Mercedes Benz Operations Management

Based on the 3 types of quality costs that have been discussed and reviewed above, I recommend that we look at doing more appraisals and inspections during the manufacturing process, this will limit the number of design changes that happen early in the process but it should help in cutting down our external failure costs and help limit

its brand to more quality-oriented and had adjusted model prices in the view of new

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

When a product is designed a specification is created to determine the standards for the product. In manufacturing these standards are given an allowable range. The most common attributes for these types of products are size, shape, color, weight, and piece count. The standards placed on these attributes determine the material used, equipment needed for processing, and labor. The tighter the standards are on these attributes the higher the cost is to produce. In today’s market, there is a demand to produce high quality products at competitive price

In this report, I am going to evaluate the influence of different stakeholders exert at Mercedes Benz. The stakeholders I will be discussing is the owner of the business, customers who buy cars as they provide good quality of service, employees who help the business to perform well and making profits and the Government who support Mercedes Benz because they have been running successfully throughout the years so they want to invest money to further develop the business. On the other hand, I will make the following points in my report is by commenting on the level of influence that each stakeholder exerts on Mercedes Benz. I will also be referring to evidence from different sources for the comments that I make. I will state the strengths and the weaknesses on the influence of different stakeholders. Also, I will make recommendations on how Mercedes Benz can do to overcome the weaknesses which can affect their performance. At the end I will write a conclusion by summarising what I wrote in the report, which stakeholders have the most influence and which stakeholders have the least influence in Mercedes Benz.

One thing that Mercedes has been able to do is to build a reputation for itself, built on quality and customer satisfaction. For some, when we hear the name Mercedes, we think of sleek, sexy, and expensive automobiles. However, we also know that when they turn that key, the German engineering behind that vehicle will not fail us. Mercedes relies on the rock solid reputation, and for them to build a vehicle outside of Germany is a huge risk, high reward endeavor. However, they believe that their new facility in Vance, Alabama will help them to get the new M-class into the market faster to compete with the Ford Explorer and the Jeep Gran Cherokee.

Mercedes doesn't only seek for horse power & top speed , it also seeks for taking care of engineering and designing parts . It's a joyful thing to ride a fast car that can go from 0 to 70 in 50 seconds but your car won't be a good performer unless all it's parts are taking a good care in their details .

This is achieved by creating a system where (materials, information, customers) can be synced in a way that smooth flow can be achieved throughout operations; the very well synced system can help avoid unpredictability, which causes waste because people hold inventory, capacity or time, to protect them self’s from unpredictable event.

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.

co-managed inventories with suppliers: data accumulated at point of sale (basically the registers) may trigger production by suppliers and replenishment of product.

BMW is currently the 1st most valuable car brand in the world and the 23rd most valuable brand in the world; in 2011 it was the 2nd right behind Toyota. BMW’s brand value increased 10% while Toyota’s brand value decreased by 10%. It currently own “Rolls-Royce Motor Cars” which is a British manufacturer of luxury automobiles and “MINI” which is a British automotive marque which specializes in small cars.

The challenges that organizations face in supply chain integration is the ability to successfully coordinate activities across the supply chain so that they can improve performance in the areas of increase service level, reduce cost, better utilize resources, reduce bullwhip effect, and effectively respond to changes in the marketplace. According to Levi (2008),

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).

Implementation of excellent quality comes with a cost. The company must decide if it is really worth compromising the quality for revenue. If the quality costs exceeds the expected revenue of the company then the company must abandon implementing quality control mechanism. If otherwise, the quality would contribute to the product value and hence the revenue.