The quality criteria in a company are not limited to product compliance or a customer satisfaction score. They structure an organization’s ability to manage its processes, measure its results, and adjust its strategy. Understanding these criteria requires distinguishing between normative frameworks, models of excellence, and operational indicators.
EFQM Model 2025: A Quality Criteria Framework Beyond ISO 9001
The EFQM excellence model, in its 2025 version, abandons the historical structure of 9 criteria to move to 7 criteria grouped into three areas. The first, orientation, covers the purpose, vision, strategy, culture, and leadership. The second, operations, addresses stakeholder engagement, sustainable value creation, and performance management.
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The third area, results, focuses on stakeholder perception as well as strategic and operational performance.
This overhaul changes the game for companies that used the EFQM model as a self-assessment framework. The old division artificially separated leadership and strategy. The 2025 version merges them into a coherent block, necessitating a rethink of how a quality policy is formulated.
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We observe that many organizations still confuse ISO 9001 compliance with overall excellence. ISO 9001 sets minimum requirements for a quality management system. The EFQM model, on the other hand, offers a comparative assessment of organizational maturity. The two complement each other, but an ISO 9001 certificate does not guarantee an EFQM level of excellence. Understanding quality criteria in business requires mastering these two frameworks and their respective purposes.
Quality Performance Indicators: Choosing What Matters
A quality criterion without a measurable indicator remains a statement of intent. The challenge lies in selecting indicators, not in multiplying them.
Process-Oriented Indicators
The internal non-conformity rate, complaint handling time, and scrap rate measure operational control. These indicators resonate with field teams because they reflect actual work. A non-conformity rate that stagnates over several review cycles signals a systemic problem, not an isolated incident.
Customer-Oriented Indicators
Customer satisfaction is not reduced to a score out of ten. The Net Promoter Score, the complaint rate relative to the volume of orders, and the average resolution time provide complementary insights. We recommend cross-referencing at least two of these indicators to avoid the biases of a single score.
The classic trap is to accumulate dashboards without prioritizing. An effective quality management system selects between five and eight key indicators, aligned with strategic objectives. Beyond that, management review loses clarity, and teams disengage.
- Result indicators (satisfaction rate, recurring revenue): they measure the final impact but arrive late in the cycle.
- Process indicators (cycle time, first-pass compliance rate): they allow action before the customer perceives a gap.
- Perception indicators (stakeholder surveys, supplier feedback): they capture weak signals that internal data do not reveal.
QVCT as a Managerial Quality Criterion in France
Quality of life and working conditions are gradually establishing themselves as a standalone quality criterion. Anact, through its Week for Quality of Life and Working Conditions, emphasizes the link between management, quality work, and team health.
A process managed by exhausted employees produces fragile quality. This reality pushes frameworks to integrate criteria related to actual work. The EFQM 2025 model, by placing organizational culture in its first area, implicitly recognizes that quality depends on the conditions under which work is performed.
Operationally, this translates into measurable criteria: absenteeism rate, results from social barometers, turnover of critical quality functions. Integrating this data into management review allows for the detection of degradations before they affect product compliance or customer satisfaction.
External Quality and Internal Quality: Two Areas, One System
External quality refers to the compliance of the product or service with customer expectations. Internal quality covers the efficiency of processes, document management, and team competence. Separating these two areas in the organizational chart creates blind spots.
An internal quality defect (obsolete procedure, insufficient training) always manifests itself in external quality (complaint, delivered non-conformity). The process approach, as described in ISO 9001, aims precisely to connect these two dimensions through documented interactions and clear responsibilities.
- External quality: measured by customer feedback, certification audits, regulatory inspections.
- Internal quality: evaluated by internal audits, process reviews, operational control indicators.
- Overlap area: customer complaints analyzed in depth almost always reveal a traceable internal failure.
An effective management system addresses these two areas in a single improvement loop. Organizations that maintain silos between product quality and organizational quality end up multiplying redundant audits without resolving root causes. The determining criterion remains the ability to transform a detected non-conformity into a corrective action that permanently modifies the affected process.