Quality 5.0

We are heading towards Quality 5.0. In the post-war period, and especially since the eighties, there has been an increasing focus on satisfying the needs and expectations of our customers in order to have profitable companies and efficient organizations. The concept of customers has not always been popular in the public sector, where other concepts are preferred, such as patients, users or citizens, i.e. different types of stakeholders. Nevertheless, quality tools, such as improvement tools (QC) and management tools (QM) have been used in most industries and areas of activity. Not always successfully, but often. However, the concept of the customer is now beginning to expand to include stakeholders for business operations as well. It is no longer only the paying customers that need to be satisfied, but also other stakeholders in society. We are moving from customer focus to societal focus - from Customer Satisfaction towards Societal Satisfaction - Quality 5.0.

It is no longer only the paying customers that have to be satisfied, but also other stakeholders in society.

However, this step requires us to critically examine our perceptions of who the stakeholders are and what they want. We also need to examine whether our quality tools work to satisfy stakeholder needs also at a societal level, or whether they are not appropriate there. Are any tools missing? Are there perhaps even tools that work better at a societal level than at an individualized customer level? There is much to research here.

A major step forward is the new management model, SIQ Managementmodell, which is a modern model of excellence for successful management work towards the new societal requirements based on the 2030 Agenda, where customer needs and expectations are combined with environmental, social and economic sustainability. Everything is connected. Following a simplified logic, research and practical experience show that in order to have a profitable business (or to fulfill a social mission within budget), satisfied customers/stakeholders are required. Dissatisfied customers/stakeholders always cost money in failure costs, rework, warranty costs, extra staff costs and reduced sales.

In today's society and with Generation Z in the workplace, the demand for employee satisfaction is also growing.

In today's society and with Generation Z in the workplace, the demand for satisfied employees is also growing. Satisfied employees mean more satisfied customers, and employees are themselves stakeholders in society. Companies and organizations that work proactively with sustainability have more satisfied employees and customers - at least we think so. So we are doing a lot of research on this right now. Finally, a real-life experience: without profitability in a business, there are no resources for long-term development and therefore no resources for sustainability work. So if we go in the "right direction", we see the virtuous circle: Proactive sustainability work - More employee satisfaction - More customer satisfaction - Better profitability - More sustainability work... etc.

Stakeholders and tools

However, this leads to several questions. Who are the stakeholders, and what do they want? What are their needs and expectations? Should all these really be met? A customer of a product or service is one of these stakeholders, but we must also consider the customer's customer, citizens, users, patients, relatives, neighbors, politicians and future generations; i.e. society. It is complex!

How can we in the quality profession and other actors work to identify stakeholders, find out what they want, achieve this, measure and follow up, improve and manage old and new processes? Do the tools we have work or do we need to develop new ones?

There are long-established quality tools used in business development, e.g. the sevenQuality Control tools (QC) and the sevenQuality Management tools (QM). In addition to these, there are newer and more advanced tools that are often a further development or combination of these, e.g. Quality Function Deployment (QFD), statistical process control, experimental planning, process mapping, Value Stream Mapping (VSM), etc., etc.

Within Logistics and Quality Development at Linköping University, we research this. As part of this research, we currently have two thesis projects underway where two students per project examine literature and conduct surveys on the subject to see what we need to research more about. One project looks at the stakeholders and the other at the tools. Soon we will know more about what we need to do more research on.

Strategic process management and process maturity

In an ongoing research project, "Process management for sustainable freight transport", we in Logistics and Quality Development have since 2016 applied existing tools in Quality in a new way in the freight transport sector in order to get a more proactive environmental work. Existing tools for process mapping, improvement and management have been applied but have also had to be modified and changed to suit the industry and to meet societal requirements, not just customer requirements. The work that started in 2016 has been funded by the Kamprad Foundation. We have now received an additional SEK 4 million from the Kamprad Foundation to further develop some of the tools developed in the project. We are very pleased with the interest and trust.

Prototypes of new tools have been developed in cooperation with the participating companies. One of these tools is the Environmental Account (known as Green Karma ). The need to monitor proactive environmental performance led to the development of this tool. We saw that existing measurements only measured emissions of e.g. carbon dioxide, not directly today's environmental work. In other words, the measurements did not measure what is being done now, but only what emissions there are now that are due to actions taken long before. We used QFD in a new way. Instead of customer requirements(Quality), we set Sweden's environmental goals (set by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency based on Agenda 2030) and instead of technical solutions(Function), we identified the companies' various environmental initiatives. Then we estimated the impact(Deployment) on the environmental goals from each environmental initiative and calculated the progress of the environmental work.

This has led to significantly more and more proactive environmental initiatives and faster implementation within participating companies.

This tool is an example of how we can expand quality work from a customer focus to a societal focus. Much more research and development is needed. It is important work and a lot of fun. Please let us know if you have any comments or questions.

With kind regards,

References

Cronemyr and Danielsson (2013) Process management 1-2-3 - maturity model and diagnostics tool, Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 24:7-8, pp.933-944.

Cronemyr and Huge-Brodin (2019) Green Karma - Using enhanced QFD as a proactive tool for environmental initiatives in freight transport companies. Presented at the QMOD conference, Krakow 2019.

Deleryd M. and Fundin A. (2015), The fifth generation of quality concept - from customer to societal satisfaction.Presented at the conference, The World Quality Forum of International Academy for Quality (IAQ), Budapest. 2015-10-27.

SIQ Management Model Handbook (2020), version 2020:01.