Quality Management

Strategies put in place to ensure operations output meet customer expectations for durability, dependability, usability, and customer service. If quality levels are poor, it will result in lower repeat sales, poor reputation, high costs (of replacement) and overall lower profitability.

Quality Control:

The use of control measures at periodic stages of an operations process. This reduces problems or defects in output by undertaking inspections / tests at various critical points of production process.

Benchmarks are established for quality (criteria); goods or services that do not meet the required standards are improved to ensure they do, or are removed.

Higher quality output results in lower waste, lower defect rates, lower replacement costs, higher customer satisfaction, more repeat sales (higher revenue) and overall higher profitability.

Quality Assurance:

The creation of a system / process that guarantees products meet a set international standard of quality (strength of materials, types of materials used, and specific production requirements met (heat, time).

The International Standards Organisation provides set guideline for firm that desire to produce output available for international sale. These guidelines ensure that standards are uniform across the world (ISO9000)

Firms desire this certification as it is a mark of quality (safe and reliable), leading to higher sales and higher profitability. 

Total Quality Management (TQM):

A commitment to excellence that emphasises continuous improvement in all aspects of a firm’s operations where:

• Responsibility of firm output is shared across all staff.

• The aim is to produce a defect-free production process (ambitious goal, unrealistic, but an ideal target)

• The business can improve competitiveness on price by always improving the quality of the operations process (lower costs = lower prices = more sales / market share = higher profitability).

A firm can adopt the TQM approach by:

• Employee empowerment: every single employee is charged with the responsibility for quality; teams used to solve problems

• Continuous improvement: constant evaluation of current performance and constant enquiries into ways to improve

• Customer orientation: by having the end user at the centre of the operations process, a firm can devote energy toward ensuring their complete satisfaction.