
everyones responsibility and if everyone involved in a CI journey, I would argue that
CI has then elements of OL at both individual and team levels. However, it has been
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observed that very few organisations today are integrating QM and LO for creating
and enhancing competitive capabilities for tomorrow. Perhaps the building blocks
of LO must be considered more seriously by all organisations for sustaining a CI
initiative.

Commandment 10: sustainability issues of quality

Over the last few decades, a number of scholars have studied how corporations can
achieve a competitive advantage through quality performance. In other words, quality
has been one of the primary weapons used by such corporations to win business in the
global market place. A number of studies have showed that some of the world class
organisations including Sony, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, etc. experienced difficulties in
sustaining a competitive advantage in quality. Sustaining a competitive advantage
in quality requires sustaining a high level of quality relative to competition. Sustaining
a high level of quality entails meeting and exceeding customers expectations over time.
As customers expectations change over time, it is important for organisations to adapt
their critical processes too.
Research has shown that a number of factors are critical for sustaining quality over
a period of time. These include: commitment and leadership on quality from the senior
management team, planning and organisation for quality, continuous education and
training on quality across the organisation at all levels, measurement and feedback,
use of tools and techniques of quality and culture change. Some of the barriers for
sustaining quality include: fear and resistance to change, inadequate leadership, lack
of resources for sustaining quality and so on. A recent study has shown that companies
who practice effective change management are 71 per cent more likely to achieve and
sustain their objectives than those that minimise the people side of change. Top that off
with the fact that those same companies are 55 per cent more likely to be on or ahead
of schedule in their efforts to accomplish their business goals (Barnhart, 2011).
In my view, organisations which advocate a dynamic capability approach will likely
to stay ahead in the race of quality in the forthcoming years. Dynamic capability is the
firms ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competences to
address rapidly changing environments. In a nut shell, I would highlight the fact that
organisations which build a dynamic capability would sustain quality over a period
of time. Having pursued a number of research projects and delivered a number of
consultancy assignments with over 50 companies, I have witnessed that a numbered
handful of companies are sustaining quality over time and many companies do not
have sustainability frameworks when it refers to quality and CI. Perhaps this would
lead to some good research projects in the forthcoming years.
 IJPPM Conclusion
64,5 Although quality is a strategic component or driver of many businesses today, very
little attention has been paid on the leadership, culture, education and change
management aspects associated with quality improvement. This paper presents ten
commandments of quality from the perspective of an academic and a practitioner who
has been involved in teaching, research and training/consultancy on QM for over two
734 decades. The ten commandments of quality in my perspective include: leadership for
quality, customer advocacy, emphasis on teaching applied statistical methods to quality
professionals, creating a culture of CI or II, employee empowerment, ownership and
engagement, training and education for quality, extending quality into supply chain,
quality and environment, LO and sustaining issues of quality. These commandments can
be used as a guide for achieving and sustaining quality in various organisations despite
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of their nature and size.

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Silva, A. (2005), The Ten Commandments of Quality Management, iUniverse, Lincoln, NE.

About the author

Professor Jiju Antony is recognised worldwide as a Leader in Six Sigma methodology for
achieving and sustaining process excellence. He is a Professor of Quality Management in the
School of Management and Languages at the Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland.
He founded the Centre for Research in Six Sigma and Process Excellence (CRISSPE) in 2004,
establishing first research centre in Europe in the field of Six Sigma. He is a Fellow of the Royal
Statistical Society (UK), Fellow of the Institute for Operations Management (UK), Fellow of the
Chartered Quality Institute (CQI) and a Fellow of the Institute of the Six Sigma Professionals.
He is a Certified Master Black Belt and has coached and mentored over 100 Lean Six Sigma
projects. He has trained over 1,000 people as Lean Six Sigma Yellow, Green and Black Belts from
20 countries and 160 organisations in the last 11 years. He has published over 275 journal and
conference papers and six books on quality management and engineering related topics. He is the
Programme Director for the new MSc Lean Six Sigma for Operational Course at the Heriot-Watt
University. He is currently serving as the Editor of the first International Journal of Lean Six
Sigma and is the founder of the First International Conference on Six Sigma in the UK back in
2004. He has worked on a number of consultancy projects with companies including Rolls-Royce,
Bosch, Parker Pen, Siemens, Scottish Power, Tata, Thales, Nokia, Philips and a number of small-
and medium-sized enterprises. Professor Jiju Antony can be contactd at: J.Antony@hw.ac.uk

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