1. “Quality as a Way to Gain
Competitive Advantage”
- Looking at Rolex -
United Business Institutes, Operations Management.
Justin d’Anethan (BA2)

2. Introduction
• Ways to gain competitive advantage
• What is quality?
• Why is quality important in all other
ways of gaining competitive advantage
• How can OM influence quality.

3. Ways of Gaining Competitive
Advantage
• Product novelty and differentiation
• Responsiveness
• Costs
• Quality

4. Quality
• The three interpretations of quality
- Customer-based
- Product-based
- Manufacturing-based
• Understand the trade-off with costs
• Benefits of quality
• Cost of good and poor quality

5. Why Is Quality Important in
All Other Ways of Gaining
Competitive Advantage
• The other ways of gaining competitive
advantage will not be effective in the
long-term if a certain quality level isn’t
maintained.

6. How Can OM Influence
Quality
• Creation of the product design,
attributes and characteristics
• Setting company standards
• Choosing to comply with international
standards (ex: ISO9000,...)
• Hiring quality staff and training to
existing and/or new techniques,
material, machinery, etc.