Quality Management and Control: A Comprehensive Guide
The Pareto Chart
The Pareto chart is a bar graph displaying frequencies of certain data, ordered from highest to lowest. It allows for identifying the most frequent occurrences within a dataset, which helps prioritize analysis and decision-making.
The Cause and Effect Diagram
This diagram, also known as the fishbone or Ishikawa diagram, helps clarify the causes of a problem. First, identify the effect to be studied. Second, list the potential causes and group them into similar categories. Finally, illustrate these categories and their relationship to the effect using arrows.
Quality Organization
Organizational Structure
A company’s operation involves a series of tasks and functions grouped into jobs. Each job is defined by its responsibilities, duties, and required performance, and is assigned to a person. These jobs are interconnected through hierarchical dependencies, forming the company’s organizational structure. The basic functions of a company are:
- Sales and Marketing
- Production
- Finance and Economics
- Human Resources
Role of Quality in Organizational Structure
The placement of quality-related jobs within a company’s organizational structure depends on several factors: the company’s quality policy and objectives, the type of activity carried out, and the company’s size.
Below are examples of quality positioning within different economic sectors:
The Organization of Quality in Industry
In industrial settings where production requires structured inspection measures and the quality policy focuses on controlling processes and products, a typical organizational structure might include a dedicated quality control department.
The Organization of Quality in Service Businesses
In service businesses, such as hotels, the quality policy emphasizes service quality and customer care.
Organization of the Hotel
In this case, the quality function is often entrusted to a customer service manager. This role doesn’t directly ‘create’ quality, which is primarily the responsibility of operational departments. Instead, it focuses on driving quality improvement mechanisms to maximize customer satisfaction. This role typically includes the following tasks:
- Addressing customer complaints and suggestions to resolve issues and satisfy dissatisfied clients.
- Gathering customer feedback to understand the opinions of clients who don’t file complaints and identify areas for improvement.
- Training and motivating employee work groups to gather their perspectives on quality improvement and implement feasible suggestions in collaboration with operational chiefs.
- Providing relevant training to all hotel employees to enhance customer support.
- Integrating all quality improvement actions and initiatives into relevant quality plans or programs.
Companies Oriented to Total Quality
The most ambitious approach to quality is Total Quality Management (TQM). This management style prioritizes the customer in all business decisions. It emphasizes participatory management, encouraging employee creativity for continuous quality improvement. In a TQM approach, quality is everyone’s responsibility. For TQM to be successful, it must be championed and driven by the company’s CEO.
Quality Management Control Charts
Quality, in its broadest sense, is difficult to measure and assess directly. Therefore, companies use indicators to gain insights into the status of quality. These indicators can vary depending on the organization’s quality objectives, the type of activity, data availability, cost of information, and the specific quality factors being measured.
Quality Indicators
- Number of defective parts in a production batch (indicates manufacturing process quality).
- Number of customer complaints in a given period (indicates service quality).
- Deviation from the average delivery time against the target value (indicates delivery quality).
- Percentage of returned invoices due to errors (indicates administrative quality).
- Cost of scrap generated in a printing process (indicates process planning and execution quality).
- Percentage of accounting errors (indicates accounting quality).
- Percentage of satisfied customers (measured through surveys, indicates perceived customer satisfaction).
Quality indicators are not significant in their absolute value but are useful for comparison against established target values or standards. Tracking indicator values over time helps evaluate the effectiveness of corrective actions.