Quality management Quality management, referred to by some authors as quality assurance, encompasses all activities and functions concerned with the attainment of quality (Hill 1983). These activities can be classified into: quality of design and quality of conformance. (i) Quality of design: Wild (1980) espouses the traditional inward focused view of design quality. He defined it as being "determined by the specification of the product, for example the tolerance placed on dimensions, the composition and treatment of materials, finishes,... etc. ". The main outcome of this activity is, as far as the operation is concerned, the creation of a quality specification. This describes or defines the product or service and should be a comprehensive statement of all aspects of it which must be present to meet customer requirements (Muhlemann et al. 1992). Quality of design is defined as: "an interactive processw hereby the customer, and marketing, sales, product or service designers, purchasing, supplies and operations..w. ork together to develop a service or product that meets customer expectations and can be generated or produced economically". Muhlemann et al (1992) Hill (1991) covers quality of design in more detail than most; he asserted that "although the quality of a product/service is determined by the market need, (operations) management is responsible for establishing the appropriate quality levels for its product/services". Moreover, Hill investigated the cost/value relationship and uses failure mode and effect analysis to identify the weak points "at the development stageo f a product". Oakland (1989) contended that the main purpose of quality of design is to ensure that the product or service will be able to achieve its intended purpose. He also stressed the role of operations when saying: " it is not sufficient that marketing specifies the product or service, `because that's what the customer wants'. There must also be an agreement that the producing departments can achieve that requirement. Should they be incapable of doing so, then one of two things must happen, either the company finds a different position in the market place or substantially changes the operational facilities. " (Oakland, 1980).