All the questioning is in the context of satisfying the customer. In the matured organization the basics of improvement remain constant regardless of issue, regardless of participants. Service emanates from the intertwined activity of customers, employees, and suppliers. The personal quality of treating everyone with respect stretches without strain from executive suites to cubicals. It includes partnerships with customers and suppliers.
Suppliers are integral and important parts of the systems managed.
And because they are, and because they must be as committed to quality as the matured organization if they are to be integral to it, in their essence they are indistinguishable from the organization served. In the matured organization actions are based on reliable data, information, and analysis. Data and information come from all segments of the organization, customers, and suppliers as one would anticipate. They come also from competitors and from the world beyond the business environs. Within the matured organization key measures tethered to customer and organizational requirements for performance are a lucid, unprejudiced foundation for alignment of process with goals.