Quality Management

1. Quality Management

2. What is Quality? ‘Exceptional levels of customer comfort’ ‘Fit for use’ • A customer’s perception of quality is key to their buying decision. • Customers will accept a trade off between price and quality, however there is a minimum level of quality that is acceptable. • The importance of quality is related to the competitiveness of the market. If the market is competitive the quality of the product can tip the balance in the customer’s decision making.

3. What is Quality? • Quality is about satisfying expectations. • The customer will take into account the total buying experience. • Customer service and after sales service may be as important as the product itself. • The way the product and where the product is sold all contribute to the customer’s feelings about quality.

4. Quality defined by customer specifications • Customers are in a powerful position, quality can be directly defined by the customer’s expectations • Marks and Spencer only sell products with these ranges of quality: • Good • Better • Best • Marks and Spencer’s customers have an expectation that the quality will be high for any of their products.

5. Why is Quality Management Important? • Quality is an important competitive issue. • Where the consumer has choice, the quality is vital. • For your new businesses quality is essential: • You need to establish your brand name and perception from customers • Generate high level of repeat purchases and therefore a longer product life-cycle • Adds a price premium (your product will be more expensive with large amounts of profit) • Make products easier to place with retailers

6. Implications of Poor Product or Service Quality

7. How can firms detect Quality? Ideal is to detect quality problems before they reach the customer. This can be done by: • Inspection of finished goods before sale – this has been the traditional method. • Statistical analysis within the production process – this can be used to ensure that specifications stay within certain limits; for example Mars might set a target weight for 100g bags of Maltesers to be between 96g and 104g.

8. Managing Quality You must create and explain how could do the 4 stages for your service business • 4 Stages to quality management: • Prevention – this tries to avoid problems occurring at every stage of the business process: • The initial product design • In purchasing raw materials and components • Designing the shop/ warehouse in order to minimise errors • Ensuring all staff feel empowered to care about quality. At Toyota car plants, any worker who has a quality concern can pull an alarm. This stops the whole assembly line 2. Detection – this ensures quality problems are detected before they reach the customer. Traditional method. 3. Correction – Correcting but also identifying why faults are happening. 4. Improvement – Customer’s expectations of quality are always improving. In order to remain a competitive business your quality levels must always be improving

9. Total Quality Management ‘’A passion for quality that starts at the top, then spreads throughout the whole organisation,’’ • Total quality management or TQM is an integrative philosophy of management for continuously improving the quality of products and processes. • TQM functions on the premise that the quality of products and processes is the responsibility of everyone who is involved with the creation or consumption of the products or services offered by an organization. In other words, TQM capitalizes on the involvement of management, workforce, suppliers, and even customers, in order to meet or exceed customer expectations.

10. Unit 2, Section B, Tasks 1,2,3,10 • Define what total quality management is. • Explain what it is and why it is important? • Create 4 Stages for managing quality for your service industry • Explain the reasons for doing those 4 stages.