“Are you sure, shouldn’t this be the other way around?” No, the quantity first, quality next is a logical and wise business rule.

But first of all, this is not about strategy, because even if your strategic direction is towards cost leadership, you cannot without quality. Neither is it about what is more important.

This quantity-quality-issue is about the priority in business and organizing activities. It means that you need to produce a significant amount of products (quantities) before you can improve the quality of these products. It is impossible to improve the quality of a product that is unique on the market and most of all, not even used (yet) by a large number of people.

The real challenge — After you have designed a product, tested it and brought to production - - is the acceptance of the product in the market. This starts with someone buying the product, and someone else, etc… And only after a certain amount of products (quantity) you can improve the quality.

“But what about those real quality products?” Even there holds the same rule, but on a different level.

Quality is an abstraction with many definitions. But whatever definition you take, the quality of a product is never about the function. It is about additional requirements that are independent of the features of the product.

For example, you can buy a car because of the model, the color, the extra features like: airbag, cruise control, board computer, etc. Yet the quality is not about any of these features. Because you can by a different model car with exactly the same features, yet the quality of both cars can differ quite a bit.

Quality is about the invisible aspects of your car. About those things you don’t get preoccupied with the first day you buy it, but what becomes an issue once you are using it. And using it, and using it…

So quality is about what you do not see at first hand. And this is the hardest part. Not in the last place if you want to manage (higher) quality.

From management literature we know that any business is about the primary process and about supporting processes. The primary process produces the products and services. These are processes where you can measure easily; the number of products (the quantity).

The supportive processes and the contribution of this support to the end product is less visible and not always easy to measure.

Imagine the primary process as the accelerator of your car and the supporting process the brakes. If you want to improve the quality you need to use the brakes. You need extra control, support, checks and balances and more of invisible contributions which make the automobile not directly more attractive but inherently of a higher quality.

Different departments of your organization manage these different processes. Again, this is not about who is more important. Yet quality assurance is often seen as a burden and this is a pity, because any product or service needs quality like a car needs brakes.

So teamwork of both disciplines, like you cannot drive a car without brakes, but you need some acceleration before you can use them. And too much speed will damage your image in the end. It’s a matter if finding the right balance.

Hans Bool is the founder of Astor White a management consulting company that offers online management advice and management tools. Visit him at: www.astorwhite.com