Today’s highly competitive market means that quality products are extremely important to a firm.
To ensure customers keep coming back, businesses must deliver products to customers which satisfy customer needs and give good value for money. Businesses must keep customers happy and that there are no customer complaints.
Quality means ensuring that actual products and services meet customer requirements. All businesses have to set standards of quality for each product or service they make. They also have to make sure that they meet these standards. Businesses use several method to check that their goods and services meet the quality standards.
Quality Control
This is when a product is checked for faults at the end of the production process before being sent to customers
Quality Assurance
This is when a product is checked after each step in the production process to catch any faults before moving on
Quality Circles
Groups of workers involved in discussions to solve production problems.
Total Quality Management
This method has quality control at each stage of production. It involves continuous inspection of the production process. In this way poor quality can be prevented before final production. The source of any problems can also be traced. Organisations which use this method make quality an important aim of every department and worker. People must work as a team for TQM to operate effectively.
Benchmarking
Uses a standard set by an established quality leader to discover the best methods or production. This best method then becomes the quality standard which the organisation can follow.
