Unit 9: Quality Management
Quality management is a primary concern in operations departments. Though all employees and managers should be concerned with maintaining quality, most firms host a team dedicated to ensuring production quality. Quality management can come in any number of different forms. Quality control usually involves the random sampling of products coming off the line (with the goal of ensuring that all products are up to standards). This may be for compliance reasons (such as in meat production) or quality service (such as checking the seams in the leather of a Rolls Royce car). Other quality managers are concerned with the quality of the production process itself: are all employees being productive? Is there a bottleneck in the production process? This focus on efficiency is especially important for products with low margins. In this unit, you will learn about a few pioneers in total quality management and the processes used to control quality in manufacturing and service organizations.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 4 hours.
Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- explain quality management and apply quality management principles to continuous improvement in operations management;
- define total quality management;
- describe W. Edwards Deming's impact on quality management;
- evaluate the differences in operational costs between a focus on continuous quality improvement vs. maintaining the status quo; and
- explain how statistical process control assesses variations to measure quality.
- explain quality management and apply quality management principles to continuous improvement in operations management;
9.1: Productivity and Total Quality Management
This video describes the integrated system necessary to create a quality management system within an organization. Just using the word quality can be confusing for managers. Understanding what quality is and how it should be approached is challenging. Designing a systematic approach to quality management is fundamentally important to successfully controlling quality.
This article explores the nature of total quality management (TQM) and the necessity of use in the operations environment. TQM is one of the bedrock approaches to quality management. You will see many of the components of TQM in other quality management approaches. This approach is important because of the focus on a continuous cycle of improving the quality of a product, service, or process.
Quality principles are important to focusing on and leading an organization toward a culture that embraces continuous quality improvement.
- Quality audits are an important part of the quality process. Companies ensure they produce quality products or services by integrating ISO standards into processes. Audits are conducted to ensure that all parts of operations are compliant.
Quality control is focused on identifying issues with quality and initiating corrective action. Quality control processes are vital to a healthy quality control function.
Read this article to better understand the history of quality management and the impact of these three men on the approaches to quality management. You might call these men the founders of the quality process. Their contribution to this organizational focus on quality needs to be understood.
- Make forum posts: 1
After you've spent some time reviewing what you have learned so far in this unit, post about this topic on the discussion forum. Respond to your classmates' posts, as well.
Research the three notable awards (the Baldridge Award, European Quality Award, and Deming Prize) given annually to recognize quality. Pick one of the awards and one of the main evaluation criteria. Compare and contrast this evaluation criterion for two companies you are familiar with. How would these two organizations score on this quality dimension? How would you suggest improving the quality of this criterion based on the materials covered in this section?
Click on the Unit 9 Discussion discussion and then on 'reply' to post your response.
9.2: Statistical Process Control
Watch this video to explore the relationship between quality and costs in operations. Ultimately, there is always a tradeoff between the cost of addressing quality and the cost of ignoring quality. Every organization has to determine how it will address the cost factors associated with managing quality.
SPC is a standard method used in many organizations to monitor the quality of processes. Familiarizing yourself with the method is the first step in understanding how processes can be monitored for more effective evaluation.
Pay attention to the key concepts related to developing a process map and workflow charts. Process development is crucial to an efficient and effective organization. Each process contains the workflow (system design with tools used) and the procedures (work instructions for people). Both of these must align and together become the process.
Process design is a tool to improve processes to affect quality. Every time we adjust work, we change the process. This means that as an operations manager, it is important that you understand how each change impacts the whole process. When an adjustment must be made to improve quality, a systematic approach to process design is the best method for a successful change.
Unit 9 Activity and Assessment
In this activity, you will continue working on your operations management plan by explaining techniques and methodologies for managing your organization's productive resources.
- Receive a grade
Take this assessment to see how well you understood this unit.
- This assessment does not count towards your grade. It is just for practice!
- You will see the correct answers when you submit your answers. Use this to help you study for the final exam!
- You can take this assessment as many times as you want, whenever you want.