Quality
Quality Control
Quality Assurance
Description
Description
Disadvantages
Disadvantages
Advantages
Advantages
Quality Circles
Quality Improvement
Description
Disadvantages
Advantages
Description
Disadvantages
Advantages
- Any faulty products are filtered out
- Helps maintain a good reputation
- The business stays ahead of the competition
- The business can react easily to changing external factors
- Creates waste
- The business can have high staff-development costs
- High costs to rework
- Employees may feel under pressure to continually keep improving
Inspecting finished products at the end of production to look for faults
This involves following a Japanese philosophy known as Kaizen, which states that everyone and every process in an organisation should constantly improve
- Low waste
- Easy to pinpoint where faults are occurring
Inspecting products at each stage of production to look for faults
This involves a group of employees meeting with a line manager to discuss problems in the production process and how to solve them, suggestions are then passes to management
- Slows production
- Expensive initially
Mystery Shoppers
Description
Disadvantages
Advantages
- Employees will be motivated as they get to have a say in decision-making
- No bias as shopper does not work for business
- Can suggest improvements based on actual customer experience, not just intended customer experience
- Management get well-informed suggestions from the workers who actually produce the product
- Employees meet during paid company time, meaning production time is lost
- Mystery shoppers are forbidden from sharing experience outside of the business
Anonymous individuals are hired to 'test' the customer service experience of a branch
- Employees are often trained to join a quality circle, costing the business even more time and money
- Staff may feel cheated by this 'sneaky' method
- Mystery shopper may encounter a one-off error and report it, which is then assumed to be the norm
- Businesses need to pay mystery shoppers
click to edit
Total Quality Management
Advantages
- Zero errors means no waste
- Motivates staff
- Reputation as perfect
- Culture of teamwork
Disadvantages
- Substantial staff training, to ensure no mistakes are made, will increase costs and result in lost work time
Description
A combination of various techniques including assurance, improvement and circles to attempt to bring errors to zero
- Requires the commitment of all staff, stricter selection process
- Processes need to be continually monitored and compared to policies and procedures, time consuming