Quality Flashcards
Quality
A good quality product is one that meets the customer’s requirements. A business could set targets to ensure quality.
Examples of setting targets to ensure quality
Hospital having targets for time patients kept waiting or how long it takes to treat them.
Car manufacturer challenging a car’s calabillities in extreme conditions.
Problems with having poor quality
Customer’s dissatisfied- may not buy again.
Damaged reputation.
Cost of recalling and/or replacing products.
Cost of waste
Cost of goods nobody wants
Cost of potential legal action
Maintaining consistant quality- suppliers
Making sure suppliers sell good quality products and are reliable
Maintaining consistant quality- staff
Train staff to inspect quality properly and understand the quality which the business expects and customers desire. Investing in better equipment (and training staff to use it). Inspecting products at every stage of the process to check for defects (cheaper than checking at the end). Kaizen groups to involve staff.
Total quality management
When everyone is focused on preventing errors occuring and ensuring quality at each stage of production. Gives employees extra responsibility (passing back and examining work). Means employees require extra training to understand how to check work and the quality expectations- costs time+money.
Costs of improving quality
Costs of inspection + checking- known as quality control. Costs of training staff to check their own quality. Costs of selecting another supplier.
Benefits of maintaining quality- customers
Customers likely to come back+recommend the business.
Customers know what to expect and trust the business to provide good quality products.
Benefits of maintaining quality
Avoiding mistakes saves cost of recalling, replacing or redesigning products.
Can charge higher prices.
Improves product+brand reputation
Problems achieving consistant quality
Good suppliers, well defined ways of working and regular monitoring of performance necessary to ensure quality. A business that wants to grow faster may need to franchise andor outsource meaning it has less control over wether these measures are being carried out; harder to ensure quality.
