6. What approach should you take?

"We recommend the following procedure:

• "The NQF assessment is a powerful trigger for raising awareness among the company's managers, executives and staff of the importance of quality improvement and the potential gains to be made;

• ">setting realistic and achievable targets for decreasing costs;

• ">hierarchize problems into costs with the Pareto chart, stratifying costs and identifying priorities;

• ">determine the true causes with the cause-effect diagram – (Ishikawa), which provides a structured classification of the points of view of the various specialists;

• ">define corrective actions by prioritizing them (potential gain/effort required ratio), monitor their application and measure their effectiveness...