Business Driven Quality Maintenance

Alexandros Rizos
[email protected]

1SE001, 1SE801 Assignment Quality 1 - Individual assignment

1. Describe what could be considered as good and bad quality in the following two
situations. You can use the different quality dimensions mentioned in course litterateur
but you should elaborate on them and give example what it means in these two cases.
a. You, as a private person, are living at a hotel for three nights.
b. You have a company producing lawn movers. For this you buy all components from
sub suppliers and assemble them.
2. Describe why feedback (or information flow both forward and backwards) is so
important in a production process.
3. Some companies have as a goal that: No faulty parts should be delivered to the
companys customers. Describe why it is usually not good to have this as the only goal.
What could be the consequences?
4. How can exceeding customer expectations when selling goods or services be
motivated?
Submission date: Tuesday 2012-09-11 (Before the lecture)
________________________________________________________________________

1a) In this case we are examining the quality of a service, specifically one offered by a
hotel for a short period of time.
One of the most important factors, in valuing the quality the hotel offers, is the reliability
of the hotel. Getting there only to know that you have to wait some hours for your room,
sets an example of bad quality. Reliability regarding that matter is linked with the
communication skills of the hotel employees. If I was informed about the delay, instead
of low quality mark I would give the hotel a high one for letting me know beforehand and
plan accordingly. By doing this the hotel would also show the will to respond to any
situation that occurs unexpectedly. And seeing a company that is willing to serve the
customers and cares for the way they access their service (whether they wait for hour or
not), can only make me give them a high mark regarding their quality. The important
thing is that the customer does not feel cheated, that he gets what he wants.
1b) In this case we are mainly concerned with the quality of the product, although there is
a small percentage that amounts to service (the gathering of the components and the
shipping of the movers).
One of the major factors concerning the assembling of the lawn movers is safety for both
the employees that assemble them and the customers that will buy and use them. Safety is
strongly linked with other quality dimensions, such as reliability and compliance with
agreement. For a product to have good quality it is very important that it is safe to
produce and use and it performs as expected. Failing to do that will result in bad quality.

Alexandros Rizos

[email protected]

Business Driven Quality Maintenance

Another point that needs to be looked at is the impact the assembling process has to the
environment. Nowadays being a green company is a very welcomed move in the eyes of
governments, employees and potential customers. Thus a environment friendly company
will be considered to have good quality, while one that disregards the environment will
have bad quality. Another point that should be addressed is the cost of the process. Good
quality is depicted by a balanced cost; having a high cost with no reason will result in
profit losses thus leading to bad quality for the company, while having low cost by
sacrificing performance and reliability leads to bad quality for the customers.
Regarding the service percentage, the most important factors, in my opinion, are
reliability and communication. The parts have to be on time so that the production
schedule is not set back, and the shipping should also be in time and reach the customer.
Comment: In both situations, it is clear that every quality dimension has an impact on
whether quality is considered bad or good. Furthermore, it is obvious that the dimensions
do not appear individually. Every one of them is linked with one or more of the others.
The strength of this link appears to be what gives a company good or bad quality.

2) Feedback is really important in todays production process.

Feedback allows better decision making, since having full knowledge of what is going on
through the production process, enables employees to have a broader view of what is
going on, improve and change for the better. Communication and exchange of ideas
between the members of a production line will propel the output they are able to achieve.
Thereafter it is easy to say that feedback is the key to continuous improvement, a value
that most companies desire in todays competitive environment. Besides that it is fairly
obvious that feedback contributes to some of the key principles in quality management.
To achieve error-free work, information flow both forward and backwards is very
important. Every part of the production line should have an idea of what the other parts
do and know about any changes made. For example in four part production line, if
something changes in the third part, all others parts should know about that in order to
adjust their work to those changes, so that any errors that would occur will be avoided.
Managing by prevention is also difficult to achieve without proper feedback. To prevent
something, one must have a firm grasp of what preludes it and what follows it. In the four
part production line example, knowing what happened at the second part and what will
happen at the fourth part, someone can predict a mistake and prevent it from happening.
To prevent something bad from happening, you need to predict it, which is impossible
without proper information. Feedback allows the company to have this information.
Feedback also benefits in measuring the cost of quality. If there is no information flow
both forward and backwards, it is nearly impossible to grasp the whole situation and
accurately calculate the cost which breaks down to: prevention cost, appraisal cost,
internal failure cost, external failure cost (page 8 of the presentation about quality by Ia
Williamsson).

