Practices and technology transfer in Quality and Information Technology

Successful application of quality concepts, methods and techniques is a key driver for enterprise efficiency and continuous improvement in today's competitive environment. The various levels of quality implementation (Quality Control, Quality Assurance, Quality Management, Total Quality Management) have been taken up at different rates by European industrial enterprises. However, although the trend is rapidly increasing, this concerns mainly large companies. Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) have been lagging behind in quality up-take, often limited to quality control. Information Technology (IT) provides a powerful support for quality implementation, making some tasks easier and opening the door to new types of methods. Quality supported by information technology (“Quality and IT”) is an important issue, particularly in the context of the emerging Information Society, which needs to be addressed as a whole by integrating classical quality, IT characteristics and human operations. This issue has been investigated within the European Commission IT Programme in the area of Integration in Manufacturing. Important research results have been obtained in the last 3 years and a Working Group has been organised to promote Quality and IT and to disseminate research results for the benefit of industrial users, in particular of SMEs.