Quality system - An integral part of total quality management

A quality system is required to provide quality products or services to meet customer requirements and to generate profits to satisfy stockholders. A quality system consists of the organizational structure, responsibilities, processes and resources needed to achieve quality objectives for products, services, and customer satisfaction. The system is capable of sustaining the environment and means by which superior products and services are profitably designed, developed, and delivered to customers on time and defect free. A quality system also catalyzes an organization to become a learning organization. At the initial stage, the quality system drives systematic problem solving, experimentation with new approaches, and learning from experience and history. Furthermore, the quality system drives an organization to benchmark world-class operations as well as capture and apply the learned knowledge. This paper provides a thorough view of the quality system architecture, its required elements, and implementation approach.