Multiscale quality: micro, meso and macro concepts

Abstract

The quality concept can be defined according to different points of view, dimensions, and characteristics. Quality can be considered as a multiscale concept. This leads to the need of understanding how quality measurements and evaluations are done across products, processes, people, organizations and territories. The aim of this paper is to build a quality holistic view to the problems that arise in different management levels through a measurement system of quality.A preliminary literature review is presented and the main insights that come up from it are shown and explained, resulting in a definition of multiscale quality, as well as a first approach to the characterization of macro, meso and micro dimensions.The added value of this paper is the comprehension and clarification of several terms related to multiscale quality, as the terms micro, meso and macro have been increasingly used in different fields of application and knowledge.The future work intends to develop a model that can be used in companies as it integrates quality measurements of different management levels of an organization in a single integrated and consistent model.