Quality
Explain the difference between quality management practices in the early 1900s with quality management today?
At the beginning of the 20th century, many organizations and companies were determined to accomplish producing goods and services of high value and as a result, members of the organizations came up with different methods to manage and ensure quality of their products. During that period when the model of mass production was introduced, several organizations categorized employee tasks and jobs into different and precise working measures to add up the number of the output units of production, resulting to more effectiveness. However, the task of ensuring high quality of products was left to the inspectors who were in charge of the final section of manufacturing segments where the assembling of goods was already completed.
Despite the producers’ effort to provide high quality products and services, the cost of manufacturing goods became so high because of additional expenses incurred from faulty production materials. In addition, the organization was in need of hiring a great number of employees including supervisors to check the quality of a large number of products. However, this problem would not have occurred if the quality of products were properly investigated from the beginning. As a result, several producing industries and organizations came up with the idea of introducing new departments with the assigned responsibility of ensuring high value and quality of goods. This was a strategy for minimizing production expenses. However, other sections of the organization had a disadvantage because they did not have the opportunity to be informed about quality production of goods.
Another weakness the organizations had was that the top managers lacked adequate information on the significance of sustaining high value of products and services in all levels of their company. As a result, it led to errors in the decisive process that caused a major disaster in terms of quality production. During the period of the 1920s, a company known as Western Electric developed a new strategy known as Statistical Quality Control, for managing quality in production procedures. The idea was perceived as being innovative because its function was more than the normal quality investigation. It involved tracing, spotting and eradicating the causes of the defaults in products.
Immediately after the historical event of World War II, markets in the United States were in short of goods. This led to the prioritization for goods produced over the product quality. In the meantime, a man named Dr. W. Edward traveled to Japan so that he could assist the Japanese in recovering from the effects of World War II. In the process, he educated them on various methods of quality management that were adapted in America. As a result, the Japanese learned that quality is a great determinant in improving an organization’s performance in all levels. This made them to change their perception of quality from being a technological discipline to understanding it as an area of quality control that involves having a significant influence on product quality.
On the other hand, organizations in the United States that participated did not gain anything from their experience in Japan until the 1980s, when customers in the United States figured that American products had lower quality than products manufactured in Japan. As a result, the American consumers began demanding for goods and services that were of higher quality. American Organizations and Companies responded to the consumers’ demands and were determined to improve their production procedures with the aim of reducing the quality difference between products made in America and Japan. This made the organizations’ managers to understand more clearly on the importance of quality production.
The managers made an effort to change their perceptions about their responsibilities towards the organization and focused on ensuring complete quality that entailed ensuring employees understood, met and went beyond consumers’ demands when producing goods and services. As a result, American businesses including the non-profitable type made a big difference in their progress. The concept of quality guarantee was changed through the process of organizations improving the quality of their products. By the year 1900, the aspect of quality was linked to technological factors in the production process. In addition, the subject of quality was also treated as a discipline of management.
Compare and contrast the evolution of quality and the role it played in the management of U.S. and Japanese business firms from the 1950s to the present?
In 1950, Japanese organizations used the Statistics Quality Control methods, which involved introducing new ways of constant inspection of products and progressiveness in methods of achieving high quality production. In addition, the SQC approach focused on ensuring that top managers became more alert about the significance of quality assurance in organizations and companies. As a result, the Japanese incorporated quality in their organizational operations leading them to increase their competitiveness and market shares. In addition, the Japanese were able to scoop an award known as Deming prize for their organizations meeting the standards of the quality practices stipulation.
On the contrary, organizations in the United States were lagging behind in terms of progress as compared to Japan. However, in 1980, American companies began following quality progressing procedures in order to improve the quality of their products and hence meet the demands of customers who were well informed about quality awareness. In addition, quality concepts and procedures were also adjusted for the organizations to be able to face challenges in the marketplace. Quality was also believed to be a managerial science and this led to the introduction of Total Quality concept. This concept made it possible for innovative methods and movements beginning from the Leadership through Quality movement in 1980 to the Lean Six Sigma movement in 2001. In addition, the American government introduced new awards of quality performance to motivate and encourage organizations in the United States to remain competitive and continue adopting ways of maintaining excellence in their operations.
Contract the mindset of management under total quality and more traditional management structure with respect to employees, manufacturing, and leadership?
In the case of employees, the type of management featured in the Total Quality Management model is identified as efforts made by an organization team to ensure that all employees are accountable for quality and are able to participate in formulating decisions that meet the customers’ needs. This is because parts of an organization are arranged in a parallel manner in order to allow communication of important information between employees from all levels of the organization. In addition, it would better the procedures used in producing high quality goods and services. However, businesses in the traditional methods of management were incorporated and combined vertically in the hierarchical order.
As a result, workers were not able to meet and communicate with each other and hence the responsibility of quality assurance would be carried out by normal employees who were not well informed about quality applications or in other cases, where quality guarantee would be performed by inspection departments of the organization. Total Quality Management also aided in improving the manufacturing process to focusing their technological practices to meet customer demands. In addition, they included areas such as product design, management of staff and relationships with suppliers.
Although, production procedures in the traditional perspective focuses more on ensuring that technical conditions and physical proportions of goods are strictly followed in the area of leadership, the variation between Total Quality Management and traditional management depends on how managers dealt with their workers. As discussed earlier, organizations that trust in the concept of Total Quality Management have formed horizontal structures, which help in motivating leadership that impose managers to communicate with their employees on how they can assist in their tasks instead of penalizing them for their faults.
