What are the Duties of Quality Council?

QUALITY COUNCIL

What is it?

✔ A quality council is a team to provide overall direction for achieving the total quality culture (TQC).

✔ A quality council is a team formed in the organisation with an objective of building quality into the culture of the organisation.

✔ In other words, quality council helps to build quality into the culture and to provide overall direction.

The quality council is composed of:

the chief executive officer (CEO);
the senior managers of the functional areas, such as design, marketing, finance, production, and quality; and
a quality council coordinator or consultant.

Objectives of Quality Council

The objectives of the quality council are:

To raise the quality consciousness in the organisation through seminars, study tours, and using other forms of promotion.
To ensure effective functioning of the organisation on the quality statement and plan.
To encourage basic and applied R&D in the field of quality and dissemination of its results to the organisation.
To raise the level of training of personnel engaged in quality activities including the assessors and trainees.
To facilitate upgradation of testing and calibration facilities and laboratories as well as to encourage the overall quality of the organisation.

Duties of the Quality Council

The duties of the quality council are listed in Table 1.

Table 1. Duties of the quality council

1.To establish the core values and quality statements. Quality statements include vision statement, mission statement, and quality policy statement.

2. To establish the strategic long-term plan with goals and the annual quality improvement program with objectives.

3. To plan the training and education programmes.

4. To determine and monitor the cost of poor quality.

5. To perform and monitor the performance measures for each functional areas of the organisation.

6. To determine continually those projects that improves the processes, particularly those that affect external and internal customer satisfaction.

7. To establish multifunctional project and departmental teams and monitor their progress.

8. To establish/revise the recognition and reward system periodically.

Responsibilities of the Quality Council Coordinator

The various responsibility of the quality council coordinator are:

(i) To develop two-way trust;
(ii) To propose team requirements to the council;
(iii) To share council expectations with the team;
(iv) To empower the team; and
(v) To brief the council on team progress.

Thus quality councils are the instruments for creating the idea of never-ending quality improvement. In other words, it is the driver for the TQM engine.

Quality Structure

Fig.1 shows a typical quality structure involving different levels of cross-functional participation by managers.

Typical quality structure involving different levels of cross functional participation by managers