QUALITY can be a confusing concept, partly because people view quality subjectively and in relation to differing criteria based on their individual roles in the production-marketing value chain.
Quality can be defined from six different perspectives:
• Transcendent
• Product
• User
• Value
• Manufacturing
• Customers
TRANSCENDENT PERSPECTIVE – defined as the goodness of a product. It is often loosely related to the aesthetic characteristics of products that are promoted by marketing and advertising.
PRODUCT PERSPECTIVE – it implies that larger numbers of product attributes are equivalent to higher quality, so designers often try to incorporate more features into products, whether they want them or not.
USER PERSPECTIVE – leads to a user-based definition of quality-fitness for intended use, or how well the product performs its intended function.
VALUE PERSPECTIVE – the relationship of product benefits to price.
MANUFACTURING PERSPECTIVE – provides an unambiguous way to measure quality and determine if a good is manufactured or a service is delivered as it was designed.
CUSTOMER PERSPECTIVE – the totality of features and characteristics of a product of service that bears on its ability to satisfy given needs
Modern quality assurance methods actually began millennia ago in China during Zhou Dynasty. Inspection at various stages by the workers themselves was important in establishing responsibility for quality
Many began to use the term BIG Q to contrast the difference between managing for quality in all organizational processes as opposed to focusing solely on manufacturing quality (LITTLE Q).
TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT – is a people-focused management system that aims at continual increase in customer satisfaction at continually lower real cost
PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE can be defined as an integrated approach to organizational performance management
GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY – an organization must be fully aware of global impact of its local decision and realize that as demand grows for the planet’s finite resources, waste is increasingly unacceptable.
CONSUMER AWARENESS – organizations must be quick when responding to their customers’ concerns and match their products to customers’ wants and needs, or risk having their customers defect to a competitor.
CONSUMER AWARENESS – organizations must be quick when responding to their customers’ concerns and match their products to customers’ wants and needs, or risk having their customers defect to a competitor.
GLOBALIZATION – firms have to contend with a growing number of competitors and sources of lower-cost labor and assume the risks associated with global supply chains.
INCREASING RATE OF CHANGE – the threat lies in the possibility that humanity won’t be able to adapt to the disruptions that accompany technological advances.
WORKFORCE OF THE FUTURE – competition for talent will increase, and along with technological advances, will change how and where work is done.
AGING POPULATION – as people live longer, organizations face higher costs for health care and social welfare programs.
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY QUALITY – Quality is moving beyond the organization’s walls to
encompass a customer’s entire experience with the organization rather than just the quality
of the product or service.
INNOVATION – the pursuit of something different and exciting. Innovation lies at the heart of
organizational survival.
SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS – include all nonmanufacturing organizations such as
hotels, restaurants, financial and legal services, and transportation, except such
industries are agriculture, mining, and construction.
DR. WILLIAM EDWARDS DEMING He made a significant contribution to Japan's later reputation for innovative high- quality products and its economic power
Dr. Joseph M. Juran
Stated that;
“Quality does not happen by accident, it has to be planned.”
“Management controllable defects account for over 80% of the total quality problems”-quality cannot be consistently improved unless the improvement is planned.
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
Award for excellence through implementation of quality improvement programs
Ritz-Carlton first won the award in 1992, and again in 1999
TOTAL QUALITY CONTROL (TQC) = System for integrating quality development, maintenance, and improvement into the groups of an organization
Armand Feigenbaum
• Quality control covers defining customers’ needs to obtaining their feedbacks to ensure satisfaction
• Quality is controlled in the process, not simply after production
Philip Crosby
Believed that:
• The only performance measurement is the cost of quality -i.e price of non conformance, cost of quality is always a measurable item, quantitative approach
• The only performance standard is zero defects -i.e. perfection is the target, quantitative approach to quality
Genichi Taguchi
The two founding ideas of his quality work are essentially quantitative:
• First is a belief in statistical methods to identify and eradicate quality problems.
• The second rests on designing products and processes to build quality in, right from the