Page 36 - The Handbook for Quality Management a Complete Guide to Operational Excellence

22 B u s i n e s s - I n t e g r a t e d Q u a l i t y S y s t e m s T h e Q u a l i t y F u n c t i o n 23

100

80
% Who will recommend 60

40

20

0
Excellent Good Fair Poor
Figure 2.3 Customer satisfaction and sales.

Market Strategy (PIMS) studies (Buzzell and Gale, 1987). Since 1972 the
PIMS Program, working with a database of 450 companies and 3000 busi-
ness units, has developed a set of principles for business strategy based on
the actual experiences of businesses. The principles drawn from this data-
base provide a foundation for situation-specific analysis that managers
perform to arrive at good decisions. The PIMS research indicates that qual-
ity is the major driver behind customer satisfaction, which in turn impacts
a wide variety of other measures of organizational success. Figure 2.3, based
on actual customer data, illustrates one important relationship: the percent-
age of customers who recommend the purchase of the firm’s products or
services to others.
Based on data such as these, and the relationships between such data
and other measures of business success, the PIMS authors concluded:
“The Customer is KING!” To best serve customers, the successful quality
program will apply specific principles, techniques, and tools to better
understand and serve their firm’s royalty—the customer.

Related Business Functions
There are many related business functions within the organization that
involve the quality mission in a significant capacity but which are not
properly considered “quality functions.”

Safety
A safety problem arises when a product, through use or foreseeable mis-
use, poses a hazard to the user or others. Clearly, the optimal approach to
address safety issues is through prevention. Product and process-design
review activities should include safety as a primary focus. Safety is quite

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