As the world shrinks, quality in business will have to be a priority for Irish companies, writes Colm Ward.

Quality is one of those words that has become devalued through overuse. It is something every business promises, but few deliver. But examine any successful enterprise and the chances are that quality will be at the heart of everything it does.

According to Mr Michael Dell, founder of Dell and one of the richest people in the world, quality and customer service is the next frontier in business.

Dell's business model is simple but very effective: the customer describes what they want, the company makes it and ships it directly to them. It is a formula that has been enormously successful, generating $32 billion (€31.78 billion) in sales last year. Dell employs 4,700 people at its two Irish facilities in Bray, Co Wicklow, and Limerick.

In the competitive personal computer market, quality and service are essential and this quality ethos is built into every level of the organisation, according to Mr John Naughton, director of quality engineering.

The company makes a commitment to deliver the product to the customer within a set period of time - generally four or five days but no more than 10 - and, if there are any problems, it makes a commitment to "fix it on time, the first time", he says.

Earlier this year, Dell received the ISO 9001:2000 international quality certification. This updated version of the ISO 9000 quality standard has a greater focus on continual improvement and customer satisfaction across the whole organisation.

The company's adoption of a business process improvement system, a six-stage process designed to continually improve quality, played a large role in allowing it to meet the standard.

Essentially, business process improvement involves identifying where improvements are needed, examining the current processes to see how they can be improved and, finally, making the necessary changes and putting systems in place to ensure that they are maintained.

The adoption of business process improvement techniques resulted in savings of more than $25 million over the past two years in Dell's operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

"This is the major engine that is driving the quality message, the elimination of waste, the reduction of costs and so on," says Mr Naughton.

In Dell's "high velocity" production model, designed to produce large quantities of products in a short space of time, getting it right first time is essential. Rigorous quality control procedures are in operation in its plants to ensure that errors are kept to a minimum.

If defects are found, the quality team will work backwards to find the source of the defect.

If, for example, it resulted from a mistake by a worker on the assembly line, that person's work will be checked for a period afterwards to ensure the problem does not recur.

Mr Naughton believes training and creating awareness are central to creating a culture of quality. This applies from the top down. "To get it right, everybody has to be enlightened," he says.

Increased globalisation means quality will have to become a priority for Irish industry if it is to remain competitive in the international marketplace, according to Excellence Ireland, the national quality organisation. It is a membership-based organisation that provides training and support to businesses to help them achieve international standards of quality and performance.

Achieving excellence in business requires more than just meeting set quality standards, it must be based on continuous improvement, says Mr Derek Moffatt, business excellence manager. "Our emphasis has moved to one of shifting forward your base for improvement; if you're not moving forward, you're going backwards," he says.

With the breakdown of barriers to international trade and the development of technologies such as the internet, customers have more choice than ever about where they buy their goods and services. If they are not satisfied with one company, it is easy to find another supplier elsewhere.

This has served to raise the bar for quality standards.

"The standards of acceptance of products here are conditioned by the fact that you can get those products from anywhere now," he says.

One of the best-known standards awarded by Excellence Ireland is the Q-mark, developed to award Irish businesses for continuously producing quality output. In its 20 years, the Q-mark has been awarded to numerous organisations in a variety of sectors including Government agencies, solicitors, shops, creameries, even funeral directors.

Health insurer Bupa Ireland first achieved the Q-mark in 1998. It takes a "top down and bottom up approach" to quality to ensure all staff are involved. Ms Anne-Marie O'Keeffe, Bupa Ireland quality manager, says: "We have integrated the quality system into our everyday life. Our quality system is not something that is taken out once a year before an annual audit," she says.

This is reflected in the fact that retention of the Q-mark is included in its strategy and annual operation plans. The firm also runs a programme which involves staff in decision-making by giving them an input into product design, for example. This aims to motivate staff by giving them a sense of responsibility for their work.

The Q-mark is one of several standards used to measure quality. As more and more organisations recognise the importance of quality, the number of different approaches to achieving it has also increased.

For many organisations, the biggest challenge can be to integrate various approaches into a "strategic leadership system", says Mr Patrick O'Neill, chief executive of the Irish Centre for Business Excellence.

The centre was set up by a group of Irish firms to encourage the practice of total quality management and the pursuit of business excellence. It now operates as a "knowledge network" to help companies share information on issues relating to quality. But Mr O'Neill warns that organisations wishing to achieve business excellence may put too much effort into reducing waste and making their processes leaner only to find output quality has dropped.

He describes the ideal solution as a "see-saw effect" where costs and waste are reduced while the value of the work goes up.