Tech & Operations Management- Quality Management Lecture Notes, Reading List Book Summaries and Essay Plans
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Technology & Operations Management
Instelling
University Of Oxford
Detailed notes, including lecture notes, reading list book summaries and essay plans for the Oxford University FHS Technology & Operations Management course's section on Quality Management (Week 4 of the course).
General QM Points
Largely seen as an essential, but routine, activity that prevented errors having an impact
on customers
Also has a part to play in how operations improve
Quality management can contribute to improvement by making the changes to
operation processes that lead to better outcomes for customers
Key task for operations functions is to ensure that it provides quality goods & services
both to its internal & external customers
Quality: consistent conformance to customers’ expectations
o Conformance- a need to meet a clear specification
o Consistent- quality in design process
o Customers- product must take the views of the customer into account
Flynn, Schroeder, Sakakibara (1994): Quality management- an approach to achieving and
sustaining high quality output
Victorinox: Protects its brand from fakes through quality
o Rigorous quality standards
o Metallurgical inspections- faults are easily detected
o Process Control employed at all stages of the production process- responsibility
of company’s employees
o Final Inspection department employs 50-60 people who are responsible for
ensuring all products conform to requirements
Garvin (1984)- Different approaches to quality
Transcendent Approach of Quality
Approach of philosophy
Quality means innate excellence
o Absolute & universal
Learn to recognise only through experience
o Plato- beauty: can only be recognised after being exposed to it
Product-Based Approach
Approach of economics
Abbot – differences in quality amount to difference in quantity of some desired
ingredient or attribute
o High quality ice cream has a higher butter fat content
Higher quality requires higher costs
Quality is view as an inherent characteristic of goods rather than something ascribed to
them
Can be assessed objectively
User- Based Approach
Quality lies in the eyes of the beholder
Edwards (1968)- Quality consists of the capacity to satisfy wants
, Gilmore (1974) Quality is the degree to which a specific product satisfies the wants of a
specific customer
The quality of the product depends on how well it fits patterns of consumer preferences
Juran- Quality is fitness for use
Issues:
o How to aggregate varying preferences of individuals to get quality at the market
level
High quality- best meets the needs of the majority
o Ambiguous link between quality and satisfaction
Maximising satisfaction but is the product better?
o Even perfectly objective characteristics are open to varying interpretations
Durability now sought but in 19th century was considered for products for
poor people only- association of durability with inferior quality
Manufacturing-based approach
Quality means conformance to requirements- Crosby
Gilmore (1974)- Quality is the degree to which a specific product conforms to a design
specification
Focuses on the supply side of the equation
Any deviation from a specification is a fall in quality
o Making it right the first time
Primary focus is internal
o Focus on statistical quality control & reliability engineering
Value-Based approach
Broh (1982)- quality is the degree of excellence at an acceptable price and the control of
variability at an acceptable cost
Quality means best for certain customer conditions. These conditions are the actual use
and the selling price of the product
Performance at an acceptable price and conformance at an acceptable cost
Quality is discusses and perceived in relationship to price
Hybrid: ‘affordable excellence’
Managers often fail to communicate what they mean by quality
o Result is inability to show progress on the quality front
Managers ought to reflect on how their approach to quality changes as they move a
product from design to market
Once the focus has been given to the separate dimensions of quality, cost savings,
market share gains & profitability improvements follow
Analysis of different approaches
Different definitions are necessary to the successful introduction of high quality
goods
o Japanese paper manufacturer discovered that its newsprint rolls failed to
satisfy customers even though they met the Japanese industrial standard
Conformance but no user based acceptance
o Us manufacturer of room air conditioners was well received by customers but
reject, scrap & warranty costs were so high that it cost the company greatly
, Shift in approach to quality as products move from design to market:
o First, quality characteristics must be identified through market research
(user-based approach)
o Then, characteristics must be translated into identifiable product attributes
(product based approach)
o Then, manufacturing process must be organised to ensure that products are
made precisely to specification (manufacturing based approach)
Customers’ view of quality
Slack et al (2019): There is little point in improvement unless it meets the requirements
of the customers
o Involves the whole organisation in understanding the central importance of
customers to its success and even to its survival
Customers perceived as being the most important part of the organisation
Capturing a customer’s requirements, expectations, perceptions, and preferences in
some depth
Done as part of an improvement activity through market research of customers’
requirements & prioritisation of different aspects of operations’ performance
Customers are the ultimate judge of quality performance
Hammer: All work should be examined for whether it adds value for the customer and, if
not, processes should be redesigned to eliminate it
BUT balance needed between what customers would like and what the operations can
afford (or wants) to do.
Quality needs to be understood from a customers’ POV because, to the customer, the
quality of a particular product is whatever he or she perceives it to be.
o All about the perception of quality
o Customers may be unable to judge the technical specification of a service so use
surrogate measures as a basis for their perception of quality
E.g. quality of the dentist
Four Seasons Canary Wharf
o ‘to make the quality of service our competitive advantage’
o ‘do to others (guests and staff) as you would wish others do to you’
o Employees empowered to deliver exceptional service as they see fit
o Focus on selecting the right people with an attitude in delivering exceptional
service
o Guest History database- with all their preferences & comments are logged
Operations View of quality vs Customer view
Operations view concerned with trying to meet customer expectations
Customer view is what they perceive the product to be
Quality can be defined as the degree of fit between customers’ expectations and
customer perception of service/product
Customers view of quality is the result of customers comparing their expectations with
their perception of how it performs
Within operations domain, management is responsible for designing the service or
product & providing a specification of the quality to which the product has to be
created.
, Factors that influence the gap between expectations and perceptions. Poor perceived
quality because:
o Mismatch between organisation’s own internal quality specification & the
specification which is expected by the customer
o Mismatch between product concept & the way the organisation has specified
quality internally
o Mismatch between actual quality & internal quality specification
o Gap between organisation’s external communications/ market image & actual
quality delivered to customers
Quality of service- includes speed, dependability, flexibility, etc
Quality of experience- degree of delight or annoyance of the user of an application or
service
o Applied to any customer related business
o Strength that it focuses operations on the richness of how their offerings are
experienced by users
o BUT difficult to operationalise as metrics are difficult to design, expensive & time-
consuming
Mistakes- Vaughan (1997)
“Mistakes are indigenous, systematic, normal by-products of the work process,' and thus
could happen in any organisation, large or small, even one pursuing its tasks and goals
under optimal conditions. The possibility of error and mistake are exacerbated by the
complexity of risky work: the more complex the technology, the more complex the
organisation, the greater the possibility of failure”
Example: The Challenger tragedy occurred due to an O-ring failure on the Solid Rocket
Boosters
o Widely blamed on the cold weather conditions of the day of the launch.
o These worries were highlighted in a conference call the night previous, but
worries from the engineers were ignored by middle managers.
Error and mistakes can never be completely eliminated, all that can be done is that we
learn from our mistakes as well as our successes to reduce the frequency at which they
occur.
Vaughan (1997): To do this, we should have three main aims:
o Target elite decisions: Top administrators must take responsibility for mistake,
failure, and safety by remaining alert to how their decisions in response to
environmental contingencies affect people at the bottom of the hierarchy who
do risky work.
o Target Culture: firm culture could prevent failures of foresight.
o Target signals: In decision making, all participants should be alert to the
categories of mixed, weak, routine, and strong signals and how they influence
others' interpretation of a situation, and therefore, how those others respond
"When an unexpected event occurs, we reconstruct history, not to fool others but to
fool ourselves, because it is integral to the process of going on.... People attempt to
rescue order from disorder."
Dimensions of Product Quality
Basic elements of product quality:
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