QUALITY MANAGEMENT AT EXECUTIVE HOLLOWARE

Quality Management At Executive Holloware

Quality Management at Executive Holloware

Quality definition

Quality management is an important subject in modern management, and quality is a crucial prerequisite of survival of any kinds of businesses, it is one of the most important factors to lead a business's success or failure. Quality is a perception of class, excellence, a type of "referential" standard or (in definition) reflecting needs and expectations of customer. (Chris Jarvis, 2000)

There are a lot of quality messages put forth by the so-called quality gurus: Deming said quality is product or service, nature or features reflecting capacity to satisfy express or implied statements of need.

Crosby: Quality is conformance to requirements.

Juran: Quality is fitness for purpose or use.

Feigenbaum: Quality is product/service characteristics as offered by design, marketing, manufacture, maintenance and service that meet customer expectations.

Oakland (1995): Quality is perceivable, measurable move from mere satisfaction to "delight and reputation for excellence".

No matter what the definition of quality is, its importance to an organization is obvious. No focus on quality means a company would lose market share and reputation, aand a good reputation is easier to lose than regain.

Quality has been identified as a key competitive weapon in the global market. Quality assurance and improvement is not the work that the Quality Control Department should do, every one within the organization should implement it. (Thompson Strickland 2001 Pp. 41-42)

During the last few decades, the management literature saw a tremendous increase in the attention paid to the concepts of quality management and total quality. Total Quality Management (TQM) is one of the important topics in the field of quality management. It is an approach to improving the competitiveness, effectiveness and flexibility of a whole organisation. It is a way of planning, organising and understanding each activity and it depends on each individual at each level. TQM is a way of bringing everyone into the processes of improvement. (Chase, Aquilano, Jacobs, 2001).

Tenner and DeToro (1992) advocate that TQM has three principles customers focus, process improvement and total involvement, and it has six elements leadership, education and training, supportive structure, communication, reward and recognition, and measurement.

A TQM programme promotes "quality" as a strategic imperative. Comprehensive TQM programme requires re-evaluation how organisational members address the quality of their work and production /service processes. (Chase, Qauilano and Jacobs, 2001)

Importance of quality at Executive Holloware

The quality is extremely important to Executive Holloware Ltd since:

Many of its products were aimed at supplying the top end of the market and commanded high prices.

Executive Holloware Ltd was engaged in producing home-used items, -- cutlery and tableware items, such as silver-plated tea sets, candelabras, and small items of giftware. Customers flavour, interests and demands of these products tend to be more changeable than of other products, which require the company to be flexible enough so that they can respond to these changes and continuously satisfy customer demands. It is one of the objectives of an effective quality assurance system -- assist a company to satisfy customer needs and ...