The Deming Cycle (PDCA) Concept as a Tool for the Transition to the Innovative Path of the Continuous Quality Improvement in Production Processes of the Agro-Industrial Sector

Abstract

Introduction At the present stage, the catastrophic and apocalyptic scenarios of the civilization development after the active introduction of scientific discoveries at the beginning of the 21st century (shale revolution in the USA, the rapid development of genetic engineering technology in the West and in China, the active development of "green energy" in the world, etc.) have proved to be ineffective. Thus, there is a need for the qualitative review of future scenarios of the development of the modern civilization in general and individual regions, ecumenes in particular (Walliser, 2008). This refers both to the highly developed civilizational habitats and to the regions, which are traditionally considered to be underdeveloped (Dinur, 2011; Norse, 2012). Many of the abovementioned scientific concepts were developed in the early--mid-twentieth century, but it was not until fairly recently that their commercial implementation became possible (at the end of the last century and at the beginning of this century). Therefore, along with a number of social, technological, economic and political achievements, the key issues of providing the world's population with good quality food resources remain highly relevant. That is why the international non-governmental organizations, institutional and venture capital investors, governments of the countries pay considerable attention to the development of the agro-industrial sector, which makes a significant contribution to the formation of human capital and intellectual potential of the world's population (Mathe, 2013; Sekhampu, 2013; Ziatdinov and Tyunnikov, 2016). At the same time, the development of technology, an increase in the availability of bank lending and the expansion of access of underdeveloped countries to high technology in the agro-industrial sector (mainly with the active participation of Western and Chinese transnational corporations) significantly negate the importance of the highly productive land and its areas (as a key factor of agricultural production) against the world indicator. In previous studies (Dudin et al., 2016; 2015) we have repeatedly shown that the availability of fertile land is one of the aspects; its effective and intensive use is possible only by means of the management of production processes in the agro-industrial sector on the basis of key quality management concepts. The production quality management in the agro-industrial sector involves not only the formation of competitive advantages, it is also a social responsibility of manufacturers, which, in combination with the environmental responsibility, forms a new understanding in developing business models that are more focused on the achievement of parity between the needs of society and the needs of entrepreneurs. In turn, this means the growth of quality and living standards, which is also achieved by increasing economic and physical access to food resources (Firescu and Popescu, 2015; Havhcek et al., 2013; Kovalenko et al., 2016; Tyaglov et al., 2017). We suppose that the product and service quality management in the agro-industrial sector is currently one of the few practice-oriented tools, the effectiveness of which has been proved by time and demand patterns. This thesis is also confirmed by the results of previous studies (in particular, the analysis of trends in the agro-industrial sector development in Italy, as well as the applicability of the concept of "business model canvas" for Russian agricultural and agro-industrial enterprises (Dudin et al., 2015a; Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010; Clark et al., 2012; Frank et al., 2016; Bashmakov et al., 2015) and the statistical data (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2013; Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2015) which provide an additional scientific value to the cycle of proposed publications. Therefore, we offer to comprehensively and systematically consider the problems of quality assurance in the agro-industrial sector, including with the involvement of recommended quality management tools. …