Surveying Quality management: a new measure-oriented approach

In this paper, the two main approaches employed up to now in quality-related surveys, namely the technique-oriented and the activity-oriented ones, are discussed, showing their relative advantages and weaknesses. Then, a new method of surveying quality management, based on the analysis of quality-related information flows, is presented and discussed. In order to illustrate the comparative advantages of this new measure-oriented approach, some results from a field survey on Italian white goods manufacturers are discussed. Results provide evidence on the power of the new approach here presented to disclose new aspects of quality management that could have been overlooked by other approaches. Moreover, it is shown that the new approach is considerably more efficient than others in terms of time consumption for the data collection phase with respect to the depth of information collected.