Although in the information society a quality system is almost as much a formality as a profit and loss account, the significance of quality as a competitive factor has not disappeared. Great efforts have to be made if excellence is the goal. Professor Paul Lillrank lists the challenges for the modern-day company: the desire to understand the customer's needs, the ability to communicate and produce the right information and the skill to control management information at all stages of a project.

With the change in the structure of business life there is less repetitive work in modern-day society. The focus of industrial operations in countries such as Finland has moved towards activity in which the added value is high and the significance of brands is emphasized. "This can be achieved with technology-based product management and quick, adaptable design," states Professor Paul Lillrank of Helsinki University of Technology.

An increasing amount of well-being is based on individual or low-volume products and customized solutions. Many office and service jobs are changing from being repetitive standard operations into varying situation-based routines that we attempt to control by means of process descriptions.

"Although some repetitive back-up processes can be standardized, the actual value of the work is created through non-routine and creative work. In project business activities every job is a single entity."

A degree of mutual understanding

The demand for higher added value can be seen in the growth of the information intensiveness and specialization of jobs. Today the faultlessness of a product or activity is insufficient to act as a criterion for quality; mutual understanding based on information and communication is necessary.

Lillrank talks about interactive quality. Because the customer does not necessarily recognize his targets, the end result cannot be predicted nor can it be based on ready-made concepts in advance. The need becomes clear in the interaction, and the end result can be something other than what the customer had originally thought.

"The quality criterion is the degree of mutual understanding that is created in a discussion. If and when the customer's need can't be communicated with sufficient precision, problems arise, and then the end result isn't what the customer expected."

From an art to a science

When the present state of quality in Finland was examined, it became clear that it is bad or inadequate information in particular that is the biggest obstacle to good quality. The actual producing is not the main problem but what should be done at any given moment or what others are doing.

"Although information technology has greatly increased the volume of information that controls operations, it's questionable whether its quality has improved at all. There are so many players in the networked society and project business activities that the likelihood of mistakes will increase if the management information just stumbles along. Therefore, the biggest challenge in the near future will be the development of new methods and tools as well as perspectives for managing the quality of information."

A respectable theory about quality in non-repetitive processes does not exist, and there is no single, ready-made method for solving problems. Continuous development must be used to trim project business operations so that ultimately mistakes are not generated at any stage of a process. In addition to making the process modelling secure, care must be taken over the modelling of the information that controls the processes.

"However, it will take time before the endeavour for excellent results is more of a science than an art," Lillrank says.

>> Specialist company needs direction (9.10.2003)

Professor Paul Lillrank of Helsinki University of Technology ponders the new challenges for quality in the information society of today, challenges that are associated with the quality of information that controls activities.