Quality Management – Today & Tomorrow

With a mission to be the Earth's most customer-centric company, Amazon is driven by the excitement of building technologies, inventing products, and providing services that change lives. An impactful business leader, Karuna Pande holds more than 29 years of rich experience with leading conglomerates.

- Karuna Pande

Quality management practices have evolved over the years – from being a tool for ‘inspectors’ to check and certify products before release to the market to being a partner in designing or making the product/service. In fact, today the concept of quality management is getting it right at source. Rather than certifying the output, it is confirming the inputs – because the learning is if the input is right, output has to be. Whether it is related to a product off the shelf/showroom; software developed for a customer or a service provided; the quality of the result is governed by the strict conformance to the design standards by every input that goes into making of the product. Hence, the working is more governed by the systems and standards developed for the purpose instead of it being dependent on the person and his experience or the rigorous checking procedures running into multiple levels.

In recent decades, the idea of quality management has extended beyond the manufacturing floor into the entire value chain, from finance to warehousing and every process in between. Quality management in all business processes has become the expectation rather than the exception. Customers increasingly demand suppliers implement effective quality management systems - and companies that can’t meet this demand are losing their competitive edge.