Col.Dr. Jmal Al-Hommadi CQI&PS Director S.R. “QUALITY IS EVERYONE’S RESPONSIBILITY” CQI&PS DEPARTMENT

Objectives: To answer this question Who is responsible for quality?

Introduction: This is a big question that every one asking the others. The answer is that even if you have specific people who have responsibilities for quality, “Quality Department” the quality is everyone’s responsibility.

“QUALITY IS EVERYONE’S RESPONSIBILITY” William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993) was an American statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and consultant. He is best known for his work in Japan. Deming made a significant contribution to Japan's high-quality products and its economic power. He wrote many books on quality management one of them “Quality is Everyone’s Responsibility”.

re·spon·si·bil·i·ties. 1.The state or fact of being responsible, answerable, or accountable for something within one's power, control, or management. 2.Responsibility is taking care of your duties.

Responsibility According to Admiral Rickover, “Responsibility is a unique concept; It can only reside and inhere within a single individual. You may delegate it but it is still with you. You may share it with others but your portion is not diminished. You many disclaim it but you cannot divest yourself of it. Even if you do not recognize it or admit its presence, you cannot escape it. If the responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else.”

Quality is a function that is operative across multiple teams and levels. Every function and every individual has multiple outputs, and every output is an input somewhere else. Each output is different, but each one eventually influences the end product. “QUALITY IS EVERYONE’S RESPONSIBILITY”

What this means is that a lot of people can influence quality, both proactively and reactively. A Quality team is rarely in a position to control all these influences.

“QUALITY IS EVERYONE’S RESPONSIBILITY” Understanding which of these “INPUTS" are critical and ensuring appropriate controls are in place to monitor and drive their improvement is the core responsibility of quality department throughout the chain, to ensure good products.

“QUALITY IS EVERYONE’S RESPONSIBILITY” It no longer is just one group that you can point to, at least in all cases. Rather, it’s the collaboration and communication mechanisms & team work that enhance responsibility. There are things that certain people can have a direct impact on. There are other things that certain people can only have an indirect impact on. everyone's responsibility doesn't mean no body business.

In stead of saying: “There are specific people who handle quality.” we can say:- “There are various people who handle (certain aspects of) quality and those people are gatekeepers (for their area of quality).”

They are not the only members of the team But:

“QUALITY IS EVERYONE’S RESPONSIBILITY” When you get to that point, a nice thing happens. You stop asking who is responsible for quality and you keep talking about what quality means and what are the most effective ways, across the board, to make sure the agreed upon level of quality can be consistently met.

After all,,,, Quality is everyone's responsibility

Conclusion Muhammad (PBUH) decided this concept before the father of quality Dr. Deming, when he said “all of you are responsible, and all of you will be asked about his responsibilities”.

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