Explain the following statement “Quality cost programs translate quality problems into the language of top management”
The statement is discussing on the best means to catch the attention of top managers. As explained earlier, problems in quality lead to production of poor quality goods and services. Therefore, if no measure were taken to minimize the causes of poor quality, the organization would fail to sustain its competitiveness and reliability within the market, hence leading to a major profit loss. The responsibility of utilizing quality measures is left upon the top management but unfortunately, most of these managers are less concerned about the company’s quality performance and so they need to be persuaded to take action. As a result, the quality assurance programs that educate on how to handle quality problems have been changed to money negotiations. The quality cost programs convert matters of quality into capital and income, which directly lead to the duties and responsibilities of managers.
Discuss the role of the purchasing department of a manufacturing firm in achieving quality.
The value of raw materials and other purchased products determine the quality of the product in the final production stage. Therefore, it is important for any production company to ensure quality in their production procedures. Such responsibility is left to the purchasing section because they help the organization to sustain the high product quality through several ways including choosing quality sensitive suppliers and ensuring that customer demands entail the quality needs that are indicated by the blueprint of the product. Other means involve combining workers from the technical, sales and supplier businesses to discuss on the product design in order to solve technological issues. The others are introducing enduring connections with suppliers based on reliability, offering quality-training programs to suppliers, update suppliers on issues related with their products and sustaining excellent communication with suppliers as modifications in product requirements of design and quality continue to take place (Evans and Lindsay, 2011).
Many managers incorrectly conclude that the meaning of point 6 (institute training) and point 13 (encourage education and self-improvement) of the Deming philosophy are identical. Explain how the meanings of the points differ.
The sixth point of institute training is the process of training and informing workers in precise job skills that are required in the operation of their job responsibilities in the business. In addition, it helps to remove barriers that interfere with the work relationship between supervisors and employees. On the other hand, the thirteenth point of encouraging education and self-improvement goes past the traditional methods of training for meeting the work requirements to unlimited education for self-satisfaction. This type of learning enables workers who are a more important asset to any company to be more informed, content and confident. In addition, it enables them to present a positive image in terms of organization performance.
Discuss the benefits associated with customer segmentation.
For an organization that seeks to determine the connection between consumers and their product requirements, it is necessary for it to be informed about the type of consumers it has. This involves identifying customers and dividing them into various categories depending on factors such as location, culture, income level and age group among others in order to understand better on their requirements of goods and services (Evans & Lindsay, 2011). This method is known as customer segmentation. The mail order clothing business can utilize this method to categorize different kinds of consumers in order to produce more efficient goods and services. For the mail order company to achieve customer segmentation, it has to accomplish several tasks.
The responsibilities involved include paying attention to consumer’s requirements. As a result, the organization will be able to know the specific goods and services to offer customers. Consumers can also be classified into diverse categories; hence, simplifying the decision making process for the Clothing Company on the selecting of the product features including the material and size among others. In addition, the organization will have access to consumer updates on the product requirements. The other task involves finding out information on modifying goods and services through evaluating customer demands and determining the solutions. As a result, the business would be at ease when identifying the dissatisfying and satisfying consumer factors of a product, and therefore be able to make the correct product modifications. In addition, the company gains consumer dependability and preservation.
During the organization’s process of determining consumer’s needs, each consumer group contains a precise arrangement of product applications depending on the customer response of how they use the product. As a result, this analysis helps in updating the quality of goods and services beyond the limits of the customers’ demands. The other task involves exhaustive promotion of goods and services. The customer product applications enable the organization to have a better comprehensiveness of the product factors from each customer group including the age, purchasing conduct and mindset. This information is used by the marketing sector of the organization to make the necessary adjustments when producing goods and services including price and quality to march with the criteria that is demanded in the marketplace.
Identify five different ways in which the clothing company could segment customers
The Mail Order Clothing Company would categorize its customers depending on their age group, gender, fashion preferences and physical location. For example in the physical location factor, some consumers who are located in a foreign country might have their goods delivered to them through different means of transport including air. In terms of time segmentation since the organization is an online business, it should focus on finding the fastest and most efficient means of delivering goods to their consumers.
What criterion is used to classify a failure cost as “internal” versus “external”? Give three example of an internal failure cost and three example of external failure cost
In the process of obtaining expenses from the low quality goods before presenting them to the consumer, costs involved are calculated as internal failure costs. However, if the costs are calculated on the low quality goods after they have reached the consumer, they are known as external failure costs. Several examples of internal failure costs are product faults and modifications, including expenses in material and human labor. Other costs are incurred on resources used for research or investigation done to obtain product solutions. Another example of internal failure includes technical issues such as uncertain power failure that slows down the process of producing goods hence bearing the company more costs.
Examples of external failure include expenses incurred in consumer refund of goods, modifications on refunded products and unsuccessful orders. Other examples include guarantee demands and product related legal issues such as liability.
Should an organization invest more heavily in appraisal or prevention cost? Explain your position
It is necessary for organizations to spend a huge amount of capital in prevention expenses because if it ignores to exercise preventative measures in avoiding low quality goods, the consequences will be much greater. As a result, the negative impact will be extreme to the extent of making the organization to lose its foundation within the market from other competitor organizations. Appraisal costs can be defined as expenses incurred in the process of examining the quality of products to ensure they are free from defaults. However, costs of prevention can be defined as expenses incurred in protecting the products from having defaults right from the beginning of the production process and hence securing the organization’s capital.
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