QUALITY MANAGEMENT

Quality Management

Quality Management

Introduction

Operations management is defined as an area within business administration, which is devoted both towards research and to the execution of all those actions that are intended at producing greater value added by the organization, planning, management and monitoring in the production of goods and/or of services, each designed for improving satisfaction of customers, increasing the productivity, quality, and lower the costs. A strategy for successful operations management should answer questions such as:

Under what economic and technological conditions the company tries to execute its strategy?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of competitors? What are you trying to do?

What do you intend to do business?

What stage of the life cycle are the products and services of the company?

At a strategic level the goal of the administration of operations is to participate in the search for a sustainable competitive advantage for a firm. The responsible management of operations must address ten strategic decisions that are:

Design of services and goods;

Quality Management;

Process Strategy;

Localization strategies;

Strategies organization;

HR (Human Resources);

Inventory Management;

Supply management;

Programming, and

Maintenance (Elearn, 2008).

This paper focuses on one of the most significant areas under the field of operations management that is quality management.

Discussion and Analysis

The organization criteria of quality control have evolved over time in parallel with the transformations of ' manufacturing activity, from the last decades of the 1800s, when the single operator was entirely responsible for their manufacture, and therefore also its quality. The philosophy of quality control has been changing in cycles-about twenty years depending on the size of production facilities and the resulting organizational aspects of the job. Quality control has become the first responsibility of the manager (coordinator of a group of workers), then independent inspectors from the organic production. In a further step, coinciding with the Second World War, it was necessary to rely on statistical methods: the arms industry is the protagonist of the great impetus given to these instruments.

Globally for the major consultants of operations management, the American Roger Schroeder has described that operations management have the responsibility of developing 5 key areas: process, capacity, inventory, strength work and quality (Schroeder, 1993). The concentration on these 5 areas and careful decision-making is vital for triumphant operations management. Contemporary operations management works on 3 fundamental characteristics:

The total quality.

The application of scientific methods.

A fully integrated team.

Quality management must take into account:

Planning of quality system management (audits, corrective and preventive actions);

Design control;

Qualification of suppliers;

Monitoring of customer satisfaction and complaint management (ISO 10002);

Control system documentation and records;

Control of measuring instruments and verification;

Control of products / services;

Returns management (reverse logistics);

Monitoring of all processes identified within the company;

Management of a system of indicators for the evaluation of processes;

Reporting and periodic reviews of the management.

The standard series ISO 9000 edition 2000 introduced an important innovation since the last edition 1994, while the 1994 version was the result of the quality of the product quality and the implementation of procedures, the 2000 version has shifted the focus to the system and management of business processes. In this sense we speak of the quality management ...