Higher Business Management - Quality Methods

What is Quality?A product is a quality product if it is defect free. To the producer, a product is a quality product if it meets or conforms to the statement of requirements that defines the product. This statement is usually shortened to: quality means meets requirements. From a customer’s perspective, quality means “fit for use.”

Quality Control- product is checked, normally at the end of the production process and this ensures it meets quality standards.
- It ensures defective products are not dispatched to customers, harming reputation.
- Increased production costs associated with high levels of waste
- Its focus is defect detection and removal. Testing is a quality control activity

Quality AssuranceAt certain points in the production process, products are checked to ensure that they meet agreed quality standards. All aspects of the production process are looked at to ensure errors do not occur.
It deals with ‘prevention’ of defects in the product being developed.
Quality Assurance is more thorough than Quality Control.

Total Quality Management (TQM)- inspection is carried out at each stage of the production process and prevents a defect moving into next stage
- TQM treats everyone as a customer on the quality chain
- cuts down on waste with faults often being rectified early in the production process
- often requires substantial staff training
- KAIZEN – continuous improvement
- Uses Quality Circles
- TQM mantra is “Getting it right first time”

Quality Circles- Used in TQM
- small groups of staff meet on a regular basis and solve problems and make suggestions for improvement
- can result in increased worker motivation
- suggested improvements can be expensive to adopt
- Quality Circles consist of workers from all departments and all levels from shopfloor to senior managers.

Benchmarking- Comparing your company’s products, services or processes against best practices or competitive practices, to help define superior performance
- discovering the best method of production, often that of another business in the industry and adopting the same or a better as standard
- can be used to exceed the best practice
- information on other business can be difficult to obtain

British Standards Institution (BSI)- aims to promote quality at all stages of production
- products carrying, for example the Kite Mark, will gain a competitive advantage
- time consuming preparation of quality manuals and inspections to obtain/maintain approval

Recruitment of a skilled workforce- production defects should be rare resulting in reduced production costs
- staff costs are likely to be high.


QUALITY GURUS
W. EDWARDS DEMING
W. Edwards Deming is the Godfather of the Japanese success story.

He was an American whose ideas were laughed at in his native land, but when he went to help build the Japanese infrastructure in the late 1940s and 50s he transformed Japan.

“Quality is about reducing variation”. DiscussFind out more about Deming and his views on Quality.

JOSEPH JURAN
In1941 that Juran discovered the work of Vilfredo Pareto. Juran expanded the Pareto principle applying it to quality issues (for example, 80% of a problem is caused by 20% of the causes). This is also known as "the vital few and the trivial many". In later years Juran preferred "the vital few and the useful many" to signal that the remaining 80% of the causes should not be totally ignored.

According to Juran, the principal focus in quality management was on the quality of the end, or finished, product. Juran is widely credited for adding the human dimension to quality management. He pushed for the education and training of managers.

During his 1966 visit to Japan, Juran learned about the Japanese concept of Quality Circles which he enthusiastically evangelized in the West.