Managing Quality

Apart from productivity, firms in general are focusing on how to ensure that quality expectations in both product and service are fulfilled. Various methods are being applied to monitor that metric; some even custom made for the company’s overall operations. There are also some firms who put critical emphasis and employing complex quality measures that would make sure their products would not only be accepted by the general market, but be of the highest quality as well.
That reason could only be just one of the many possible reasons and even purposes, by any firm putting emphasis on the quality of their operations. Organizations now always aim to produce and provide the highest quality of both products and services with the consideration also of the costs involved in doing so. The market demands of better quality of products and services which inevitably putting the pressure on these companies to deliver.
In this study, we will attempt to analyse how firms cope and manage quality to remain competitive and significant into not only the local market but the global industries as well. This study will also present whether the management of quality is different from a family run business enterprise to a large corporation, and analyse their key differences and purpose. And lastly, this study will critically examine the above statement prior to this introduction, and explain its meaning by discussing the importance of managing quality.

Management Management is actually a broad term that can be simply defined as the method “of combining and coordinating a series of assets, either in the form of cash, manpower or machineries, to realize an organisation’s goals” (“The Nature of Management”, n. d. , p. 1). Management covers all things that deal with the basic planning, controlling, leading and organizing the whole body of work called operation to ensure that the expected output would be achieved. Defining Integrative and contingency approach
The integrative and contingency approach is simply a system of methods to ensure that potential issues would be detected early and errors can be corrected as soon as possible. Thus, any manager of any organization ensures that day to day operations should always be running smoothly until the end or output whether it is a product or service. This approach does not confide only in the production environment but also to other areas of the organization as well. Quality Management Managing quality is a very important responsibility for every manager.
The goal here is depending on the organizational goals/mission, would either be cost-effective or gain a significant market share due to the distribution of improved products and outstanding services. Managing quality is just one of the roles of any manager, which explains that in order to realize company’s objectives; one must integrate all the required formulas for success and not solely basing it on focusing too much on quality. But still, quality is an integral part that accounts a significant factor to any firm’s goals.
A lot of companies’ needs improvement on the way they run their business, according to Foster, the aggregate time being used by most companies in production is only 25% of total working time (2010). That means that 75% of all the tasks can be considered as “wastes” or non-value added activities that can be decreased or eliminated using various methods and tools for quality management. Quality management is so critical that failing in it may cause products to fail even before manufacturing it. The term “Total Quality Management” or (TQM) was born from the desire of companies to have the competitive edge on the market consistently.
An example would be an article from the “Logistics Association of Australia Ltd” which they consider adopting TQM policies as their main weapon on thriving on the logistics business (n. d. ). TQM principles provide a systematic framework for companies to run their business efficiently. It has methods to analyze wastes and how to eliminate it. For example if an organization that has a 15 man staff, that has the ability to work on 1000 work order volume a day, but only works 800, there could be error detected in either work training procedure, technology used or the ineffectiveness of the whole workforce itself.
TQM has the method capacity planning and “Lean” concepts and philosophy that would help managers identify the problem and act on it real-time. TQM also focuses on “continuous improvement” or “Kaizen” (Imai, 1986) a Japanese term that validates the focus on quality. This means that any process can be improved which equates to a better result in product output or service. Quality management also conforms to having a standard in doing things correctly consistently and identifying improvements necessary to gain an edge competitively.
Quality Management in Practice – Accenture Australia Accenture Australia is a large multinational corporation that offers several types of business services (Accenture Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, 2010). As a company the firm banks on its major accreditations of sustained and consistent improvement with meeting and exceeding their service levels with both current and potential clients. One of their major accreditation is their consistency on maintaining the ISO 9001, which is a major certificate that validates a firm total commitment in quality management (Australian Gov.
Dept of Finance and Deregulation, 2010, p. 7). The firm garnered major growth as shown by their total annual revenues, it doesn’t mean that it is because of their outstanding quality management alone, but by their ability to integrate quality management into other operational capabilities such as productivity, effective marketing plan, strategic planning etc. which made this company successful. KFC Australia’s Quality Management In a fast paced industry such as a fast-food chain, it is important that the workforce keeps up on the demands of their customers.
