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Operations Management QUALITY

The document discusses quality management and statistical process control. It explains that quality means meeting customer expectations, and operations must define quality standards. It also discusses total quality management concepts like continuous improvement, six sigma, and employee empowerment. Statistical process control uses charts to monitor processes for assignable variations that can be eliminated to improve quality. Process capability and acceptance sampling also help managers ensure production meets specifications.

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108 views

Operations Management QUALITY

The document discusses quality management and statistical process control. It explains that quality means meeting customer expectations, and operations must define quality standards. It also discusses total quality management concepts like continuous improvement, six sigma, and employee empowerment. Statistical process control uses charts to monitor processes for assignable variations that can be eliminated to improve quality. Process capability and acceptance sampling also help managers ensure production meets specifications.

Uploaded by

jeansabalos
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Operations Management: MANAGING QUALITY

Quality is the ability of a product or service to consistently meet or exceed the

needs and expectations of customers. These needs may be stated or implied. It is

therefore imperative to define the quality expectations and translate these into

technical specifications to which goods and services must conform. These will now

dictate the flow of operations, making it effective and efficient.

Organizational Practices determine what is important and what is to be

accomplished. This leads to Quality Principles that focuses on how to do what is

important and to be accomplished. These accomplishments lead to Employee

Fulfillment when employees’ attitudes can accomplish what is important. The end

result is Customer Satisfaction, which defines an effective organization with a

competitive advantage. Today, the International Organization for Standardization

(ISO) has set international quality standards, mainly the ISO 9000 and ISO 14000.

To do business globally, it is crucial to acquire ISO certification.

Good quality entails costs, including prevention, appraisal, internal failure, and

external costs. The consequences of poor quality are greater, including loss of

business, liability, decreased productivity and increased costs. It is imperative that

the philosophy of total quality management (TQM) be imbibed by the whole

organization, concentrating on quality at the source. Building quality into a process

and its people is difficult. Therefore, the TQM concepts and tools are essential to the

operations manager.
The 7 TQM concepts are continuous improvement, six sigma, employee

empowerment, benchmarking, just in time, Taguchi concepts, and knowledge of

TQM tools. There are TQM tools for generating ideas: check sheets, scatter diagram,

cause and effect diagrams; and TQM tools to organize the data: Pareto charts and

flow charts; and TQM tools for identifying problems: histograms, and statistical

process control.

Inspection safeguards that an operation is producing at the quality level

expected. However, it is difficult to inspect quality into a product. A better approach

is to go back to fundamentals of robust design, empowered employees and sound

processes. Inspection may begin at the source (point of production), or may use

attributes (good or defective). Inspection may also use specific variables (length,

color etc), or poka yoke, which are foolproof devices or techniques designed to pass

only acceptable products.

Service quality is more difficult to measure than the quality of goods.

Determinants of service quality are: reliability, responsiveness, competence, access,

courtesy, communication, credibility, security, understanding and knowing the

customer, and tangibles. In the event that some services fail, the operations manager

should have a service recovery strategy which involves training and empowering

frontline workers to solve a problem immediately.


Operations Management: STATISTICAL PROCESS CONTROL

By: Ma. Virginia M. Santos-Abalos MD FPOGS FPSGE FPIDSOG

Statistical process control (SPQ) is a TQM tool for identifying problems. It uses

statistics and control charts to detect when to take corrective action, thus initiating

process improvement. It involves four key steps: 1. Measure the process, 2. When a

change is indicated, find the assignable cause, 3. Eliminate or incorporate the cause,

and 4. Restart the revised process.

SPC is a major statistical tool of quality control. While variability is inherent in

every process, it may be natural or assignable. Natural variations are common

causes affecting virtually all production processes. Assignable variations are special

causes of variations that can be tracked to a specific process. SPC aims to uncover

these assignable variations to be able to eliminate the bad and incorporate the good

causes. Operations manager use control charts to distinguish between these two

variations. Management should make three major decisions: 1. To select points in

the processes that needs SPC, 2. To determine the appropriate charting technique,

and 3. To set clear policies and procedures.

Variable sampling uses the x chart and the R-chart while the p-chart and the c-

chart are for attribute sampling. The p-chart is used to monitor the proportion of

defective items in a process. The c-chart is used to monitor the number of

defects per unit.


The Cpk index is a method to define process capability, which is used to

determine if the output of the process will satisfy specifications. Process capability

is a measure of the relationship between the natural variation of the process and the

design specifications. It can provide vital information to managers in terms of

reducing costs and avoiding problems created by generating output that is not

within specifications or even needed.

Operating characteristic curves enable acceptance sampling and provide the

manager with tools to discriminate between good and bad lots (shipment), and

appraise the quality of a production run or shipment.

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