This paper will look at the concept of quality management and how it helps businesses compete in the domestic and global market by improving the product or service, and the assurance of quality. It will provide an in depth look at how it affects the position of the companies at the global and domestic level by comparing and contrasting the execution of this concept in the domestic and the global level.
Quality management can be defined as:
“The objectives and processes of a company designed to focus the company toward quality and customer satisfaction” (Pletneva, 2007).
Quality management can be said to utilize quality assurance and control of processes as well as the actual products to achieve added consistency in quality” (Pletneva, 2007).
There are3 components to the quality control concept. These are:
- Quality improvement, which is defined as the process of enhancing a product so as to up the chances of obtaining reliability in the said products.
- Quality Control is the sustained effort of upholding the consistency and reliability of the product.
- Quality Assurance is the planned actions that are necessary to ensure the satisfaction of particular requirements.
The main tenets of the QM procedure are to ensure that the company meets certain ISO 9000 standards (International Organization for Standardization). ISO 9000 is:
“an internationally recognized standard of quality, and includes guidelines to accomplish the ISO 9000 quality standard” (ISO, n.d.).
These major tenets include:
- Bench marking is defined as the process by which companies grade themselves against certain standards based on comparison of their activities and those of other companies in order to get insight into their own organizational performance.
- Continuous improvement which stems from the Japanese word kaizen to mean a progressive process of maintaining customer satisfaction through incremental changes to the company activities including discarding unnecessary or obsolete functions.
- Failure mode and effects analysis is an approach to anticipate future equipment and process failures i.e. system malfunctions.
- Total Quality Improvement (TQM), which are all the management practices and policies geared at consistent satisfaction of the customers needs.
- Six Stigma is a statistical &methodological approach to doing away with defective elements in the company structure so as “to achieve the six standards of deviation from the desired target” (Tooling, n.d). The six standards of deviation means 3.4 defects per million.
QM also consists of functions such a outsourcing and standardization
QM involves not only product improvements but also in the work force. It involves maintaining a stress-free working environment fostering a feeling of free expression of their concerns and their impediments to performing better.
Take for example the Russian automobile industry, which is largely domestic. It has four major automobile makers who deal mostly in passenger vehicles, trucks, vans, limousines and heavy-duty vehicles. It cannot compete very well in the international market because of the lack of certain QM principles such as outsourcing, benchmarking, TQM, six stigma and continuous improvement. Most of the cars manufactured are mainly for the Russian market with little being done to venture out into the global market. Most of the cars are also the same as they were when the AVTOVAZ, ZIL, GAZ and the KAMAZ automobile manufacturing companies were established in the post war periods of the late 1940s. This shows a lack of innovation in continuous improvement or kaizen (Pletneva, 2007).
There is also very little marketing done to inform potential customers of the benefits of the cars and building brand recognition.
In comparison with the international brand that is General Motors of which GM is considered part of the Big 3 comprising of Chrysler ,Toyota and the aforementioned GM, principles of QM have worked in the company’s favor through outsourcing of most of its spare part manufacturing to Mercedes and looking into new innovate and cheap cars. All the four tenets have been put into practice so as to bring the ailing GM back into global recognition status.
The point of similarity in the QM procedures of The Russian companies and that of GM is the element of failure mode and effects analysis.
QM affects the level of competition in domestic and global markets in that it allows for GM to continuously assess its performance in relation to other companies and help it compete through sustained efforts in customer satisfaction. On the domestic level the upgrading of equipment at Russian plants and anticipation of equipment failure and maintaining its Russian originality is an important element in positioning its place in the domestic market. Sometimes it is better not to make any improvements at all (Tooling, n.d).
Lastly, it is important to note the contributions of Walter Shewhart and Edwards Deming in championing the adoption of the QM procedures in a bid to improve quality in products and services for the customer and for helping companies to get a platform where they can compete better in the market with the ISO 9000 standards. If these standards are meet through certification by the International Organization for Standardization which promotes an equal playing field in the market and ensure s the highest standards of production are meet for maximum utility of the product and enhanced performance, companies can be able to work more efficiently and effectively in supplying products and services to meet consumer needs (Tooling, n.d).
In conclusion, this paper has researched into the subjects of QM and its three basic components: quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement. Under these components are the tenets of TQM, six stigma, failure mode and effects analysis, and continuous improvement. It touches on other factors such as outsourcing and standardization. It is has given a comparison of the domestic automobile industry and the international automobile industry (Tooling, n.d).
It has tried to show the advantages of QM in positioning a company in the domestic and global market. It has also explored the subject of how QM procedures help in producing a competitive product in the domestic and global market in reference to the automobile industry.
The following quotes by Deming and Shewhart put forth the ideas they envisioned in the concept of QM that was ignored largely by the American business community, but was adopted by the Japanese market, which made gains and is still making gains through its Toyota manufacturing unit by using these basic principles of QM.
In the words of the founders of the QM concept who are Walter Deming and Walter Shewhart:
No one… can put in his best performance unless he feels secure. Secure means without fear…become more open and honest about discussing barriers to performing their jobs… workers cooperate to ensure the long-term survival of the company (Hasan, n.d.).
Reference
Hasan, S. (n.d.). Quality Assurance Management in Automobile Industry. 2010. Web.
ISO. (2010). About ISO. Web.
Pletneva, O. (2007). Russian Car Manufacturers. Web.
Tooling, U. (n.d). Quality Training. 2010. Web.