Quality Integration (QI) implies professional quality practices that are integrated
seamlessly with normal business processes in any kinds of organizations.
Quality integration includes Quality Management (QM) and Quality Assurance
(QA) that become practical and effective business solutions through
sound guiding ideas and principles, effective methods and tools, and
creative infrastructure.
Quality
management means management of an organization with regard to quality. It equals the quality of management. Quality management is a managerial issue. Here the quality is the degree to which the organization fulfills its stakeholders' needs and expectations. Quality
assurance implies all those business activities that aim at creating and
strengthening confidence among an organization's customers and other stakeholders.
Quality assurance is a communication issue. Quality management is the necessary basis for a convincing quality assurance.
Quality
integration covers all the subject areas considered within the recognized
ISO 9000 standards and performance excellence
models (quality awards criteria). Also the topics of many other specialized
management areas, e.g. environmental management, safety management, risk management,
and information security management, are typical sub-domains of the quality integration.
One
can also find significant ideas for quality integration from teachings of recognized
gurus of quality profession and through benchmarking from the practices of world
class organizations although they are not necessarily explicitly expressed as quality integration aspects. Even large national and international quality movements emphasize
the approach of business-integrated quality.
Quality Integration was invented as a concept and introduced to practical business solutions at Sonera Corporation in the 1990's.