AL Chapter 15 - Quality management

Quality assurance

A system for assuring customers that processes exist to maintain quality at every stage in production

It aims to prevent mistakes occurring and is based on the ideas that each production process acts as a supplier to an internal customer

Advantages

Prevents mistakes

Greater employee involvement

Lower costs as defects are avoided

Disadvantages

Costs of training

Greater demands placed on employees

Conflicts with focus on levels of output

Quality control

Involves methods to check the quality of a product or process, (inspection, testing and involving the workforce)

Advantages

Not every product has to be checked

Experts check quality

Problems highlighted

Disadvantages

Not every product checked so some slip through

Results in waste as faulty products are only found when finished

Responsibility for quality is not held by all employees

The link between quality and training

Quality control requires employees to understand sampling methods

Quality assurance requires employees to be able to check their work

Total quality management

Is a process of quality assurance in which all employees are responsible for managing quality

Main features

Consistently get it right the first time

All staff must be committed to continuous improvement

Build partnerships with suppliers

Problem solving is shared

Kaisen and TQM

Kaisen involved a group of employees identifying ways to improve how processes are carried out, small incremental changes have a big impact of business performance

TQM demands all employees are committed, share the problems, educated and trained

Benefits of Kaisen

Improvements in productivity

Less waste

Lower breakeven

Costs of Kaisen

Training employees and managers in new attitudes

Setting up teams and empowering employees

Dealing with employees not wanting greater involvement

Benchmarking

Involves comparing a firms procedures or products with the best practice in other businesses

Success means and improvement in the quality of products or processes, being equal will mean a business can gain reputation in the market

Advantages

Using information gained by observing

Costs and waste reduced

Customer service improved

Disadvantages

Difficult to gain accurate information

Cost of collecting information greater than gains

Implementation is hard