1. Lesson 8 - The management of Quality

2. Explain supply chain management.
Question from last lesson
Suggested solution
!
Explanation should refer to the link between operations
and suppliers [1 mark],
so materials are delivered on time and at the right price [1
mark].

3. The story so far……….
Operations function Business Objectives
Does this by transforming inputs into outputs
Efficiently
To gain competitiveness
Facilities layoutIncreased productivity
Quality

4. • Outline the main features of quality management.
• Explain why quality control is important to organisations.
• In what ways can organisations offer quality assurance to
customers?
• Explain what is meant by total quality management.
• Outline the three approaches that make up total quality
management.
What you need to know and be able to do

5. Think of a product or service your have purchased recently
What were your expectations of the product or service?

6. The Management of Quality
Quality refers to the degree of excellence of goods and services
and their fitness for a stated purpose

7. Large organisations use quality management to make sure that
their products meet customer expectations.Three quality
strategies are quality control, quality assurance and total quality
management (including employee empowerment, continuous
improvement and improved customer focus).

9. Quality control is a system of ensuring proper standards are met through
checking processes (how things are done), and products and services
Quality control methods include:
- Inspection of a product, usually at random, to ensure it meets the standards
required
- Statistical quality control by:
1. taking samples of work
2. measuring the quality in the samples
3. determining whether the results are acceptable
4. taking measures to correct this if results are unacceptable

10. The Six Sigma program is a method of quality control that
requires no more than 3.4 defects per million units of goods
produced or services delivered; i.e a perfection rate of 99.9997%
Six Sigma works by:
- Identifying and removing causes of defects
- helping organisations produce products and services better,
faster and more cheaply

11. Quality assurance (QA)
Quality assurance is an organised approach to ensuring the activities of the
business are geared towards producing products or services that fulfill customer
expectations
QA involves both internal and external assessment of quality established by specific
standards
These specified standards may be internationally recognised or developed specifically for
an industry
Internationaly recognised quality standards are maintained by
the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) in
switzerland
To be granted certification in ISO 9001, an organisation
must meet strict quality standards

12. The QA approach is an advance on the quality control approach because QA
attempts to have in place a whole operations system that continually improves
processes, and includes regular internal and external audits that in many cases
eliminate the need for inspection.

13. Total quality management (TQM) takes a broader—and more ‘total’—view of
quality compared to quality control and quality assurance. In fact, theTQM
approach includes quality assurance, which in turn includes quality control as
illustrated in the diagram.

14. Total Quality Management (TQM)
Customer focus: External customers (buyers of the final product) are an obvious
focus in business. ButTQM offers a further valuable insight—all employees serve a
customer.Whether or not they have any contact with external customers, every
employee in an organisation works right next to other customers.These are
internal customers.
Employee participation: TQM sees
everyone in the process as members of a big
team guiding the quality process.Teamwork
should be encouraged at all levels of the
organisation; teams are expected to achieve
better performance than individuals working
alone.
TQM involves adopting an organisational-wide commitment to quality:
Continuous improvement - Involves
an on-going commitment to achieving
perfection

15. Exit Question
Suggested solution
!
Definition should refer to an organisation continually
evaluating their procedures and implementing changes to
increase efficiency or quality or to reduce faults [1 mark].
!
Example should relate to continuous improvement [1 mark].
For example, a car manufacturer would always review the
design and construction of their cars to improve
performance and customer satisfaction and avoid waste.