Quality management in collaborative networks

In collaborative networks, quality aspects still seem to be of secondary importance. While being a network partner, companies often do not dispose of right concepts to measure and control quality of inter-organisational processes. Functionalities of existing quality management systems are limited to guarantee process quality within the own company but not in networks. A collaborative network is not providing a set of individual parts of a product but an integrated solution. There is a need for a collaborative quality management system that guarantee the same quality of an integrated solution as the traditional quality management system do on products coming from the own organisation. But, while using traditional quality management systems, networks might run the risk of setting up a kind of “quality-bureaucracy” which could foil their essential principles. The risk to loose the advantages of a flexible network and to become more and more an inflexible traditional organization rises with the amount of norms and guidelines.