The quality movement of today is not the same one promulgated by its modern-era guru, W. Edwards Deming, in the 1980s.

Not surprisingly, a movement that has its roots in the craft guilds of medieval Europe has undergone changes over eight centuries. But the basics are still the same.

Then, guild inspection committees would separate flawless goods from the flawed with a special mark that, over time, came to represent a craftsman’s good reputation.

Today’s quality movement is much different from those 13th century beginnings. But quality products and processes continue to leave their mark on a business’s reputation.

“You need to have quality,” said Michael Nichols, president of the American Society for Quality. “Consumers’ expectations have changed and it’s too easy for them to go to somebody else. There are a dozen other people who can offer the same service or product.”

Quality refers to everything about a product, from how efficiently it is made to how effectively it meets customers’ needs. Assuring that a product works well when it’s delivered is not enough; the concept of quality also includes support programs after the sale has been made.

In the past, businesses, mostly in the manufacturing sector, had specific quality departments, much like the inspection committees of guilds. But nowadays, quality is becoming a part of nearly all sectors and ensuring it is becoming everyone’s job, Nichols said.

“What we’ve seen in trends is a growth in quality tools and techniques being required in job descriptions but a reduction in jobs that have quality in their titles,” he said.

Company-wide focus on quality helps the consumer, since more employees are aware of what quality means to them, Nichols said. But it also presents challenges for businesses.

“It was a lot easier to drive the improvement of quality when there was one group responsible for it,” Nichols said. “Now that it’s in everyone’s job, the business leader has to make sure everyone is holding up their part of the bargain.”

Quality processes have also become increasingly important in the education and health care sectors over the last four or five years, Nichols said. In education, particularly, it has been difficult to adapt to quality processes since funding issues make it harder to send people in for training, he said.

Health care is one of the fastest growing areas for quality. The growth came after hospitals began to realize that failures in health care resulted from the way in which patients were serviced, Nichols said.

“Patient care is not just at the point where they’re under the knife,” he said. “It’s from the time they walk in the door, from the time they walk out the door and after. And that’s been a major shift in how (hospitals) look at their business.”

The quality movement came to the U.S. after years of popularity in Japan. By focusing on quality, Japan was able to drive down costs and attract customers, helping the country become an economic superpower after World War II.

The U.S. responded with its own quality approach, called Total Quality Management, in the 1980s under the influence of Deming, who had become a leading proponent of the quality movement as practiced in Japan. He focused his methods on improving all organizational processes in creating a product.

Since then, a whole host of different quality processes—such as Total Quality Management, Six Sigma and ISO 9000—have come, sometimes faded and often been replaced by new quality processes. Still, many of the concepts from the older processes continue to be applicable, Nichols said.

“There is so much more that (businesses) need to be aware of about quality than there was 20 or 40 years ago,” Nichols said. “The way the business leader needs to look at it is that there is this toolbox of quality and you’ve been collecting tools over the years.

“The important thing is not what you’re calling the toolbox—it’s the fact that you’re constantly trying to bring in the newest tools.”

All too often, business owners replace an old quality process with a new one instead of integrating them.

“You throw away your screwdriver when you bought a hammer,” Nichols said.

Nichols predicts that integration of quality programs will continue to become more important in the future, and that the movement will evolve as the nature of the business environment changes. Businesses should be open to integrating that change with old processes, he said.

“Quality is about evolution, not replacement,” Nichols said.