The changing environment of an enterprise requires new responses
Environment demands
In the environment of an enterprise, there is a great variety of factors which influence different areas and functions in an enterprise in a different but specific way. This factors can be external: clients, associations, syndicates, banks, insurance companies, NGO's, public bureaus, providers and the shareholders in society in general; as well as internal: the organization, the entire workforce, the enterprise committee o the different departments. All these factors have changing expectations and demands within the enterprise, which if not fulfilled appropriately, reveal possible failure and mistake sources which influence quality negatively (Binner 1998).
These sources may produce mistakes which in the future would be to expensive to solve since they entail additional costs and lower productivity. From here, the old saying that costs and quality are incompatible concepts (Magne 1990) emerges.
What can be deducted as a necessity from this concept is the fact that an enterprise needs a system which acts effectively against these mistake sources, thus increasing quality for those involved in the environment of the enterprise. This has to be a general and total system, which is to say, a total quality system (Seiling 1994) to ensure a sustained survival of the enterprise in a long term.
