Quality

Quality

1. Quality control

   • What is quality control
     • - assumes that errors are unavoidable
     • Detect errors and puts them right
     • Quality control inspectors check other people's work and are responsible for quality

2. Quality assurance

   • What is quality assurance?
     • Assumes errors are avoidable
     • Employees check their own work. Workers are responsible for passing on good quality control
     • Prevents errors and aims to get it right first time

3. Quality circles

   • Quality circles meet a couple of times a month to discuss quality control issues
   • Include various departments and all levels of the organisation
   • Strengths
     • Be very effective
     • Good way of making staff feel involved and increasing motivation
     • Often lead to an increase in productivity as well as quality
   • Weaknesses
     • Unrealistic decisions
     • Only useful if management actually listen and take action
     • They only work if participation is voluntary

4. Total quality management

   • Is a lean production method, it means the whole workforce has to be committed to quality improvements
   • Every employee has to try and satisfy the customer
   • Advantages
     • Because all members are involved with maintaining quality, TQM can help them to bond as a team
     • TQM boosts a companies reputation for providing quaity services or products
     • Leads to fewer faults
   • Disadvantages
     • Can take a long time to introduce
     • Can demotivate staff
     • Is usually expensive to introduce

5. Benchmarking

   • When firms agree to share information about their way of doing things
   • Businesses can benchmark internally
   • Motivates staff
   • Provides early warnings to businesses about technology or methods that might allow their competitors to overtake them.

6. Kaizen

   • Means that employees should be improving their work slightly all the time
   • Cheap to introduce