Various quality-improvement concepts relate directly to planning. Total quality management (TQM)

means planning for quality, preventing defects, correcting defects, and continuously improving quality and customer satisfaction. Knowledge management, which involves systematically planned approaches to storing and disseminating information, has increasingly become an important part of many organizational efforts to improve customer and employee services and satisfaction.

Benchmarking, the process of identifying and improving on the best practices of others, precedes plan development. Organizations that want to be as good as or better than the best in the world strive to attain national or international quality standards.

Plans must be developed to establish, maintain, and increase product and service quality. Quality improvement does not just happen; it must be planned.

Organizations that want to be the best in the world will meet the quality standards established in ISO 9001 or the Baldrige Quality Awards. Quality improvement doesn’t just happen; it has to be planned. G=9687