Different Perspectives on Qualily Management - Research Paper Example

 A STUDY INTO DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES ON QUALITY Introduction Successful organizations are making major changes in their business performance by pursuing excellence, quality and customer orientation as a result of ever-changing global market places. Quality has recently gained considerable attention as a management strategy that can help managers achieve their business goals and gain competitive advantages by adapting to the changes in both technology and customer demands. Due to the technological explosion and radical changes in business contexts, organizations increasingly need to overcome various organizational issues and limitations and thus to provide goods and services according to the changing environments and customer demands. Quality is a significant interdisciplinary at various functional areas of managerial and organizational tasks like Supply Chain, Human Resource Management, Engineering, operational and strategic management levels and so on. This research paper presents a detailed analysis on different functional perspectives of quality including supply chain perspectives, human resource perspectives, engineering perspectives etc. Different perspectives of Quality Quality means providing excellent product and services including its attractiveness, lack of manufacturing or otherwise defects and long-term dependability and reliability. Customers want increased value and high quality in the goods and services. Customers do not get satisfied with those goods and services that are failing to provide a reasonable quality (Bateman and Snell, p. 12). According to Foster (2007), organization can be viewed as a sum of different parts that function to achieve an ultimate goal. Each part in the body functions differently, and likewise, various levels and departments in an organization function differently and therefore quality matters in all such different levels of functional areas of an organization (p. 8- 9). Different perspectives of quality are detailed below: Supply Chain Perspective Supply chain management has recently grown to be an integral part of management mainly due to the cost saving and quality opportunities. Supply chain management gives greater emphasis on cost reduction and it plays pivotal role in providing goods and services ultimately conforming to customer requirements through a number of distribution channels (Simchi Levi and Kaminsky, p. 2). A good number of quality related activities like upstream activities, core processes and downstream activities are involved in supply chain (Foster (2007), p. 9). Delivering products to customers at right time, right quality and right quantity can be achieved only with high level planning (Wisner and Tan, 2008, p. 19). A supply chain management process involves various relations and dealing with various goods and services (Monczka and Handfield, 2008, p. 125). A supply chain process involves taking wise decisions regarding whether the supplier would be worthy and cost effective with helps of various criteria like cost levels and delivery reliability. Evaluating and training suppliers by using electronic or otherwise data are also significant parts of upstream activities in relation to the quality concern in a supply chain (Foster, 2007, p. 11). Value stream mapping, flowcharting process and other traditional process improvements are core process activities in the supply chain process. Shipping, logistics, customer focus and customer supports are downstream activities that help management determine quality measures and achieve quality objectives. Strategic Management Perspective Strategy plays vital role in managerial functions to help achieve the long-term goals of the organization. Strategic planning and strategic decision making are some of the very basic tools of management that help managers take most appropriate decisions, set plans for the future, establish a planned course of actions to attain the objectives and so on. Foster (2007) emphasized that quality management is an integral part of business processes including strategic planning. It explains why quality related goals, strategies and business tactics have become major part of the strategic planning process, and not as a separate entity (p. 14). As far as quality in strategic management is concerned, the quest for quality is a never ending process in which people are continuously working to improve the performance, speed and various features of product and services (Gomez, Mejia and Balkin, 2002, p. 19) Generally, the mission, vision and core values of a business are made to inform the public about the guiding operation principles of the business and thus it influence the organizational culture. Organizational culture is a major determinant of the quality standards that the business is aiming to achieve (Foster, 2007, p. 15). The mission statement, vision and core values that a business has set as part of its strategic planning often help stakeholders determine the quality standards that they can expect for its offerings of products and services. Marketing Perspective Customer satisfaction and delivering goods or services according to his requirements are of greater importance in today’s marketing. Customer relationship management has gained greater significance in the marketing because customer satisfaction and availability of goods or services according to his changing requirements can determine which product should remain in the market, what quality should it meet and for what price it can be marketed (Kotler and Keller, 2006, p. 146- 147). In short, quality is not what the manufacturer or the manager decides, but it is what the customer perceives. An expensive or high value product may still not be meeting the required quality, unless it can satisfy the end users in the market. Therefore, marketers are more often trying to put much effort to manage quality perceptions in the market. In today’s market places, effective marketing benefits society and it enhances competition which in turn improves both the quality of goods and services (Kerin, Hartley and Berkowitz, 2006, p. 23) Customer demand is always a significant factor in the marketing, but still, other factors like price and advertising are some of the factors that are closely related to the quality perceptions of the customer. A product should be able to meet the quality standards as is advertised and it should be priced based on the cost of materials and manufacturing expenses. If not, customer is more likely to find poor quality in such goods and services (Foster (2007), p. 18). According to Foster (2007), price and advertising are not only the factors that determine the quality in marketing, but service quality in transactions, after sales