Business - Influences on Operations

The cost of quality in a manufacturing process and environment are many as you are aware. But the 3 primary costs that we should review on a more regular basis to assure we are creating the most cost effective and quality products are the following: Appraisal, Prevention and Failure, and failure costs should be looked at as internal failure and external failure.

The main focus of this report is to identify the legal classification, the characteristics, the life cycle stage of Qantas and one internal and external stakeholder that is affected by the activates of Qantas. The legal classification describes that Qantas is a public company and has changed its legal classification in the growth and maturity stages of the business life cycle. The characteristics of Qantas talks about the company's industrial classification and sector classification. The business life cycle is explained and gives reason why Qantas is in the renewal stage of post maturity. There is also description of one internal and external

1) Qantas Airways Limited is the national airline of Australia, it is also the largest airline in Australia. The Qantas Group’s principal business is providing domestic and international air transport services for passengers. Additionally, Qantas owns several subsidiary companies such as Jetstar and QantasLink that also operates flights to domestic and international locations, and Q Catering, a premium full service flight caterer.

Given the highly competitive nature of today’s markets we as a company must provide high quality products to survive. Quality itself has become a major competitive factor and in many ways is a contributing factor in success or failure. The intent of this memo is to identify, explain and evaluate the three types of cost associated with quality.

Rivalry among industry competitors has caused attention to be focused on tariff levels. Airfare prices were at an all time low in 2009. This suggested a strong competitive rivalry based on price differentiation. This price differentiation will cause a dramatic loss in revenue if these prices continue to drop and this would lead to a reduced competitiveness. In an effort to safeguard revenue and reduce expenditure, Qantas has developed a strategy to deal with a change in the external competitive environment. .

As I said on the thread discussion,The cost of quality is not the price of creating a quality product or service but the cost of not creating a quality product or service:If an organization can quantify the quality of their products and services, they can use Quality is conformance to requirements as a definition for quality. If an organization cannot quantify, they can use Quality is satisfying the needs and

Management practices at Qantas are more flexible and adapted to suit challenges in society such as the reaction to terrorism, the introduction of viral disease and the ever changing market and customer requirements.

By outsourcing, Qantas is able to significantly reduce costs and maintain it’s competitive advantage. However this advantage also has a draw back, hundreds of engineers have also been cut from their jobs and have had their jobs given to people overseas. This puts a bad reputation on the name of the business as an Australian business will cut jobs from Australian workers and supple foreign workers with jobs. Families and friends of these workers may feel resentment towards Qantas and choose to travel with another airline instead resulting in a loss of customers. This strategy has been effective in reducing cost but has resulted in a reduction of quality and safety and led to a decreased business reputation resulting in a loss of customers and stakeholders.

IDENTIFY AND REVIEW THE RELEVANT RANGE OF OPERATIONS AND THE SPHERE OF BUSINESS ARRANGEMENTS OF THE ORGANISATION

Qantas’ main weaknesses come from the high risk nature of airlines (possibility of crashes and large scale incidents), the complexity of the aircraft they buy which could lead to costs of re-training pilots to fly that particular aircraft and may lead to higher labour and the recent string of incidents have undoubtedly hindered Qantas’ image. One of the most recent incidents occurred while a reasonably new Qantas A380 was flying from Singapore to Sydney when it experienced engine and hydraulic problems forcing it to hastily turn back and make an emergency landing in Singapore. This

A business has many influences that provide a duel effect on its operations. Not only can they cause the business to undergo change and continually adjust to the external factors in the business environment, but they also provide threats and opportunities in the operations process.

Qantas has three major problems. 1.) Fuel efficiency, 2.) Lack of communication between employers and employees, 3.) Competition in the corporate customer market (Ferguson

Operations Management in an organisation is repsonsible for managing and in making decisions concerning the activities that convert inputs into outputs , that is goods and services. This covers both short term actvities as well as longer term activities to meet strategic goals. Inputs can be the raw materaials need to manufacture goods such as furniture or the computers needed to create a service like online shopping site. Operation management’s role is to make decisions to improve how operation activities function, for example, to improve the final quality of the output or to change production methods to be more efficient in terms of cost and in time.

Provide full value of money for customers through reduce cost and enhance level of quality (Qantas Airways Limited, 2014).

It is also their vision ‘to be a great airline that champion’s the Spirit of Australia’ (Qantas.com). Since it is their vision to demonstrate the Australian Spirit to the public, it is vital that they start incorporating practices that reflect this conduct within the