6.0 Quality Management
In order to attract more customers, many companies try their best to enhance the quality of all aspects of their products and services that are vital to the customers. Every company has implemented a few quality control methods in order to maintain the quality of goods and services produced by the company, which is essential to compete in this competitive business world.
The concerns for product and service quality and process control had started far back as 3000 B.C in Babylonia. The research also found some references to quality from the code of Hammurabi, the First Dynasty king of city-state of Babylonia and one of the references is “The mason who builds a house which falls down and kills the inmate shall be put to death.” In the early 1900s, the beginning of Factory Productions, the final product were inspected for the purpose of accepting or rejecting the same. The famous philosophers of quality control are W. Edwards Deming, Joseph M. Juran, Armand Feigenbaum and Phillip B. Crosby.
Managing quality helps to build successful strategies of differentiation, low cost and response. In addition to being a critical element in operations, quality has other implication. Quality management is important towards company reputation, product liability and global implications. Normally, it is imperative to produce healthy, safe and quality products and services to the customers.
Service quality is a comparison of expectations with performance. Service quality can be related to service potential, service process and service result. Below is the table of service quality dimensions.
6.1 Total Quality Management
Total Quality Management (TQM) is a philosophy which involves everyone in a company in a continual effort...
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...on to labour skills, before setting up this business, the manager has used this method to help in a more objective decision making. Before the manager exploited to the market, he was choosing three locations which are Farlim, Gelugor and Jelutong.
Based on Table 3, Eye Level concludes that the highest weighted score is 68.75 in Farlim compared to Gelugor and Jelutong which are 44.25 and 62.50 respectively. Moreover, Eye Level chooses Farlim due to its new and fast development. Another reason is a good traffic flow which is convenient for parents to pick their child up and down from the centre.
Figure 6 shows Eye Level has chosen the location that has a convenient and good traffic flow which eases the parents to pick their children up and down from the centre. On the other hand, the centre is located at the junction helps to attract the attention of the road user.
Quality is an important part of any business rather from a customer’s perspective or a producer’s perspective. Quality from a customer’s perspective is they “want value and quality has become a major factor in the value of products and service” (Russell & Taylor, 2013, pg. 53). “The customer is the most important part of the production line” (Russell & Taylor, 2013, pg. 53). This can be referred to as quality of design meaning “involves designing quality characteristics into a product or service” (Russell & Taylor, 2013, pg. 54). Now let’s look at the quality from a producer’s perspective. This can be referred to a quality of conformance meaning “making sure the product or service is produced according to design” (Russell & Taylor, 2013,
Maintaining good quality helps the organization to avoid focus on rework and loss. Quality attracts customers and acts as detour to other suppliers. Most organizations fall for huge supplier list and spend their time in negotiating for costs over quality. It is a good practice to maintain minimum of approved most trusted suppliers than to promote huge suppliers list.
First of all, the top management was clearly aware the importance of quality control. The company is one of the earliest companies to bear a vision of quality control in China. And the GM had attended modern management training from overseas, which made him focus on the establishment of quality control procedures.
Ishikawa is also known for his key ideas in user friendly quality control, the implementation of quality circles, and his emphasis on the internal customer. Ishikawa took an alre...
Quality by Design focuses on a risk based approach to ensuring process and product quality through an in depth understanding of product attributes and the overall process and product performance. This concept will be achieved by defining the product to be produced and through the identification of Critical Quality Attributes (CQA) and their potential impact upon the process and the final product. The Quality by Design System will be shown in the following diagram:
Total quality management is a management system of organization that involves all employees in continual improvement and is oriented on customers. This approach was developed by such quality leaders as Philip B. Crosby, W. Edwards Deming, Armand V. Feigenbaum, Kaoru Ishikawa, and Joseph M. Juran. TQM uses next principles (Westcott 2013):
To maintain the hygienic conditions, great care is exercised in the selection and quality control of the raw materials, packaging materials and rigid quality standards are ensured at every stage of the manufacturing process. All the workers, expert staff and employees participate with complete dedication for ensuring the best quality commitment. For high grade quality commitment, a regular inspection
Quality relates to ensuring that the item or service supplied firstly meets the specification but also that considers the lifespan of the product, ease of repair and maintenance (Coyle, 2017). For example, a light fitting may meet the required light output specification but if it only lasts a few hours before blowing it would not be suitable in a long-life appliance.
Ishikawa made many contributions to quality. These include the five principles on total quality namely; process affects results, continuous improvement must be a way of life, problems must be prevented rather than reacted to, people who do the work must be involved and results must be measureable and proposed the seven basic tools of quality as a problem solving tool (Ishikawa, 1985, 1989).
The word quality management comes into our mind means managing quality not only improving product quality. While making a product, the needs and demands of the customers must be kept in mind and the product should be up to people’s expectations. (Simons, 2000) says Total quality management is a very popular approach as it signifies the calibration and rationalization of operating procedures to guarantee high quality and low rates. The success of this approach depends upon the evaluation of manager’s performance. (Abernethy, 2003). A concept tells that conferring to consumer’s perception, quality is, satisfying his or her needs which includes its exterior, its working capability and its dependability.
Total Quality Management has many definitions. Gurus of the total quality management discipline like Deming, Juran, Crosby, Ishikawa and Feigenbaum defined the concept in different ways but still the essence and spirit remained the same. But the essence has more or less been to develop an approach to problem solving, conformation to standards for customer satisfaction. With management functions getting complex, approaches to managing quality in functional areas are becoming difficult. Organizations, which have successfully use TQM principles, have customer and quality embedded in their corporate
“Various management systems have also appeared as structures in which to implement quality improvement. One of these is total quality management (TQM), which is a strategy for implementing and managing quality improvement activities on an organization-wide basis.
Extensive research over the years has resulted in a number of variable being identified that encapsulate the dimensions used by consumers to evaluate service quality. This list was originally quite extensive, but over the years it has been reduced to five main dimensions. These dimensions are important to understand as they form the foundation of the evaluation of service quality .and the correction of any service quality shortfalls described Machado, R. & Diggines, C. (2012).
Quality - the organization through individual and collective actions focuses on meeting customer needs, recognizing that customer perception identifies quality.
Quality is a very important thing in an organization; therefore it is not possible to improve the quality of a product or service substantially without major changes in all aspects of the organization. Because quality is so important if changes aren’t made throughout the organization the output of the product will no be very successful. Everyone in the organization plays a major role in the out come of its products.