MANAGING QUALITY COSTS

Managing Quality Costs

Managing Quality Costs

Introduction

"Quality is expensive, but there is something more expensive than quality: his absence.” Jocou P.

In last twenty years, the economic environment and competitive business has changed. The offer now exceeds demand, and increased consumer demands on product performance have changed the functioning of organizations. The quality management has become essential for business survival. Quality is the objective and reference to any activity in the company. It has become a powerful management tool and advanced into the hands of companies allows them to achieve significant market shares, in the name distinctive competitive strategy (Juran, 2006). Thus, it arises the need to control the resources used to get that quality, cost being a valuable tool in this regard, in order to keep track of the management strategy by providing the necessary information. All management from personnel to owner must understand and agree that quality control is essential for business success (Vincent, 2005). Employees and management both should understand and should get involved in the quality control process in order to become the market leader.

This paper discusses the management of cost of quality, its meaning for the organizations, their the tangible effect on other business measures, their importance for decision making and the need for procedures for its determination in order to control the quality management, improve processes related with it and contribute to the reduction of expenses for this concept.

Discussion

In today's competitive environment leads firms to undertake great efforts to achieve improvements on many fronts, recognizing that the only way to stay in business and prosper is by offering products and services of higher quality from the perspective of the customer, at the lowest cost possible. An emphasis on quality means to identify and eliminate causes of errors, rework, reducing costs and ensuring that there are more units available to meet product delivery times to customers. The total quality management is a way that affects all employees of the company in order to procure goods or services that meet customer needs at the lowest cost possible while causing motivation and satisfaction among employees, considering these aspects its main objectives (Rwelamila, 2005). The purpose of quality not fit what is wrong is to remove everything that is wrong and to prevent such situations from recurring, which is one of the guiding ideas management of quality.

In terms of business, the ultimate judge of quality is the customer; therefore, a product or service quality is meeting or exceeding customer expectations. Another analysis can be done is from the perspective of the customer, in this case refers to the design quality, its suitability for use, determined by those features of the product that the customer can recognize as beneficial for him. In this sense, it can happen that a product meets the requirements appropriate for their production but not the tastes or customer needs. Quality costs are an integral part of the cost of production, being present in the results that are reflected in the State of Result of an ...