Banks failing? Manufacturing struggling? Hospitals missing targets? Amid a recession that, as ever with such downturns, is proving to be a Darwinian struggle for survival, where only the fittest can prosper, it seems that any shortage of quality is being punished, quickly and severely. It may be time, then, to call in the quality professionals.

“There’s lots happening in the economy, about sustainable business and long-term thinking,” Vincent Desmond, an executive director at the Chartered Quality Institute, said. “We feel that it is time for quality professionals to step forward and say: ‘That’s what we do.’ ”

Indeed, he says, if the banks had had quality professionals in place — and had they followed their advice — they could have avoided the long-term problems they created by chasing short-term profits. And, if you follow that train of thought through, you could argue that means avoiding the credit crunch and the consequent downturn altogether.

Perhaps the problem is that the banks were unaware of the benefits a quality professional can bring, ignorant even of what they do. “A chartered quality professional,” Mr Desmond said, “is the person who looks at an organisation as a system, from the beginning to the end of the process, to see how it links up.” Senior managers can tend to focus on what is happening in their own unit or department; the quality professional’s job is to look at the big picture, to see where things might be slipping through the cracks, how overall processes could be improved and why incentives used in one business division might not be good for the whole organisation.

The profession grew out of manufacturing industries and the people whose job it was to make sure that finished goods and their component parts complied with the relevant standards and that the processes to order, make and ship them were as efficient as possible.

“It started 100 years ago with inspections at the end of the process, but now it involves much more and at a much earlier stage,” Mr Desmond said. According to Roger Cliffe, the global quality director of Vodafone, other commercial sectors are adopting the discipline as they see the benefits it has produced in manufacturing. “It provides a very specific and wellproven set of techniques around doing things properly,” he said. “You only have to look at the Japanese companies that started doing this 50 or 60 years ago.” Someone looking at the car industry half a century ago would be hard-pressed to believe that today Toyota would be the top of the pile while General Motors languished in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. “The reason for that is quality,” he said. “[Toyota] built cars with fewer defects and at a lower cost.”

Dr Cliffe added: “Manufacturing has been at it [quality] for a long time and it knows that if it does not improve quality, the business will go. Service industries are only starting to realise the benefits of quality.” He believes that sectors such as financial services have made some big improvements, but he agrees with Mr Desmond that better-quality processes could have helped to prevent problems in banking. “If you look at the big failures, that was without a doubt due to process failures. They had not done due diligence, proper risk assessment or good processes for acquiring businesses.”

The public sector could also benefit from more quality professionals. Sanya Sreekumar, a quality manager in the public sector, works with teams across her organisation to help to make sure that they are carrying out their tasks in a consistent, structured way. “I go through their processes, see if they are meeting their aims and timelines.”

Yet it is still comparatively rare for companies outside manufacturing and a few safety-critical industries, such as nuclear power, to have quality specialists.

To an extent it is part of every manager’s job, in much the same way as HR. But it has to be more than that, Dr Cliffe said. “If you just say that it’s part of everyone’s job, then nothing happens.” And if nothing happens, what’s the point?

The lowdown

How do you train to be a quality professional? The Chartered Quality Institute offers training and professional development courses from introductory level through to a diploma in quality. Experienced professionals can gain chartered status after five to six years

How many are there? At least 5,000

What do they earn? Quality managers typically start on between £18,000 and £23,000. Managers with ten years’ experience can earn up to £43,000 or £60,000 at director level, more in some sectors

Who employs them? Quality began as a discipline in manufacturing and that is still one of the big industries. Nuclear power, oil exploration and other industries that have a strong emphasis on safety also hire quality specialists. They can also be found in other public and private sector organisations

What attributes do you need? Problem-solving abilities to help to find out why something is not working or how it can be improved, curiosity about how things are done, good interpersonal skills and a genuine interest in how processes can be improved are all important attributes

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