Many organizations need answers to some key questions about lean and quality management: Is there a difference between quality and value? Should we have two teams, one for continuous improvement and one for lean? What roles would each have? What are the differences?

The source for this confusion is a misunderstanding about the terms “quality” and “value.” Part 1 of this series will deal with this misunderstanding. In Part 2, we will explore the roles, responsibilities and the differences between the two teams at work.

Over several decades, companies have focused their quality initiatives on listening to the customer and reducing defects. Many of these initiatives have paid off and organizations worldwide have improved the quality of their products. Companies that didn’t pay attention to customer needs and quality improvement have fallen by the wayside: They simply couldn’t make it in today’s highly competitive and demanding environment. In both cases, a lot of money and resources were invested in the efforts.

Now that so many companies are dynamically improving competitiveness and bottom-line performance with lean methods for building customer value, the question becomes, "How does the quality of the product fit into a lean enterprise?"

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