ch 40 Flashcards
kaizen
means continuous improvement in every aspect of like including soical life work and home life.
everyone in the business is involved
There are a number of features of Kaizen which affect a business:
Continuous Improvement
Eliminating Waste
Implementing Continuous Improvement
What is Continuous Improvement as part of Kaizen?
Kaizen is main difference between Japanese and western approaches to management.
Western approach tends to lead to occasional large increases in production
Large increases tend to be more disruptive and costly than smaller continuous changes
What is Eliminating Waste as part of Kaizen?
The argument being waste in any activity increases cost, without adding value.
Examples include;
Time wasted as staff wait around before starting a task
Time wasted when workers move unnecessarily in the workplace, ie walking to central storage areas
Irregular use of machinery, still requires servicing and maintenance.
Excessive workloads can lead to a tired, less efficient workforce.
What is Implementing Continuous Improvement as part of Kaizen?
Japanese businesses use the PDCA cycle:
Plan – where is the improvement needed? Plan how to generate improvement
Do – implement changes to processes
Check – to see if changes have led to desired improvements
Action – if successful, so apply across the rest of the business
This process is usually applied across smaller teams first, before being rolled out across the whole business.
What are the Advantages of improving quality? quality management can give competitive advantage
- Increased quality = increased sales
Cutting costs:
-Less waste - Increased efficiency
- Lower unit costs
- Development of a USP – reputation for quality (Rolls Royce, JLR, Apple, etc)
- Charge premium prices
- Competitive advantage
ad of TQM
-Focus clearly on customer needs and relationships with suppliers
-Achieve quality in all aspects of the business
-Critically analyse the processes to remove waste and inefficiencies
-Find improvements and develop measures of performance
-Develop a team approach to quality and improvement
-Improve communication within the organisation
-Continually review processes to develop a strategy for continuous improvement
drawbacks of TQM
-There are training and development costs for new systems
-Will only work with commitment from entire business
-Can increase bureaucracy and systems require frequent audits
-Stress can be placed upon the process and staff.
what are quality circles
These are small groups of individuals from the same area of production who come together to meet and discuss quality issues.
They will look to identify areas in the production process that may be failing and look for improvements, or to improve working practices to make things more efficient.
To be successful, quality circles need the support of both management and workers. Workers need to feel that comments can be aired freely without fear of reprisal to allow the business to benefit from these groups.
ad of control
not wasting time
cheaper
lower training costs than Quality Assurance
Less difference in opinion on quality
dis of control
-dont know when the problem occurred
-the sample may not reflect on the entire batch
-Harder to identify an error
-May be expensive as whole batches could be discarded
-inefficient if errors occur early on - waste of time and resources
ad of assurance
Guaranteed a perfect product at the end
Can easily identify where the problem is
less chance of waste products as quality is assured
dis of assurance
may be usafe to check some products before they are completed e.g. chainsaw
time-consuming
expensive training costs
complaint in the checking process as it has been checked previously
what is control
The product’s quality is checked at the end of the process
checked by a quality inspector.
what is assurance
a method of working for businesses that take into account customer’s wants when standardizing quality. if often involves guaranteeing that quality standards are met
and is cheaked for errors thoughout the production proacess at the end of EACH STAGE
