Whether you sell a product or a service, these 4 steps will help you ensure that you are constantly improving the way you do business - to help satisfy your customers.

Every business owner likes to think that he or she has a commitment to quality. If that was true, no product would ever disappoint, and no service would result in a complaint. So how can you improve quality at your company? Here are four steps you can take to put you on the right path.

1. Make a commitment

W. Edwards Deming, the father of the quality movement, famously laid out 14 points for quality management.

Deming argued that a company's commitment to quality had to come from the top, and it had to be reinforced over and over again. Unless a business views quality as its single, non-negotiable goal, workers will inevitably feel the need to let quality slip.

So are you ready to commit? If you are, you should tell your staff - and then think about how you will handle the first conflict between your stated objective and a pressing deadline or an attractive short cut.

2. Track mistakes

If you are going to commit to quality, first you must define exactly what quality is. For manufacturers, this process involves statistical quality control, the process of setting a product's specifications and then sampling a small number of units from the production line to see how closely they measure up to those specs (i.e. are the products ‘fit for purpose’). Standards are set and, if too much deviation occurs (or if quality appears to be trending in the wrong direction), the manufacturing process is altered.

Tracking quality is admittedly more difficult in a service business, and efforts by groups such as ISO to create meaningful benchmarks beyond manufacturing have had mixed results.

One way to record mistakes is having an effective corrective action and preventative action (CA/PA) management system. CA/PA focuses on the systematic investigation of discrepancies (failures and/or deviations) in an attempt to prevent their recurrence (for corrective action) or to prevent occurrence (for preventive action). To ensure that corrective and preventive actions are effective, the systematic investigation of the failure incidence is pivotal in identifying the corrective and preventive actions to be undertaken. CA/PA is part of the overall quality management system (QMS).

3. Invest in training

In some organisations it is no surprise that quality is not his or her chief concern. Quality experts recommend that businesses train workers at all levels to look for ways to improve quality.

Training takes on several dimensions. For starters, you should set up a new-employee initiation programme that trains workers to focus on quality issues from their first day on the job.

Different organisations have different perspectives on how best to do this. Whether you hand training duties to your employees, take them on personally, or some combination of the two approaches, it's important that you provide workers with a history of the company through the lens of quality.

For example, let them know what problems you have had in the past, how you corrected these problems, and where your company stands with respect to its quality goals today. You should also go over your definition of quality in detail, and show them how you measure quality. Finally, train workers to see the connection between their actions and, more broadly, their work ethic, and the company's overall performance. By tying individual behavior to an overall system of work, and then showing where that system can, on occasion, break down, you will be giving workers the information they need to be good stewards of your business.

4. Have the right attitude

The right attitude is not necessarily easy to adopt and runs afoul of some of the basic management practices we take for granted. Rather than pointing out inadequacy wherever it might be found, Deming believed that the job of managers was to frame the pursuit of quality as an interesting, noble, and worthwhile goal. If you are to truly improve quality within your business, whether you manufacture products, distribute goods, or perform a service for your clients, your first step (and also the hardest) is to resist the temptation to dwell on your company's flaws and instead rally your team around the cause of rooting them out.

To help people learn how to improve quality processes and activities for their business, we are holding a 45 minute webinar. This webinar features the challenges associated with compliance processes and procedures and provides detail into how Q-Pulse, our flagship Quality Management System, can offer a solution. Our webinar will:

• Teach you the secrets of quality management

• Educate you on how to demonstrate compliance

• Enable you to effectively manage Audits, Document Control and Incident Management 

Sign up for the free webinar on 9th February 2012 today!

P.S. This free webinar is invaluable for quality professionals needing to remove silos of information, reduce the burden of compliance and improve business efficiency.