service, free delivery etc are also to be considered. Service and customer satisfaction towards the services being offered are to be strictly assessed as they contribute significant dimensions of quality (p. 19) Human Resource Perspectives Human capital is one of the most powerful intangible assets of a business and hence Human Resource Management is involved in enhancing the potentiality and productivity of each and every employees in the business. Various aspects of human resource management like employee performance, high performance working, employee commitment, knowledge management, motivation and so on are closely related to the quality concept. Dreher and Dougherty (2001) sated that high quality human resource system works as a set of highly integrated practices and thence it will be very difficult for competitors to copy them (p. 5) Foster (2007) found that employee empowerment and organizational design are also closely related to Foster (2007)ing and enhancing quality in employee performance. Employee empowerment strengthens decision making to the lowest possible level in the organizational structure. By implementing of employee empowerment, even the lowest level employees are entrusted to take decisions regarding minor issues like replacing a broken machine. Human resource managers indulge with various organizational functions like designing reward and recognition system, pay system, compensation and training and this in turn helps HR managers balance the employee needs and organizational needs by aligning both their needs. When company’s needs and employee needs are closely aligned, the management can flourish the quality measures (p. 22). As part of job analysis, Human Resource Management collects detailed information about a particular task including employee’s skills, abilities, performance level and job description etc. Foster (2007) explained how training and quality are interrelated. Training allows organization to standardize the approaches that their employees use in various problem solving. This is termed as vertical deployment of quality management. Similarly, different departments in the organization and different management groups are also expected to use same techniques for the problem solving. This is termed as horizontal deployment of quality management (p. 22). Quality is an important aspect for Human Resource Management especially in relation with employee performance, productivity, motivation, job analysis, training and knowledge management. Financial Perspective Quality ensures financial returns as well. Achieving quality in product and services helps maintain a strong customer loyalty so that repeating customers ensure a strong marketing and competitive advantages to the business and thence to gain increased profitability as well. Organizations are aiming to achieve quality in order to reduce waste and to increase profitability. As and when an organization achieves quality in its operation, defects of products or operational errors can be reduced and organizational performance can be improved. Apart from this, the ultimate outcome of providing financial information and reporting is to the quality of decision making by external parties (Williams, Haka and Bettner, 2004, p. 13) Foster (2007) emphasized that the finance function is basically interested in risk and investment relationship and the rewards resulting for such investments. Taking risk increases the chance of potential rewards. There are various tools of financing like break even analysis, tradeoff and so on that are used to assess and find the quality concerns of costs. Improving quality with such measures can be expensive, but still, it helps reduce defects, reworks and scraps and thus to increase the returns (p. 20). Engineering Perspective Many of business activities like manufacturing, product design and product development are depending on engineering. Product design and process design are the two important fields of engineering. Engineers and managers should work together in both developing and designing product and process so that improved quality and productivity can be attained in marketing the products and services (Foster 2007, p. 10). Quality has become a major concern of engineering as managers and engineers need to apply statistical thinking to the problem of reliability and thus to assess and reduce the chances that a product may fail to provide the required quality. Engineers use probability theory, life testing and redundancy so as to determine quality issues of a particular product or service (Foster 2007, p. 11). Operations Perspective Operation managers are concerned about product and process design and they concentrate on the management of these activities too. Even though operations management perspective about the quality has been rooted in the engineering approach, operation management has grown beyond the technical engineering perspective. Operation management uses system view that involves a basic understanding of product quality as it is the interaction of various variables like labor, process, planning, management etc. The system view of operation management concentrates on the system as a cause and means of quality issues (Foster, 2007, p. 12) . Conclusion Quality in business results in flows of information, process, funds, materials that in turn cause greater efficiency and increased productivity in business operation. This research paper has outlined different perspectives of quality management and explained how quality becomes an integral part of various functional management areas like supply chain, human resource management, finance, operations, engineering etc. References Bateman T.S and Snell S.A (2003) Management: The New Competitive Landscape, Sixth Edition, McGraw Hill Irwin Foster T (2007), Managing Quality: Integrating the Supply Chain, Third edition, Prentice Hall, Pearson Education Dreher and Dougherty (2001) Human Resource Strategy, A behavioral perspective for the general manager, The McGraw Hill Companies Gomez, Mejia and Balkin (2002), Management, The McGraw Hill Companies Kerin R.A, Hartley S.W and Berkowitz E.N (2006), Marketing Eighth edition, McGraw Hill Companies Kotler P and Keller K. L (2006), Marketing Management, Prentice Hall, Pearson Education Inc. Monczka R.M and Handfield R.B (2008), Purchasing and Supply Chain Management, Illustrated fourth edition, Cengage Learning Simchi-Levi D and Kaminsky P (2004), Managing the supply chain: the definitive guide for the Business Professional, McGraw Hill Companies Wisner J.D and Tan K.C (2008), Principles of Supply Chain Management, Illustrated and Second edition, Cengage Learning Williams J.R, Haka S.F and Bettner M.S (2004), Financial and Managerial Accounting, The basis for Business decisions, Thirteenth Edition, McGraw Hill Companies Read More