QUALITY AND INNOVATION - A CONCEPTUAL-MODEL OF THEIR INTERACTION

After a long debate, it is widely accepted that Japanese success is ba sed on the binomial quality and innovation. In the first part, the pap er analyzes the close relations existing between quality and innovatio n and proposes a conceptual model able to explain both their strong co rrelation and their dynamic nature. The second part concerns the ways in which an enterprise can implement the conceptual model and presents concurrent engineering and ban production as two methodologies able t o give essence to the quality and innovation aspects.