Global quality

The undisputable and unparalleled quality that defines "Made in Luxottica" has always been underpinned by meticulousness verging on the obsessive. In our company, the word quality has always meant “doing your job well” and is associated above all with the finished product – a pair of glasses.

Only recently has quality taken on a wider meaning, becoming global quality. The objective, as ever, is to develop ourselves, from product experts to systems experts.

To do this, we have given quality a highly strategic role, applying it to all our business processes as an engine that drives continual improvement of products and processes. The focus on quality has thus become a system in itself, and the system covers the entire organization.

Quality is thus applied to product development, procurement, the network (distribution to clients), analysis of processes and uniform and measurable management of performance in our plants.

On a practical level, this meant creating quality teams to assign to the various functional areas, to analyze every single process.

The “product quality team”, for example, provides support to those creating new design and engineering methods by identifying technical solutions that improve the quality of the finished product, by finding the most suitable suppliers, the right level of perceived quality, the best packaging, and so on.

The “supply quality team” has become a centralized service supporting the Group’s procurement department, supporting, for example, tooling work for new outsourced components and identifying suppliers who can guarantee constant compliance with our quality standards.

The “process quality team” helps create a homogeneous internal quality assessment system using measurable parameters and where necessary organizing rapid corrective action to prevent defects and waste. And lastly the “network quality team” analyzes the quality standards demanded by clients and warranty costs and their causes, so they can be promptly eliminated.

The key instruments in this complex operation are the Multi-plant Projects, which aim to solve problems common to different plants and departments by optimizing the resources needed to handle them (maximizing the value of experience gained in individual plants) and at the same time guaranteeing strategic alignment at Group level.

For each of these projects, a work team with the necessary range of technical and organizational expertise was set up and a team leader assigned to take on the responsibility for achieving its objectives. Many of these objectives have been achieved. Satisfied with excellent results, as well as being committed to ongoing improvement, we continue to set ourselves increasingly ambitious targets.

Parallel to the definition of this strategy, a training plan for all quality service personnel and service/department heads was designed to develop skills needed in business process analysis and the drawing up of improvement plans.

The “culture of quality” is thus a priority value shared by everyone in the Group. In a market as competitive and global as eyewear, the satisfaction of optical clients and end consumers who buy Luxottica products is without doubt a primary, indeed indispensable, objective. Achieving it means continually improving quality in every phase of the production process (and also distribution).