Introduction

Abstract

[Excerpt] To write or edit a book is an honorable but painful and somewhat never-ending task for any University Professor. By doing so, we are sharing our knowledge and thoughts with others, expecting them to be read and useful to other people. This is even more so when we talk about books in the field of quality, given the power of this discipline in order to change for better products, processes, people, organizations, communities, or society in general. The original idea, by one of us, for having such a book dates back to 10 years ago, but it did not move forward until we decided later on to recover it back in September 2012, when we have been challenged by Springer to write a book in the quality field. We thought about it and found appropriate to revisit and update the initial idea and thus come up with the present book concept, presented to Springer by the beginning of 2013 and promptly accepted. This book is not aimed at providing new quality-complete formal or very well-formatted definitions, tools, or approaches, but rather tries to reflect about the past and the present of quality and, from there, extract pathways for a smiling and promising future in the field and of the field. [...]