Question 1

Discussion & Background

Taking All Nippon Airways (ANA) as a successful example, the company is acknowledged as one of the premium airlines in the world and Asian best. It all thanks to the company implements the TQM system throughout the operation process and emphasizes on customer orientation (All Nippon Airways, 2013). The ANA's Service Quality Management (SQM) includes a series of quality survey, regular quality check and a 'plan-do-check-act' close loop for ensuring the service quality and continuous improvement of the routines. Through prefect alignment of corporate vision statement "Creating Personal and Positive Experiences with Our Customers" (All Nippon Airways, 2013, p.70) with TQM system, employees are able to better understand ANA's quality system and bring such concepts into their daily work. In other words, by thinking ahead, thinking more, and establishing a cycle of accurately assessment of quality status that links to specific improvement measures, and regularly ascertainment of quality progress to achieve long-term improvement (All Nippon Airways, 2013, pp.73-75).

Take the motor manufacturing industry as an example. Much fuss is currently being made about motor vehicle manufactures having to recall vehicles for faulty parts. For example, Nishimoto (2013) discusses the recall of 10,000 vehicles for a wiper switch problem to Toyota Corollas. Toyota as you no doubt know is widely accepted to be a company that is associated with quality. Slack, Chambers and Johnston (2010, p. 441) for instance discusses Toyota's use of kanbans and how they relate it to kaizen. They are also widely accepted to be the pioneers of the lean production method (Gao & Low, 2013, p. 2). The PMI (2013, p. 235) discusses the concept "cost of quality in which they compare the "cost of conformance" with the "cost of non-conformance". Having to recall vehicles is a prime example of "cost of non-conformance" resulting in "external failure costs" that are likely to lead to liabilities, warranty work having to be performed, and crucially within the context of our DQ, loss of business. My understanding of this week's DQ is that it essentially focuses on aspects related to the "cost of conformance" aspect; i.e. the time and money a business spends in order to align the various views on quality to ensure that the customer chooses their products and service over those of competitors because they perceive the quality to be (almost) fully aligned with their expectations. I suspect that the rate at which this is achieved is relatively orders of magnitude slower than the rate of collapse caused by incidents of costs of non-conformance. Much effort can therefore probably rapidly be made worthless through a few - if not a single - incident of poor quality experienced by the customer.

Question

What I would like to discuss with you is how quality improvement initiatives can become undone, despite seemingly adequate systems being in place to prevent this from happening. My concerns are:
1) how is it possible for this to happen in the first place, and
2) how does a company recover from this in terms of damage to their reputation for excellence? 3) I was wondering how to prevent this from happening - if at all possible, and how to recover from it.

Question 2 

Discussion & Background

In my view I think that your answer highlights the importance of the quality value chain which is at the core of total quality management (TQM) (Oakland 2003, pp.5-7). Quality value chains place a great importance on the relationships between internal and external customers and suppliers in order to achieve good quality products and services. In other words, quality is every stakeholder's business be it within the organisations or without. True, the definitions of quality you have mentioned just go to show the different perceptions of quality.I am a proponent of TQM and that the involvement of all the stakeholders is essential to its success.

Question

My question to you is this; how would you use quality value chains to eliminate the various gaps which relate to quality problems that you have identified towards the end of your answer?

Question 3 

Background / Discussion

This question is based on article, you may see in the attachment.

Question

The readings for this week describe quality as "the ultimate measure of how" products and services of a company can meet or exceed the customers' expectations and requirements of the markets (Slack, Chambers, & Johnson, 2010). You described quality as being the prime objective by all operations and it is the most observable part of an operation. You described some approaches that can be used in attempt to strive for quality. However, the readings include considerations to variable measures and attribute measures. How can these influence quality? Are these considerations that should be monitored? What are some examples of these?

Question 4 

Background / Discussion
Slack, Chambers and Johnston (2010) identifies the customers' view of quality as a being based on past experiences, individual knowledge and history. In a bid to remain competitive, firms tend to strive to ensure that their products and services are in conformation with the expectations of consumers. This now brings up a question as to whether all expectations must be satisfied. Imagine a drug addict who requires the use hard drugs daily to remain in a high state. In a bid to ensure sanity within the society, this form of expectation on the part of the consumer is frowned against as it is not in compliance with the set rules and regulations within the society.

Question
What other expectation of a commodity do you think is not necessary to be satisfied irrespective of the desire to acquire such commodities and how is the gap between expectation and perception kept at a far distance?

Question 5 

Background / Discussion

The theory of (DMAIC) Define, measure, analyze, improve, and control is a structured approach and is a further advancement from Plan, Check Do and Act. For continuous quality and effectiveness, defining the target and what measures need to be taken to meet goals is a critical factor. For Example Quality control organizations such as ISO 9000 set standards that measure quality. In the international education field there are many organizations such as the Council of international schools (CIS) and British schools Middle East (BSME) that implement similar processes such as (DMAIC) to measure the effectiveness of the school. These organization set strict guidelines that must be adhered to with recertification awarded through improvement of targets and control of standards.

Question

How accurate are these quality organizations, can companies fabricate evidence to gain certification? Can quality be overlooked by other focuses of business, such as profit, location, market and productivity? How much focus should be emphasized on quality in a business structure?

Slack, N., Chambers, S. & Johnston, R. (2010).Operations management. 6th ed. Harlow: Prentice Hall/Financial Times.

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