November was celebrated as a Quality month for the year 2023. It is an annual celebration of our commitment to continual improvement of the Quality Management systems. The celebrations provide a platform for acknowledging the accomplishments of people and organisations making advancements and valuable quality contributions in businesses, communities, and institutions worldwide. Many organizations shared LinkedIn posts about the celebrations at various project sites. All these posts received much appreciation and many thumbs-up responses.

However, often such celebrations may not result in the expected improvement in Quality performance. Such celebrations are aimed at motivating employees to give their best in the context of product quality. However, Deming and Juran, the most revered Quality management Gurus were against slogans and motivation programmes without first identifying underlying causes for poor quality. Exhorting employees to give their best and deliver defect-free products presupposes that quality problems are caused by workmen. Deming and Juran were of the opinion, well backed by evidence, that more than 75% of quality problems were caused by the system and not by workmen’s error.

Celebration of quality day/week/month would be helpful if we resolve to identify and eliminate systemic shortcomings.

Till then, enjoy the celebrations!