Quality management/Process improvement

The reason why Quality management is such a hot topic is because the competitive advantage it provides to companies. Quality Management is a method for ensuring that all the activities necessary to design, develop, and implement a product or service are effective and efficient with respect to the system and its performance. Companies realize that in order for them to be successful and gain a profit they have to exceed customer's needs and this starts with Quality Management. Also, focusing on Quality Management will cut down on defective products and improve machinery and personnel efficiency. This leads to why process improvement is a hot topic. Process improvement is becoming easier due to the advancements in technology, but it is also becoming easier for companies to duplicate competitors product, which is harder from companies to gain a competitive advantage on it's product alone. Companies also cut cost by improving their products and the way they are being produced. and example of this is a company called VistaPrint, http://www.vistaprint.com/. VistaPrint is a company that offers customized marketing materials. They offer a selection of free things just for visiting their site i.e. 250 free business cards. VistaPrint used technology to keep cost low, make them more flexible, and eliminate waste. They combined similar products and printed them on one press and this allowed to receive a large number of small orders and print them cheaply and quickly.