3.4.4 Making operational decisions to improve performance: improving quality. Flashcards
What are the tangible measures of quality?
Appearance.
Reliability.
Durability.
Functions.
After-sales service (cost, promptness and effectiveness).
Repair and maintenance
needs.
What are the intangible measures of quality?
Brand image.
Reputation.
Exclusiveness.
What are five possible quality objectives?
Customer satisfaction ratings.
Customer complaints.
Level of product returns.
Scrap rate.
Punctuality.
What are the benefits of quality to a business.
Competitive advantage.
Impact on sales volume.
Unique selling point.
Impact of selling price.
Pricing flexibility (good reputation).
Cost reductions.
Brand loyalty & firm reputation.
Define a quality system.
An approach used by an organisation to achieve quality. Either classified by quality control or quality assurance.
Define quality control.
A system that uses inspection as a way of finding any faults in the good or service being provided.
Outline the methods of improving quality.
Quality Control.
Quality Assurance.
Outline quality control:
Quality inspectors are employed to check the accuracy of completed work and the quality of supplied goods.
What are the benefits of inspection?
Prevent the defective product from reaching the customer.
More secure system.
Common problems was be resolved effectively.
Outline the drawbacks of inspection.
Employees are not encouraged to improve the quality of their product.
Can be viewed as unnecessary if products are “right first time”.
Worker responsibility motivates them.
Define Quality assurance.
A system that aims to achieve or improve quality by organising every process to get the product “right first time” and prevent mistakes ever happening.
Outline the benefits of quality assurance.
Responsibility rests on the workers - greater motivation (Herzberg).
Reduced costs - faults caught at the initial stages.
Higher more consistent level of quality.
Workers likely to reject defective partially completed products on the line - more involvement.
Outline the systems of quality assurance.
Total quality management (quality chains).
Kaizen.
Define Total quality management.
Quality chains in which people treat the receivers of their work as if they were external customers and adopt a target of ‘right first time’.
Define Kaizen.
A policy of implementing small, incremental changes in order or achieve better quality and/or efficiency.
