The term Quality 4.0 (Q4.0) was clearly defined by Watson (1998) more than 20 years ago. Due to the
increasing availability of telecommunications technology, the Internet, personal computing, networks
and thinking machines that will make the quality of functions and analysis automatically. Over the past
20 years, quality has gained a larger role than its original meaning, in an ever-changing context where
quality professionals must adapt to a changing environment of high technology and innovation
(Elshennawy, 2004). Quality professionals should then shift the focus to predicting change and
integrating new concepts into their business models.
In the same progress, the term “Quality 4.0” was coined by Dan Jacob. He is a leading research director
and analyst with LNS research, a leading research firm and manufacturing advisor (Johnson, 2019).
While building on and improving existing traditional quality methods, Quality 4.0 aligns quality
management closely with Industry 4.0 to enable enhanced enterprise efficiency, performance,
innovation and business models.
Meantime, according to Mittelstädt et al.(2015), Industry 4.0 offers increased productivity and
quantity, as well as promising potential for the quality management domain by improving the quality
of products, processes and services. Because today’s manufacturing industry must operate in a
competitive global environment, the pressure on them to offer higher quality products at the lowest
possible level and in the shortest possible time to satisfy customers and maintain their position in the
market will continue to increase.
In addition, digital technology applications can change quality in a variety of ways. For example,
organizations can monitor processes and extract data from real -time sensors (Sony, 2018). The big
data generated from these sensors can be further analyzed to predict quality issues and organizational
maintenance needs (Johnson, 2019). 4.0 quality like that is better than technology. It is a new method
that uses digital tools so that the ability of organizations to deliver high quality products consistently
can be enhanced. Quality 4.0 will drive improvement across the value chain. In a recent study by
Boston Consulting Group, the American Society for Quality and others it was found that manufacturing
and R&D would benefit greatly due to the implementation of Quality 4.0 (Küpper, et al., 2019).
Whereas, according to Pereira et al. (2017), efforts to implement Industry 4.0 bring diverse
technological challenges, with a high influence on many dimensions in the manufacturing industry
today. Therefore, it is important to develop strategies for all actors involved in the entire value chain,
to reach consensus on relevant security issues before implementation begins (Wan, and Zhou, 2016).
In addition, many authors state that implementing Industry 4.0 is a difficult mission and may take
much longer i.e. as long as ten years or more to be realized. Adopting this new manufacturing process
involves many aspects, and faces a wide variety of difficulties and challenges, including scientific,
technological and economic challenges, social problems as well as political issues.