KFC can be considered a large food chain that in Australia alone has already have established 600 stores and twelve thousand (12000) employees (KFC Australia, 2010). In KFC their main focus is make certain that the company has always has the “right people, trained in the right skills, in the right roles” (Financial Review, n. d. ). And to ensure they do have the right people, KFC has put emphasis on their human resources department to ensure that they would attract, recruit and select the most capable staff for the company.
Then afterwards, they would engage those hired on consistently “training and developing them to attain their utmost career potential, which also enables the organization to profit from its employees’ improved skills and knowledge”. (Finance Review, n. d. ). They also provide a “balanced scorecard” which has “key performance indicators” that acts as a guideline for employees to follow and also be assessed upon by the HR department whether they are meeting expectations and their outputs are aligned with the organisational goals.
To guarantee retention KFC’s also is providing its employees with “performance-based rewards system” that can come to either bonuses or promotion to keep the employees engaged and perform at their maximum capabilities (Finance News, n. d. ) Spice of Life: A family-run Cafe and Restaurant If KFC focuses their quality management on hiring, training and developing their people, Spice of life focuses on providing value to customer satisfaction with their variety of meals. Spice of Life, comprehends the importance of having a consistent stable of loyal and satisfied clients.
A review made by Joanna Savill, shows the appreciation of the customers on food, although she also pointed out that the service by the crew still needs improvement (2010). As stated by Garvin (1987) that since this company’s focus is on customer’s the value created is determined by not only service alone, but by the product’s performance (as one of the dimensions stated on his book on product quality) in which in this example the Spice of Life meals. Conclusion In this study we have shown, the importance on integrating quality management to other important factors to consider in ensuring realization of organisational goals.
This study have cited what does TQM stands for and also outlined its viability to a large firm like Accenture Australia. There are many applications and tools of TQM and each can be utilized by any firm that has a complete commitment to quality management. As discussed, on the part of comparison between a large fast food chain KFC to a family run enterprise Spice of life, the focus could be slightly different but both having practiced managing quality by their desired goals. For KFC it is the importance of having the best people doing the job, for Spice of life it was simply customer focus by providing a quality meal.
References Accenture Australia Holdings Pty Ltd (2010). ”Company background”. Retrieved from http://www. accenture. com Anon (n. d. ) The Nature of Management. [Online] Retrieved from http://www. google. com. au/url? sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CDMQFjAB&url=ht tp%3A%2F%2Fwww. leadingedge. com. au%2Fanswers%2Ftextbook%2Fbusiness_stu dies%2Fbiz_text_ch01. pdf&rct=j&q=define%20management&ei=PZNhTLmJH4vIv QPu8pTlAQ&usg=AFQjCNFQSYNKG0ti09I3NAjtZlMXujK4vA&cad=rja Australian Gov. Dept of Finance and Deregulation (2010). “Business Process Transformation”. [doc].
Retrieved from http://www. google. com. au/url? sa=t&source=web&cd=7&ved=0CDQQFjAG&url=htt p%3A %2F%2Fwww. finance. gov. au%2Fprocurement%2Fict-procurement%2Fict- management-consultant-multi-use- list%2Fdocs%2FBPT. rtf&rct=j&q=Accenture%20australia%20ISO%209000%20certi fication&ei=Kq9hTLCjDYTJccqvpdYJ&usg=AFQjCNFSpW8dYtg_UStd43mh7Iksq -8veQ&cad=rja Financial Review (n. d. )”Training and retaining great employees in a fast-paced industry. [PDF]. Retrieved from http://www. afrbiz. com. au/library/416226/publish/Asset/431279_ABC067_YUM_CS 07_5revisedfinal. pdf Foster, S. T (2010) Managing Quality 4th ed. Pearson, New Jersey Garvin, D. A. (1987).
Competing on the eight dimensions of quality. Harvard Business Review, 65 (6), pp. 101-109. Imai, M. (1986), Kaizen: The key to Japan’s competitive success. New York: Random House. KFC Australia Pty Ltd (2010). “Company profile”. Retrieved from http://www. kfc. com. au/about-us/index. asp Logistics Association of Australia Ltd (n. d. ) Total Quality Management: The Driving Force in Logistics. [PDF] Retrieved from http://www. laa. asn. au/pdf/ldaarticles/DB7. pdf Savill, J. (2010). “Spice of Life”. [Online] Retrieved from http://www. smh. com. au/entertainment/restaurants-and-bars/spice-of-life-20100319- qlcc. html