Managing Sustained Quality in Business

This article was made to fulfil the pre-midterm assignment of Operational Management subject, lectured by Prof. Dr. Achmad Firdaus, M.Si in Institut Tazkia.

Quality control is important in business as it makes sure that every product is the same, or in other words, without any significant differences. This is because the customers and buyers expect that the product they buy does not differ from the one that others buy, providing that it is the same product.  On the same line of thought, a customer expects that the product they buy now is the same as the product they previously bought.

But let us go to the very basic first, what exactly is quality? The American Society for Quality divide the meaning into two, the value perspective and the conformance perspective. From value perspective, quality is how the product manages to satisfy the customer's need. From the conformance perspective, it is how lacking it is from any deficiencies. In other words, the former focus on what the buyer expected while the latter focus on the intended use.

For customers, the perspective they use when buying something depends on the customer's background, what they want to buy, and the condition when they are buying something. Of course, either of these perspectives can be used interchangeably since it is not the total opposite different. Whichever perspective the customer uses, the common thing that they expect is sustained quality. This means that a customer expects a product (of the same brand, as an example) will not differ if they buy from store A or store B.

With that in mind, we can move on to Total Quality Management (TQM). TQM itself was established in the 1970s. Total Quality Management is an approach from a managerial perspective to make sure that the organization excels in all qualities important for the customers. It is divided into seven points:

• Strategic Quality Plan

In business, there must be a plan to achieve profit. An effort to keep quality consistent must have a strategic plan to make sure that, along the process, the result does not deviate from the desired result. Not only that, a plan allows the business to remedy any failure or flaws, this is because strategic planning makes problem identification easier. Imagine it like a straight line, any curved line can be easily spotted.

• Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance is the actions done to achieve the desirable quality standards, this action happens throughout the business to make sure that no part of the product has any different quality. Companies use techniques such as Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and Statistical Quality Control (SQC) to do quality assurance.

• Supplier Partnerships

If a product was made, then there must be raw resources or base product to be processed. Thus, TQM must extend not only to the internal of a company but also to the supplier. Each supplier must be held to the same standard of quality, or at least the necessary standards, to make sure that the company does not need to do additional processes to upgrade the supplier's product quality.

• Customer Focus

This means that the employees must be able to put themselves in the position of the customer, either external or internal ones. External customers are the typical ones that the front desk will meet; while internal customers are usually the colleagues who need results from other colleagues, hence the title of 'internal customer'.

• Leadership Involvement

When a quality has been set, then the top position (let's say manager) must be the first to step in. This means that the manager will be the one responsible for keeping the business operation up to quality standards.

• Continuous Improvement

In business, we have to remember that just like humans, no business is perfect. Improvement must flow without a halt so that each flaw can be discarded. Moreover, the progress of time made businesses attract natural flaws, which can happen to small or big businesses.

• Employee Empowerment

Businesses that employ Total Quality Management make sure that their employees are empowered. Empowerment in this context means that individual employees have the ability (or authorization) to also manage quality, through actions deemed necessary. This is the opposite of a workplace where the low-positioned employee just works but does not pay attention to the quality of their work.

Another thing that we have to know is Statistical Process Control (SPC) which is also known as Statistical Quality Control (SQC). This control is important as it makes sure that the process of a business conforms to the needed quality. To be able to know if a business is capable of reaching a certain quality requirement, we can measure it by using the Process Capability Ratio.

So what does this mean for business? In short, consistent quality is important to let the customer know that the business is professional. When a business is deemed professional and satisfactory, the customers tend to come back to the business to buy something. Thus, Total Quality Management alongside Statistical Quality Control allows businesses to retain quality across the production line.

Total Quality Management is particularly good in the manufacturing industry, as we can expect that when making a product, it is easier to implement this when there is already a production line.  Even in the case that the manufacturer does not have a production line, in this case, the manufacturer makes products based on incoming orders, TQM is still useful. While TQM allows the business to be adaptable, it means that some parts may resist it. Total Quality Management is not a magic tool that can solve every problem, that is for certain. Considering that continuous improvement is one of TQM's points, it may even need more financial backing than other solutions to sustain quality.

Even then, with all of its pros and cons, we have to acknowledge that sustained quality using TQM is not a bad one. With the progress of time, even if TQM began to show its oldness, we can change some points of it to adapt it with time. We have to remember that customers want to buy products as they expected, therefore businesses have to find a way to sustain the quality in their products.

References:

• What Is Total Quality Management (TQM) and Why Is It Important? (investopedia.com)  
• Bozarth, C. B., & Handfield, R. B. (2018). Introduction to operations and supply chain management.