Entrepreneurial quality management — A new definition of quality

Product quality is traditionally seen as the intersection of customer requirements on the one side and the product characteristics on the other. This classical understanding of quality is insufficient to cover all entrepreneurial conditions. It needs to be enlarged by a holistic, more market oriented view. To cover all economical requirements the articulated and implicated customer demands, the defined management strategy and the actual companies´ ability should be taken into account. To face these challenges a new quality management framework is required, which allows a holistic organization of the corporate quality management. The architecture of such a model should enable companies to visualize, harmonize and align their project and process landscape to increase production systems´ efficiency and effectiveness. Thus, the introduced life-cycle-oriented Aachen Quality Management Model provides such a framework which allows a holistic analysis, assessment and improvement of production systems to increase productivity. The explicit consideration of the customer requirements, the corporate orientation and the corporate skills represents a paradigm shift towards other quality management models like EFQM or the ISO 9000 family.