David Garvin's 8 Dimensions Of Quality

Quality plays a major role in the product operations of a company. Consumers expect to receive a certain level of quality in a product they are buying. Through this paper, quality will be described and the issues that can arise from it, as well as the processes to manage quality control for a company.

Consumers are looking at different qualities of a product or service when they buy it from a company. The quality of a product has been broken down into 8 dimensions by David Garvin (Bozarth 108). The following dimensions are described below:

Performance: Basic operations of product or service

Features: Extra characteristics beyond basic operating characteristics

Reliability: How long a product can go between a need for maintenance

Durability:

The second of the principles is leadership involvement. Like any organizational process, it is essential for leaders to be directly involved for the quality management to be successful. If managers start implementing the need for quality to be at its highest, it will follow down through lower management and lower level employees. Leaders that are involved and passionate about adopting a TQM way of change, will affect the quality of the products or services positively. Some ways that top level leaders can influence change to improve quality is demonstrating consistency to the change of product improvement, create effective and modern methods of training and supervision, break down barriers between departments, and institute a program of education and retraining. The next step and principle of TQM is continuous improvement. This is the way that the organization puts themselves in the mindset that there can always be room for change. It allows for the company to never be content with a product that might play it safe, but to always look for change in a product or business practice that could take quality beyond the requirements, therefore satisfying the features dimension of quality expectations. Next in TQM in employee empowerment which is giving and maintaining the education for employees to know how to control and improve quality.

While the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages, the biggest issue for organization management with TQM is the implementation of the process. It can be hard to encourage the entire company to think in a TQM mindset. This can take the company a long time to create a culture that is focused on meeting all of the quality dimensions in their product. Some people are not as driven and focused to meet the customer 's needs, and without the complete organization changing the quality of work they put in, the TQM process will fail. While the main disadvantage is legitimate and can create a difficult time for management, the advantages of TQM are great. With Total Quality Management the company will have higher productivity, a better image with their consumers, less defect therefore creating less waste for the company, higher profits, higher customer loyalty, enhanced stock value, and overall improved