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These gurus first made their mark and became popular in Japan in the 1950s. And it was only after the Japanese companies began to flex their industrial muscles in the international trade arena that the American corporations began to take the quality gurus seriously.

The basic unit of understanding competition is the industry. An industry is a group of competitors producing products or services that compete with each other. Many discussions of competition and international trade employ overly broad industry definitions such as machinery, automobile ancillary, textile, computer software, or tourism.

The past few months have witnessed a considerable change in the Indian economic environment. The Indian rupee has been devalued, the licence permit raj curtailed and trade barriers relaxed.

The new industrial policy has set the pace for industrial growth in India. The licence permit raj which was a constraint on growth and competitiveness is slowly being dismantled. The Finance Minister, Mr Manmohan Singh, has gone on record that waste and inefficiency will have to be eliminated from our society.

Database marketing is response-driven, involves active participation of the consumers, requires continuous consumer dialogue and is based on “fitness for use” quality.

The Indian economy is going through a traumatic phase, largely of its own making. The country is paying the price of protection and the licence-permit raj that has stymied growth and competition.

It is always relatively easy to control quality within one’s own organization, for obvious reasons. But manufacturing has become very complex, and most large manufacturers have to depend on vendors to provide raw materials or components.

Quality improvement is also a structured approach that has to be carefully adhered to. It is the basis of a revolution - a revolution where the company completes more quality improvement projects than its nearest competitors.

Quality standards are documents that define the contractual, functional and technical requirements for all quality activities that will ensure that a product, a process, a service or a system is fit for its intended purpose.

The word ‘quality’ has been subject to much abuse because of the different perceptions of individuals. And worse, certain myths have been built around this phrase. Take the well-known myth that “higher quality costs more”.

Global competition is increasing. If India has to compete with front runners like Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and even China, it needs to rethink its strategy on quality.

A total quality approach will be a prerequisite for the survival of most Indian companies by the year 2000 AD. Many companies will have reached levels of efficiency and quality unimagined till now. Others will be scrambling to keep up.

At the macro level, our quality dykes are not in place: power, transportation, communication, education, legal and government administration. At the micro level, companies are not geared to produce goods that are free from deficiencies, while achieving production and profit goals.

In today’s competitive marketplace, a company’s ability to provide products and services that satisfy the needs of its customers is critical to its success. Quality standards are documents that define the contractual, functional, and technical requirements for all the activities that will ensure that a product, a process, a service or a system is fit for its intended purpose. But, with customer needs changing rapidly with time, can companies accept standards that are static? Certainly not. For companies to attain world class quality and increase their market share, they must challenge the standards by addressing the three interrelated, basic processes of managing for quality: quality planning, quality control and quality improvement. This interrelationship is called the Juran Trilogy.

A battery cell is usually available in four distinct sizes throughout the world. The variety of sizes should fit all equipment that require cells to operate. A company that produces cells that deviate from these standard sizes will probably find no takers (buyers) and would find itself out of business, no matter how good the quality is. But are standards a guarantee for quality? Certainly not. Standards are important and were developed to achieve amongst others, uniformity, intercommunication and interchangeability. Quality standards are documents that define the contractual, functional, and technical requirements for all quality activities that will ensure that a product, a process, a service or a system is fit for its intended purpose. The achievement of such standards should be seen as the minimum requirement to be successful. In fact, to achieve world class quality, it is necessary to go beyond the standards and look at continuous quality improvement and customer satisfaction.

Human society has depended on quality since the dawn of civilization. In primitive societies this dependence was on the quality of natural goods and services: food, air, water and temperature.

The total approach towards managing for quality includes: quality planning, quality control and quality improvement. Indeed, all the three are important.

In the emerging business scenario, the emphasis is shifting from ‘price’ to ‘quality’. This trend is visible in the more industrialized countries like Japan, America, West Germany, and the UK, among others; it is also gaining ground in other countries like Taiwan, South Korea, and Thailand.

The challenge for the next decade will focus on India taking its rightful place amongst the league of nations as an industrialized country. This will, in turn, entail addressing the question of ‘managing for quality’ in the nineties.

Attaining "fitness for use" is the company’s basic quality mission and thereby that of the company’s managers. without fitness for use there is no income, in which case all else is academic.