Every organization has a desire to offer satisfactory services to their customers. Quality in service refers to fitness for purpose and defines how satisfied the end users of products are. Quality management therefore is the effective design of the business process that puts the customer needs as a priority, put a proper plan for the product life cycle and ensure effective delivery of this service (Wallace 1999-2007).
It entails the process elements, the analysis of performance and the continual improvement of the product and service delivery to customers. The chartered Quality Institute defines Quality in terms of innovations and care to the product user. There are major quality management principles that most organizations have integrated to ensure proper service delivery to the customers.
The principles are defined by ISO 9000:2005 and ISO 9004:2000 (Wallace 1999-2007). The key principles here included but not limited: to customer focus, people involvement, process approach, factual approach to decision making, system approach to management among other.
Quality management in any organization is a process. An organization that desires to achieve quality in its process must consider the due process that include setting the quality target, define the aspects of quality, identification of quality issues and also report on the overall level of quality achieved (Wallace 1999-2007).
Coca cola is an international company that is known all across the world and that has been involved in the production of soft drinks for many years. The company management takes seriously customer feedback which they use to enable them to continuously improve the product quality.
Recently, the company expanded its beverage portfolio and supplier base by inventing mineral water that are packed in 250ml, 500ml, 1 litre and also 20litres used in dispensers. At that time, so many companies got an opportunity of producing bottled water that became a very successful step in the development of the world industry.
This came with a lot of counterfeit tap-bottled water in one of the countries Coca Cola operates. The government had to take the initiative to ensure that all the counterfeits were faced out for the safety of the consumer (Feigenbaum 1991). This presented a challenge to Coca Cola of ensuring the bottled water was up to the expected quality standards.
The management of this company had to respond to this initiative by ensuring that nothing was left to chance especially on quality of one of its latest release of the bottled water. They first had to do quality audit which involved finding out the expectations of their customers and any other stakeholders interested in the product directly or indirectly.
Some of these stakeholders included the ministry of health, who wanted to know if the bottling was to the required standards, the bureau of standards, to ensure the policies and the set standards have been adhered to in the production. This called for the Coca Cola Company to review once more if their standards met all these expectations (Feigenbaum 1991).
They had in mind that whatever they had to do to foster quality improvement, integrating quality into process management, it is only the customer who determines whether these efforts are worthwhile. Decision making at such times as management requires professionalism and the use of factual data and not situational thinking.
The company has a system that handles the changing business landscape and offer support to the company’s strategic growth plans (Feigenbaum 1991). The system integrates business and quality objectives and aligns them with the consistent metrics to monitor performance, integrates preventive action as a management tool with more rigorous demands when introducing new products.
This was done by assessing the current trends in the market, customer satisfaction and quality management systems. The leadership must also know who plays what role in order to put the situation under control (Gilb 2005).
A team consisting of senior management must be formed, called the process improvement team who must get down to the root cause of the problem. The effective management of quality not only creates value for an organization and its stakeholders but also manages its exposure to risk and can distinguish the difference between failure and success (Gilb 2005).
Conclusion
A properly implemented and effective quality management system identifies and manages the possible organizational risks. This ensures the organization consistently delivers the product and services which must be continually improved through inventions and innovations. Partnerships and the supply chain are also to deliver value to the parties involved, without compromising on the quality of the product.
There is a continuous change in the trends of customer needs and competitions also make many organizations go back to the drawing board more frequently. Quality management addresses the risk by identifying and quantifying the risks involved. Whether the management focus is on improving business efficiency, managing risk or understanding customer needs, then understanding customer needs, application of principles of quality is paramount.
As a result of the quality assurance the organization realized high sales, the company once gain met its competitive edge. Customers were also more satisfied.
Reference List
Feigenbaum V. A.,1991. Total Quality Control, Revised (3rd Ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Companies.
Gilb, T., 2005. Competitive Engineering (2nd Ed.). Amsterdam: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann.
Wallace, S. L., 1999-2007. Quality Management 1:1-5.