Operations Management
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Internal and External Quality Standards

Quality is concerned with:

  • How good the design of the product is
  • The reliability of the product
  • Being fit for the intended purpose
  • Satisfying the necessary legislation

Why is Quality important for a business? - if a product is of bad quality the chances of a customer returning the product increases, this causes not only loss of money but also could lead to bad publicity. This could sway potential customers into not buying the product.

Quality Assurance - This is the way in which a business sets out its procedures to make sure that the products they produce are of the required quality.

Quality Control - this is a process in which a business reviews the quality of all the factors involved in the process of production.

Wastage ratesnumber of rejects producedTotal number of products produced ×100

Total Quality Management :

This method of controlling quality focuses on finding ways to prevent mistakes rather than inspecting for mistakes.

Advantages:

  • Focus on the needs of consumers
  • Improves quality in all departments not just the one being inspected
  • Encourages employees to be involved which boosts motivation
  • Cuts out waste and inefficiencies

Disadvantages: Takes a lot of time to implement If lots of changes are implemented a lot of time will be used for training Can require a change in company attitude

Benchmarking:

This is comparing results of quality tests against a previous set of results. This can either be against internal results of the business or against its competitors.

Advantages:

  • Easy to see how well a business is doing compared to the competition
  • Easy to implement
  • Gives targets for employees to strive for

Disadvantages:

  • Limited access to sensitive material from competitors can make comparing difficult
  • Difficult to see just from benchmarks how the business could improve

Quality Standards:

BS 5750 Kitemark - this is an award a business can earn after being inspected by the BRitish standards Institution (BSI). A business can display this award to show customers that its products are of high standard, which will lead to more sales.

© Copyright 2020 Michał Stryjski & Holon Media Ltd. All rights reserved.last modified: 19/10/2020