Alexandros Rizos

[email protected]

Business Driven Quality Maintenance

Feedback between the members of the company (360 feedback) will also benefit the
production process indirectly. If employees and managers understand their weaknesses
and try to improve, production rates can only go up. Moreover this will allow for
specified guidance and training. Feedback is one of the key points required for continuous
improvement (mandatory in our competitive ever changing business environment).

3) It is important that a company understands, that quality is not defined only by the
condition, the product is delivered. A company should as well focus on improving the
production process, on being able to comply with any agreement the company made, on
having environment friendly etc. In general a company should not have only one goal.
By doing that they risk getting tunnel vision, where they focus too much on producing
reliable products with no faults at all and end up being late on shipping or not keeping up
with the latest developments in their area. By not complying with an agreement they
made, for instance a shipping date, due to being overzealous with the condition of the
product, the reputation of the company suffers a great loss. I am not saying that a
company should disregard that fact and not care if some products are faulty. There needs
to be balance in all quality dimensions for the product. Here appears a link between these
dimensions again. If a product is faulty, instead of trying to fix that, the company should
try to fix what caused the problem (maybe machines need better maintenance) and let the
customer know that the product will be late. Trying to fix the product and only that, due
to tunnel vision, will only lead in it being late and the same thing happening again. I think
this example describes the consequences of having one goal fairly well. Companies need
to understand that customers do not care only about the condition of the product, they
want it in time, they want it to better than the one of a rival company and they want it to
have reasonable cost. A company should have all of the above in mind when designing
and producing an item. The hierarchy of goals depends on the nature of the product, but
still there is no good reason for the majority of companies to have as their only goal: No
faulty parts should be delivered to the companys customers.
Besides if a company has eyes set only the production as is, there is no room to try new
things and as a result there is no room for improvement. Also, a very important goal for
companies is adapting to the environment. An environment that is very competitive and
very demanding. And to do that they need to try new things or revisit and change old
methods, something that will never happen, if they have as their only goal to not deliver
faulty parts to the companys customers.

Alexandros Rizos

[email protected]

Business Driven Quality Maintenance

4) To exceed the customer expectations, the company needs to have a clear understanding
of who the customers (internal and external) are. When that is clear, the company should
try to define the needs as well as the expectations of the customers. After that, the
company should try its best to fulfill their needs, meet and preferably exceed the
expectations that have been previously defined. We know that the production consists of
three levels: input, operation process, output. The output is what the customer gets and in
order to have that exceed his expectation, we need to have very high quality input
(materials, services or energy) as well as master all the processes that lead to the output.
This means we must use the best possible equipment, employ people with high skills,
follow updated systems that are adjusted to the company and have standard procedures
that have been proven effective. That way we will have the best possible output. The
word possible is key here, because we need to take into consideration the cost of such a
project. Customer expectations also include the price and we should be careful that the
final product or service exceeds all the customers expectations but is out of his price
range. This may be enough to exceed the customers expectations at the time. However it
is very important that the company develops and perfects a process of recognizing and
understanding the customer expectations. We live in an ever-changing environment to
which customer expectations are no exception. Therefore companies need to constantly
check and redefine if needed, the expectations of each customer. If expectations change,
then the company has to reconsider what goods or services would exceed the current
expectations. By doing that, the company adapts to the environment and ensures its
survival in a demanding and competitive reality.
If a company wants to exceed customer expectations, then it needs to have that as one of
its primary goals. Exceeding customer expectations should be incorporated in the culture
of the organization, and the managers should motivate their employees with that in mind.
Besides the people of the department that defines expectations and finds ways to meet and
exceed them, everyone at the company, no matter what he does, should work towards that
goal as well. There should be seminars that inform the employees about the course the
company is taking and teaching them how to better follow that course. After all a
company needs to be a healthy, synced, organization, in which everyone moves towards
the same goal.

References
Quality From customer needs to Customer Satisfaction (Bergman, Klefsj)
Presentation Quality (Ia Williamsson)

Alexandros Rizos

[email protected]