Quality issues have always been of great importance and they are as old as mankind. This is because human beings have always been striving to achieve efficiency and effectiveness as witnessed by the improvements and enhancements of the early primitive technologies and industrial revolutions (1st to the present 5th industrial revolution), inventions and cutting-edge research, which are some of the major tenets of quality.
The World Quality Day is observed every year on the second Thursday of November and in 2023 it falls on 9th of November. Themes differ annually and in previous years, there were themes like “Sustainability: Improving Our Products, People, and Planet” and “Creating Customer Value.” In 2022, it was, “Quality conscience: Doing the right thing.”
A lot can be done during this day and other countries, industries, organizations and institutions have extended the celebrations to be one week long. Such a day or week is meant to educate people, raise awareness and provide support to individuals and organizations through quality and quality assurance related activities. If the celebrations are consistent and well done across the globe, economic prosperity and sustainability can be achieved through following the adoption of the major tenets of quality assurance. These include but are not limited to accountability, efficiency, effectiveness, etc.
Elsewhere, concerns about quality and quality assurance started many centuries ago and they continue to spread across the world at different times and paces depending on the different societal cultures and the seriousness that individuals, organizations/institutions/national governments put into it. London and the United Kingdom (U.K.), for example, first celebrated the World Quality Day in 2008. In 2018, 8 November, The South African Quality Institute (SAQI) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) jointly hosted and celebrated the World Quality Day and the guiding theme for the event was, “Changing the Mind-set on Quality”.
