Currently, quality is

everybody's business. Most businesses now realise that high-quality products

and services can give the organisation a considerable competitive edge.

The most significant

quality gap and the one that the production/operations management function is

primarily responsible to prevent is the customer's/client's specification or operation's

specification gap, where there is a mismatch between what the customer/client

thinks he/she is getting and what the operation thinks the customer/client

wants.

Quality is like beauty – it

is in the eye of the beholder (people perceive it differently).

The operation's view of

quality is primarily manufacturing based and focuses on error-free products.

The organisational

responsibility for closing the actual quality-communicated image gap lies with

the production/operations function because it is not providing the quality of

product/service that customers/clients expect.