Quality Flashcards
What can quality be used for?
Quality is defined by the customer
it can be used as a competitive weapon
It satisfies customers
It ensures the product is fit for
It applies to products and services, for example answering phone quickly
There is a relationship between price and quality
What are the quality operations process?
Set quality targets (base of customers expectations)
Put systems into place to achieve them
Train staff
Regularly measured to see if targets on Matt
Take action if targets aren’t met
Benefits of improving quality
Positive brand image/good reputation
Less effective products equals lower cost
Possibly charge a premium
Improves profit mar
Don’t need to do as much promotion (market savings
Staff morale is improved as is less complaint
It’s easier to place products (easy to find retailers to stop the product)
Cons of poor quality
Fines or legal cost of customers
Negative brand image
Decreased customer satisfaction
Higher cost due to increased effects/recall
Complain
Lower staff morale
Lower sales
Offer a price discount
It’s impacts the whole product range
What are the difficulties in improving quality?
What do managers need to do as a result of the difficulties in improving quality?
Discuss issues with employees and persuade them to agree with the process. They then need to develop a culture of getting it right the first time.
-Invest in training
-Consider changing suppliers
What is quality assurance?
Quality assurance is about the processes that ensure production quality meets the requirements of customers
How does quality assurance work?
This is an approach that aims to achieve quality by organising every process to get the product right first time and prevent mistakes ever happening. This is also known as the zero defect approach.
What is there more emphasis on in quality assurance?
Quality assurance there is more emphasis on self tracking rather than checking with inspectors
What are the advantages of quality assurance?
– cost are reduced because there was less wasted in reworking of faulty products as a product is checked at every stage
– It can help improve worker motivation as workers have more ownership and recognition for their work
– It can help break down‘ us and them‘ barriers between work as a managers as a eliminates the feeling of being checked upon
– With all the staff responsible for quality this can help the firm gain marketing advantages arising from its consistent level of quality
What is quality control?
Quality control is the process of inspecting products to ensure that they meet their required quality standard
How does the quality control method work?
This method checks the quality of completed products of faults, quality inspectors measure or test every product samples from each batch or random samples as appropriate to the kind of products produced
What is the main objective of quality control?
The main objective of quality control is to ensure that the business is achieving the standards it sets for itself
What are the advantages of quality control?
With quality control inspection is intended to prevent faulty products reaching the customer. This approach means having specially trained inspectors rather than every individual being responsible for their own work. Furthermore it is thought that inspectors may be better place to find widespread problems across an organisation
What are disadvantages of quality control?
– Individuals are not necessarily encouraged to take responsibility for the quality of their work
– Rejected product is expensive for a firm as it has incurred the cost of production but cannot be sold as the manufacturer does not want its name associated with the sub standard products. Some rejected products can be reworked but in many industries it has to be scrapped either way rejects incur more cost.
– Quality control approach can be highly effective at preventing defective products from reaching the customer. However if defect levels are very high the companies profitability will suffer unless steps are taken to tackle the root causes of the failure.