3.3 The concept of quality

3.3 The concept of quality

1. Total Quality Management

   • (TQM) An approach to quality in which everyone is focused on preventing errors occuring and and ensuring quality at each stage of the production process. 

2. The meaning of Quality

   • A quality product service is one that meets the customers requirements.
   • Businesses must set targets to achieve quality with the type of targets dependent on the type of business.
   • E.g. Aston Martin decided to set themselves a target of reducing the weight of the car by 10%
   • Hotels may set targets for cleaning rooms or delivering room service to guests.

3. Measuring quality and identifying problems

   • Customers may be asked to complete surveys or customer complaints recorded to check if the quality meets the customers expectations.
   • Mystery Visitors are used to test the quality of the goods and services and offer feedback.
   • Staff can be asked to check the quality of work they have completed at each stage of the process and any mistakes retified beforereaching customers

4. Consequences of quality

   • Customer dissatisfaction
   • Cost of replacing faulty products
   • Cost of replacing goods
   • The cost of waste

5. Maintaining consistent quality

   • Suppliers need to be reliable
   • Use good quality products
   • Staff need to be trained
   • Need to be able to spot any products that don't meet standards
   • Need good equiptment
   • Inspect products at each stage of the productionprocess

6. Quality Control

   • Where a business inspects the quality of its products at the end.

7. Benefits of maintaining quality

   • Customers are more likely to come back
   • Customers encourage others to go
   • e.g. Dominos and Apple had the most repeate customers in 2016
   • Saves money
   • Brand image is maintained
   • Can charge more for better quality
   • Quality can improve brands reputation.
   • E.g. Samsung's recall on the exploding Galaxy Note 7 cost £4.3billion.

8. Problems achieving consistent quality

   • Finding reliable suppliers
   • If a business wants to franchise,it is harder to keep good quality.