4.4 - Improving quality Flashcards
How might a business identify poor quality products?
Conduct quality control.
Through customer service and returns.
How can a business measure the quality of a product or service after production?
Customer surveys and reviews/feedback.
According to Andy Grove, when is the best time to find problems within a product?
Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel and management thought leader, advocated finding problems with a product or raw materials at the ‘lowest value added stage’ or as early in the production process as possible. This is because it is cheaper to fix problems at this stage.
What is TQM (Total quality management)?
Total Quality Management (TQM) is a set of management principles that places quality at the heart of everything a business does. Every employee must do every aspect of their job to the highest possible standard in order to achieve a high customer satisfaction.
What are the benefits of a company maintaining high quality?
High quality can lead to additional sales. If businesses compete on quality (as well as price) then keeping quality high could increase a business’ sales. They may attract more new customers and existing customers may be more satisfied and buy the product again (becoming repeat customers).
Boosts image/reputation
Increase prices for a more premium product.
Avoid product recalls.
What are the costs of maintaing high quality?
Provision of services.
Inspection costs.
Staff training.
Define pull and push prodcution.
A push method of production involves demand forecasting, inventory storage and planned production levels. A pull method involves withdrawing whatever is produced at the previous stage of production when it is needed.
Give an example of a company that uses pull production.
Taiichi Ohno is considered as the father of the Toyota Production System.
He described the main aim of the system as reducing the time it took for a customer to place an order and for Toyota to collect the cash.
The best way to do this was to remove all non-value add things that he defined as waste. It took 12 years for Ohno to roll the system out across the whole of Toyota.
List sources of waste within a business (i.e elements that increase cost without adding value)
Overproduction Waiting time Transportation Time on production line People movement Defective product
In what year was the oil crisis that helped lead to the creation of the Toyota Production System?
In 1973, there was an oil crisis that meant fewer people wanted to buy cars. Therefore Toyota had to become more efficient at producing cars in small volume (in small production runs).
How many years did it take Ohno to roll out the system across Toyota?
12 years.
