Quality management is an important part of enterprise management, and its important role is well known. However, in actual production and operation, not every enterprise can answer the question of quality management well. According to the author, there are 10 main reasons.

1. Lack of foresight
Foresight refers to insight into the future to determine what kind of enterprise an enterprise will become. It can identify potential opportunities and propose goals, which realistically reflects the benefits that can be obtained in the future. Foresight provides the direction of enterprise development, how to formulate action plans, and the organizational structure and system sequence required for enterprise implementation plans. The lack of foresight leads to the exclusion of quality from the strategy. In this way, the objectives and priorities of the enterprise are not clear, and the role of quality in the enterprise is not easy to understand. In order to achieve success through efforts, enterprises need to change their way of thinking and create an environment for continuous improvement of quality.

2. No customer-centric
Misunderstanding customers’ wishes and lacking the awareness of serving customers in advance will also lead to the failure of quality management, even though some work has been improved but no value has been added to customers. For example, the delivery company is obsessed with punctual delivery and strives to improve punctuality from 42% to 92%. However, to the surprise of managers, the company has lost its market because the company emphasizes punctuality but has no time to answer customers’ calls and explain products. Customer satisfaction is a dynamic and constantly changing goal. To succeed in quality management, we must focus on understanding customer expectations

3. Insufficient contribution of managers
The investigation shows that the failure of most quality management activities is not due to technology but management. All the quality management authorities have a consensus that the biggest obstacle to quality management is the lack of contribution from the top management in quality improvement. The contribution of managers means to communicate the company’s ideas from top to bottom through actions, so that all employees and all activities are focused on continuous improvement, which is a practical method. It is not suitable for quality management to just talk or make public speeches. Managers must participate in every aspect of work related to quality management and continue to do so. In a survey, 70% of production managers admitted that their companies now spend more time on improving customer satisfaction factors. However, they delegated these responsibilities to middle managers, so it is unclear whether these efforts were successful or not. Just imagine, can such quality management be successful?

4. training without purpose
Enterprises spend a lot of money on quality management training, but many enterprises have not been fundamentally improved. Because too much quality management training is irrelevant. For example, employees learned the control chart, but did not know where to use it. Soon they forgot what they learned. It can be said that training without goals and priorities is actually a waste, which is also a factor in the failure of quality management.

5. Lack of cost and benefit analysis
Many enterprises neither calculate the quality cost nor the benefits of improvement projects. Even enterprises that calculate the quality cost often only calculate the obvious costs (such as guarantees) and easily calculated costs (such as training fees), while completely ignoring the relevant main costs, such as sales losses and intangible costs of customer departure. Some enterprises do not calculate the potential benefits brought by quality improvement. For example, do not understand the potential sales loss caused by the customer leaving. Foreign research shows that dissatisfied customers will tell 22 people about their dissatisfaction, while satisfied customers will only tell 8 people about their satisfaction. Reducing the customer leaving rate by 5% can increase profits by 25%~95%, and increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits by 35%~85%.

6. Inappropriate organizational structure
The organizational structure, measurement and remuneration did not attract attention in quality management training and publicity. If the enterprise still has cumbersome bureaucratic levels and closed functional departments, no matter how much quality management training is useless. In some enterprises, the role of managers is unclear, and the responsibility for quality management is often delegated to middle managers, which leads to power struggles between quality teams. The quality teams lack overall quality assurance, resulting in disputes and confusion. Flat structure, decentralization and cross departmental efforts are necessary for the success of quality management. Successful enterprises maintain an open form of communication, develop communication throughout the process, and eliminate barriers between departments. The research shows that the quality improvement results achieved by the decentralized cross departmental team can reach 200% to 600% of the results achieved by the team within the department.

7. Quality management has formed its own bureaucracy
In the process of quality management activities, quality management is usually authorized to a quality privileged person. Quality becomes a parallel process, generating new bureaucratic hierarchies and structures with their own rules, standards and reporting personnel, and irrelevant quality reports become normal. This quality privileged figure gradually expanded and infiltrated, becoming a colossus with huge costs and no results. Quality bureaucrats isolate themselves from daily life, do not know the real situation, and become obstacles to quality improvement.

8. Lack of measurement and wrong measurement
Lack of measurement and wrong measurement is another reason for quality management failure. Inappropriate measurement encourages short-term behavior and loses long-term performance. The improvement of one department is at the expense of another department. For example, choosing the right price improves the performance of the purchasing department, but brings great quality problems to the production department. Without reference and comparison, an enterprise is like a hunter hunting in the dark. The result is just a wild fight. Sometimes there is a result, which is more likely to be a huge loss. The company needs performance measurement measures related to quality improvement, including process measurement and result measurement. Successful companies measure and monitor the quality improvement process based on customers.

9. Insufficient remuneration and recognition
Strategic objectives, performance measurement and compensation or recognition are the three pillars to support enterprise quality improvement. Changing ideas and patterns requires significant behavioral changes, which are largely influenced by recognition and reward systems. How an enterprise recognizes and rewards its employees is the main part of transmitting the company’s strategic intentions. In order to make quality management efforts fruitful, enterprises should recognize and reward those with good performance, so that quality improvement becomes a reality.

10. Incomplete accounting system
The current accounting system bears great responsibility for the failure of quality management. It distorts the cost of quality and does not understand its potential impact. For example, costs related to defective products, such as guarantees, are not even considered as quality costs; Abandonment and rework are regarded as general management expenses of the enterprise; The customer dissatisfaction and the loss of sales reduction were not reflected in the accounts.