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