REVIEWER IN
Quality Management
Concepts
What is quality?
Dictionary
“Essential characteristic,” “Superior,” etc.
“Quality is customer satisfaction,”
“Quality is Fitness for Use.”
What is TQM?
A comprehensive, organization-wide
effort to improve the quality of
products and services, applicable to
all organizations.
What is a customer?
Anyone who is impacted by the
product or process delivered by an
organization.
External customer: The end user as well as
intermediate processors.
Internal customer: Other divisions of the
company that receive the processed
product.
What is a product?
The output of the process carried
out by the organization. It may be
goods
How is customer satisfaction achieved?
Two dimensions: Product features and
Freedom from deficiencies.
Product features – Refers to quality of
design.
Examples in manufacturing industry:
Performance, Reliability, Durability, Ease of
use, Esthetics etc.
Examples in service industry: Accuracy,
Timeliness, Friendliness and courtesy,
Knowledge of server etc.
Freedom from deficiencies – Refers to
quality of conformance.
Higher conformance means fewer
complaints and increased customer
satisfaction. (This is related to free from
defects.)
Reasons for quality becoming a cardinal
priority for most organizations:
Competition – Today’s market
demand high quality products at low
cost. Having `high quality’
reputation is not enough! Internal
cost of maintaining the reputation
should be less.
Changing customer – The new
customer is not only commanding
priority based on volume but is
more demanding about the “quality
system.”
Changing product mix – The shift
from low volume, high price to high
volume, low price have resulted in a
need to reduce the internal cost of
poor quality.
Product complexity – As systems
have become more complex, the
reliability requirements for suppliers
of components have become more
stringent.
Higher levels of customer
satisfaction – Higher customers’
expectations are getting spawned by
increasing competition.
Relatively simpler approaches to
quality viz. product inspection for
quality control and incorporation of
internal cost of poor quality into the
selling price, might not work for
today’s complex market
environment.
