Juran and Deming

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.

Cost minimisation however, cannot be pursued without attention to quality - there must be a balance between the two

Quality as one basic dimension of competitive priorities is very important for companies, although different functions such as manufacturing, marketing and engineering have different views of quality definitions, Garvin in 1987 clarified a framework of quality which includes eight dimensions, performance, features, reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability, aesthetics and perceived quality (Ward, et al, 1998). Definitely, companies could choose different one or more above dimensions strive to develop quality to be competitive priority.

Question 2. 2. (TCO G) Explain the concept of the cost of quality model and then link your explanation to how quality can be defined by organizations. What are some advantages and disadvantages of the cost of quality model? This answer must be in your own words—significant cut and paste from the text or other sources is not acceptable.  (Points : 30)

Juran 's perspective on quality was based on five general measures, the measures being the cost of poor quality, defects, product/process features, customer needs, and customer behavior. Deming 's measurements were based on the Kaizen approach, which involved the evaluation of each operation

The purpose of this project was to gain experience in quality improvement by working with an organization to identify a business problem, analyze the causes, develop an improvement plan, implement changes, and to verify the effectiveness of the solutions. For this project we had to keep scope in mind. This project had to follow certain criteria, such as: that it is a manageable project with a local organization, it can be completed within the time frame of the course, it has a direct impact on external customers, it is relatively simple, and that it is not something that is currently undergoing major changes.

This week’s assignment is about evaluating the quality issues of three organizations. The three sectors I chose to evaluate are manufacturing, service and government. I will then discuss the importance of quality to each organization, the relationship of quality to customers, the leadership commitment to quality and the alignment of quality to the organization’s strategic goals and objectives.

Customers expect safe and strong products, sold to an affordable and suitable selling price, otherwise they will refuse to buy it. The aim of big companies is to fulfil and exceed customers’ expectations and offer them quality products.

Quality of conformance includes technology, manpower and management while availability focuses on reliability, maintainability and logistics support. Juran emphasized that good service quality composed of promptness, competence and integrity. Like Deming, Juran advocated a never-ending spiral of activities that includes market research, product development, design, production process control and inspection and testing, followed by customer feedback. In his view, senior management may play an active and enthusiastic leadership role in the quality management process.

18.   The dimensions of product and service quality are too abstract to be applied to be applied operationally TRUE

The President Ralph Larsen has realized that Wengart has some major problems with the quality however he is focusing on the profitability instead of the longevity of the company. He needs to have the team focus on improving the quality problem or the company’s profits will continue to decrease. Larsen in the effort to improve the quality has decided to seek out help from an OD practitioner who suggests to Ralph to implement Top Quality Management (TQM). Larsen feels that this should be easy to implement and hands it off to Kent Kelly the Vice President. He feels that the TQM program was a matter of common sense (Brown, 2011, p. 365).

All the quality experts say that there are processes in which inspection will be needed. All the quality experts agree cost and competition does not compete with each other. Deming Juran and Crosby support the practice of involving the suppliers in the quality effort.

Dr. W. Edward Deming is best known for reminding management that most problems are systemic and that it is management's responsibility to improve the systems so that workers (management and non-management) can do their jobs more effectively. Deming argued that higher quality leads to higher productivity, which, in turn, leads to long-term competitive strength. The theory is that improvements in quality lead to lower costs and higher productivity because they result in less rework, fewer mistakes, fewer delays, and better use of time and materials. With better quality and lower prices, a firm can achieve a greater market share and thus stay in business, providing more and more jobs.

Our company should make sure that manufacturers deliver products with the highest design specification, in order to be order-winner quality conformance, by delivering products with no defects (Hill and Hill, 2012). Furthermore, improvements in quality lead to a decrease in cost for the company. According to (Evans, 1997) higher quality products lead to a decrease in costs for the company through higher productivity: ‘improvements in quality leads to lower cost because of less re-work, fewer mistakes, fewer delays and snags’ (Evans 1997, P.55).

Even though Deming, Juran, and Crosby all have similarities between their key principles in quality management there are several aspects that are different to the approaches. They all recognize the importance of measurement to improve quality; however, the level of importance each emphasizes is different. Crosby and Juran view the cost of quality as the focus of measurement whereas Deming does not use the cost of quality as a focus (Suarez, 1992, p.18). To Deming, meeting the customers’ needs and expectations about a product or service is of higher importance to quality. He also considers unknown costs such as the impact of lost customers to be more significant than visible costs (Suarez, 1992, p.18).