The quality backward chain - The adaptive controller of entrepreneurial quality

Abstract

To meet the challenge of producing innovative and technologically demanding products economically, companies need the ability of quick and flexible reaction to internal and external disturbances. Increased performance of a company can be achieved by focusing on improvements to effectiveness and efficiency; principal tasks of modern quality management. Quality management itself must not only face new entrepreneurial challenges; its main task remains consistently providing information for continuous improvements. Based on a new definition of quality, a framework is introduced that faces the entrepreneurial conditions from quality management's point of view and provides an organizational element, which assists in meeting the demand for informational transparency. This element, the quality backward chain, which is responsible for providing the needed information, is then introduced. By means of a modular conception on the operative and the adaptive levels, the backward chain acts as a quick and flexible organizational controller for entrepreneurial quality. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010.