Is Quality Just a Word We Use?: The Evolution from Managing Quality to Championing Organizational Excellence

Quality management systems are essential for businesses to meet customer needs, ranging from product control to enterprise-wide process management. Effective management can elevate organizations to brand domination, while poor management can ruin an enterprise. This book equips quality experts with skills to champion business excellence and risk avoidance. Is Quality Just a Word We Use? The Evolution from Managing Quality to Championing Organizational Excellence explores the history and flaws of quality management, offering a career opportunity for professionals that can lead to professions as expert witnesses in products liability and organizational negligence litigation. It introduces a novel quality auditing method, focusing on forensic-level investigations and case studies to illustrate the importance of prioritizing quality in business operations. This book presents a groundbreaking model for quality professionals to drive revolutionary changes in business management, empowering them to eliminate defects and enhance their impact on business success, attracting professionals in fields such as quality assurance, quality management, risk management, and manufacturing management as well those involved in litigation.

Table of Contents:
Section 1: Our History to Date. 1. The Way It Was. 2. The Way It Is. 3. The Way It Must Be. Section 2: Organizational Pathology. 4. Organizational Evolution. 5. The Pathological Organization. 6. From Defects to Tort. 7. Living the Five Stages of Grief. Section 3: The Limitations of Risk Management. 8. Risk Management. Section 4: The Limitations of Process Management. 9. Process Management. Section 5: The Paradigm Shift. 10. A Moment of Clarity. 11. Case Studies. 12. The Plaintiff’s Stories. 13. Flying the Mission. Section 6: Risk Avoidance. 14. The Evolution to Risk Avoidance. Section 7: Process Excellence. 15. The Evolution to Process Excellence. Section 8: The Genesis of The New Quality Professions. 16. The New Quality Professions. Appendix A. The Quality Masters’ Program. Appendix B. Terms and Definitions. Appendix C. Strategic Thinking and Situational Awareness. Appendix D. Forensic Investigation Handbook. Appendix E. Forensic Investigation Checklist for ISO 9001:2015. Appendix F. BMS 9001:2024. Appendix G. Quality as a Profit Center. Appendix H. The Risk Avoidance Handbook. Appendix I. Conducting Competence Assessments.

About the Author :
With a perspective cultivated from having worked with more than 700 companies in his 50+ year career, Tom Taormina brings a unique talent for precision problem diagnosis, strategic thinking, and effective written and verbal communication skills to his work as a quality consultant, trainer, expert witness, and liability avoidance expert. Tom was a member of the team at Mission Control in Houston during the Apollo 13 disaster and recovery. His experiences during his 14 years at NASA formed the foundation for his ability to rapidly analyze problems and diagnose solutions.

Review :
This is an in-depth and well written treatise on how quality has evolved over the past 50 years and looks at where we should be moving to in the coming future. While the target audience of this textbook is primarily the quality assurance student; professionals in Operations, Engineering and Business Management would be well served to read this book. As you read, it is highly recommended that you take a deep dive into your company’s quality management system, the lessons learned from the author and ask how these can be applied to help you grow as a Quality Professional and how you can help your business grow into a leader in your industry. -Review by Steven Garner, Retired Director of Quality and Safety at Sierra Nevada Corp.