INTEGRATED QUALITY MANAGEMENT

Quality integration (QI) implies professional quality practices integrated seamlessly within business leadership and management. Quality integration includes Quality Management (QM) and Quality Assurance (QA) that become practical and effective / efficient organizational procedures through sound professional principles, tools (methodologies), and infrastructure solutions. All this covers the subject areas considered within the internationally recognized ISO 9000 standards and performance excellence models (quality awards criteria).

Quality integration is understood in a broad sense as quality of management and it covers many specialized management areas for which there is needs for multi-expertise knowledges. These areas that from the management point of view are very similar include, for example:
- Financial management
- Business risks management
- Human resource management
- Information and knowledge management and communications management
- Information security management
- Occupational health and safety management
- Environmental management

Quality integration supports enhancing business performance towards excellence through:
- Increasing key competencies within business leaders, operators, and experts
- Diminishing uncertainties in business activities
- Releasing resources of business leaders from acute problem clearing to proactive business measures
- Avoiding amateurism and trial-and-error approach in business actions
- Gaining respect of professionalism within partners and stakeholders

These topics may also be beneficial in developing relationships with customers and other stakeholders (interested parties).

In quality integration the quality expertise is carried out by organization's internally networked competent resources. There are many years' international experiences available from general world-wide movements of quality, and from organizations of different business branches including enterprises, public civil service organizations and the third sector organizations. Organization's in-house resources should be also networked with world-widely recognized experts and professional organizations. Provision of the in-house quality integration services based on specified quality integration process cover activities like training, education, consulting, facilitating, projecting, "sparring", and mentoring.

The integrated QM model is based on organizational learning (see figure).

[This material has been presented in details and in different forms in differerent seminars or conferences based on many years' experiences e.g. from the company case of Sonera Corporation]

Juhani Anttila