Title: The role of Quality Assurance and Quality Control in Management
Presented to Professor:
Arebe Taylor
LOGI1020-Materials Management
(41931)
By: Glennis Rowley
Date: March 17th, 2015
“Quality assurance and quality control is the combination of quality assurance, the process or set of processes used to measure and assure the quality of a product, and quality control, the process of meeting products and services to consumer expectations. Quality assurance is process oriented and focuses on defect prevention, while quality control is product oriented and focuses on defect identification.” Quality assurance and control affects companies in many ways, from the productivity and profitability to
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Although the initial cost might seem expensive, the overall costs of ensuring delivery of quality products and services might prove to be less than expected. There are four ways in which quality assurance and control can affect a company, and they are: productivity, profitability, cost, and customer satisfaction. Poor quality costs organization money in terms of productivity problems. If an organization uses low-quality parts and materials, systems will break down, even if of any high quality parts or materials are also used. Low quality parts and materials can cause mechanical breakdowns and failure, as well as slowing down the flow of work or even bringing work to a halt. Improving productivity and quality in an organization usually results in increased customer and employee contentment. If an organization implements and uses the quality management system techniques such as cost-analysis, process mapping, and benchmarking, they can attain regular improvement in all work flow processes. Improved production will results in fewer deficiencies, fewer delays and reduced costs. With improved productivity within an organization it leads to increases profitability. When employees are engaged in a work environment in which teamwork is emphasized and where quality products are the goal, the work environment flows more smoothly than one in which quality is an afterthought. For example,
Quality can be greatly affected internally within an organization. Considering that internal factors can be monitored and controlled mainly from within, it is considerably easier to manage, though these factors have a much more direct and immediate effect on the organization where the management responsibility lies. Internal contributors that factor into quality outcomes include leadership styles, administrative policies, and organizational culture. These factors, if not performed to standard or with minimal empathy can cause stress among staff indirectly affecting the consumers. An unpleasant environment may lead to a low morale and dissatisfaction throughout the organization. (Suchman, A., 2001)
Quality Management is viewed as a vital factor for the long-term achievement of an organization. Quality Management implementation has been an imperative viewpoint for enhancing organizational performance. The connections between quality management and execution have been explored by various researchers. While analyzing the relationship between quality management and execution, researchers have utilized distinctive execution sorts, for example, budgetary, creative, operational and quality execution. Research on quality administration has analyzed the connections between the Total quality administration and organization's performance. Quality management concentrates on continuous change of processes inside the organization to give excellent
Total quality management can be defined as a system of management that is based on the principle that every staff member needs to be committed to maintaining standards of work in every aspect of a company’s operations. This form of management is done in order to make sure that the entire organization can excel as a whole when it comes to the products or services that are important to the customer. Subsequently, this form of management has two fundamental operational goals. These goals are; careful design of the product or service, and ensuring that the organizations systems can produce the design at a consistent rate. What makes these two goals so important is the fact that they cannot be accomplished without the entire organizations unity. Furthermore this is how the term total quality management, was established.
Quality Control or (QC) for short, is a set of strictly enforced procedures that have been designed to ensure that a product meets the qualtiy requirements of a client on a ongoing basis. Therefore, to ensure that you provide your clients with consitentcy as far as qualiity goes, as the potential manufacters about the specifics surrodung the procedures they implement to enure qualitiy
As employees of an organization we are required to ensure the welfare of the same at all times. Sometimes we see and analyze certain processes carried out and it is understood that there is any way in which these processes can be improved. It happens that we are not prepared to report that such changes are needed for reasons that are varied. There are positions in companies that are responsible for ensuring that all processes, products and services offered comply fully with the expectations of customers. The so-called "quality controls" are the order of the day in different industries thus minimizing the losses that come when we could make a claim for defective product or service. The following provides an example of
The article highlighted several areas on how quality management affects the performance of an organization. Studies done have come back with mixed results. Some studies have proven that implementing quality implementation can have many benefits to an organization. However some studies have shown that organizations that have implemented total quality managements do not necessarily outperform organizations that do not or have not implemented total quality management programs. Of the results that have been published for organizations that had issues with quality management implementation several
Quality assurance is any orderly procedure of checking to see if a product or service being developed is to a high standard and meets specific requirements in developing products and services. Various companies have a different department which is truly dedicated to quality assurance. A quality assurance system is said to give customers confidence within the company and their company's reliability, to expand work processes and their efficiency, and to enable a company to better compete with others. Quality assurance was initially introduced in World War II when weapons were reviewed, examined and tested for defects after they were made. Today's quality assurance systems emphasise catching defects before they get into the final
Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa developed a simple method of graphically displaying the causes of any given quality problem. His ideas were synthesized into 11 points that made up his quality philosophy. Most firms that pursue quality improvement use his tools. By democratizing statistics, he allowed for the complete involvement of the workforce in improving quality and performance.
An explanation of how quality assurance and control systems help the business to add value to its products.
Quality control is an important aspect of science and impacts life for average Americans daily. Just about every manufacturing facility used quality control, including medicine, food, and cosmetics. Quality control is used to determine if a product, like food contain what they say they do. For example, a company claiming to make healthy food may understate the amount of high fructose corn syrup (sugar), but if quality control happens then the contents will be revealed accurately.
The system of quality is prevention: This is why management must take the concept of prevention very seriously because it reduces defects and it lowers cost. This absolute state that appraisal, checking and inspection is an expensive and unreliable way of getting quality. Prevention can be achieved if during production process opportunities for error are identified. Prevention can also be achieved using statistical quality control method. Crosby (1995).
Companies ' utilize the quality control process along with following policies and procedures to monitor the quality of goods and services. They measure the quality through statistics and corporations are committed to produce products without defect. The manufacturing industry needs specific regulations and quality control measures should be required to protect consumers, corporations, and the environment. Stronger companies, leaders, and employees are created when quality control is implemented and used properly. By educating employees through training, setting goals, expectations and creating quality control standards new business relationships with vendors are formed and relationships with existing suppliers are stronger. Regulations from city and state are also required in order for corporations to distribute goods. Without a quality control process, companies ' run the risk of delivering defective or contaminated goods.
Joseph Juran defines quality as “fitness to serve,” meaning freedom from deficiencies. Like Crosby, he defines the term “quality costs” as the costs of making, finding, repairing, or avoiding defects. The costs of making good products are not a part of quality costs; the term is associated solely with the defective product. Juran divides the cost of quality into four core categories: internal failure costs, external failure costs, appraisal costs, and prevention costs. Juran believes the cost of providing quality to be the total of two very different costs: (1) the cost of the process that produces the products: the inputs, the facilities, the human effort, and (2) the cost of poor quality, including “chronic waste and sporadic firefighting.”
Our company should make sure that manufacturers deliver products with the highest design specification, in order to be order-winner quality conformance, by delivering products with no defects (Hill and Hill, 2012). Furthermore, improvements in quality lead to a decrease in cost for the company. According to (Evans, 1997) higher quality products lead to a decrease in costs for the company through higher productivity: ‘improvements in quality leads to lower cost because of less re-work, fewer mistakes, fewer delays and snags’ (Evans 1997, P.55).
Implementation of excellent quality comes with a cost. The company must decide if it is really worth compromising the quality for revenue. If the quality costs exceeds the expected revenue of the company then the company must abandon implementing quality control mechanism. If otherwise, the quality would contribute to the product value and hence the revenue.