Quality management (11)

Question 1

SUMMARY

Answer 1

In summary, the following are covered in this topic:
1. Quality means that a good or service fulfils its purpose and meets customers’
expectations.
2. The four forces that have emerged which have led to quality becoming a major
priority for many businesses are increase in customer awareness; competition,
increase in consumer income and government legislation.
3. By producing quality goods and services, businesses would gain benefits such as
customer loyalty; avoid costs associated with customer complaints; longer
product life cycle; reduced need for advertising; and ability to charge a price
premium.
4. Implications of poor quality include loss of business; liability; productivity; and
costs.
5. The two approaches to quality management are quality control and quality
assurance.
6. Quality control involves inspecting, testing and sampling the quality of the
completed product or service.
7. Quality assurance is based on setting agreed quality standards at all stages in
the production of a good or service in order to ensure that customer satisfaction
is achieved.
8. Quality improvement is based around four key phases of the PDCA cycle; Plan,
Do , Check and Act.