Flexible excellence

Both quality and flexibility are important requirements for survival in today’s competitive and turbulent markets. Of course, quality has always been important as a differentiating strategy, and the past twenty years or so have seen an increasing emphasis on managing quality. A flood of management literature on total quality management has educated managers about the role of quality and how it can be built into the firm’s products and processes. Additionally there has been a growing recognition that pursuit of quality products and service need not compromise cost efficiency, and moreover, that guaranteeing quality and dependability may even be prerequisites to becoming cost efficient.