QUALITY & PRODUCTIVITY

Part 1: Evaluation of Published Article

Part 1: Evaluation of Published Article

Introduction

Every organization, irrespective of the industry, has a portfolio of customers (internal and external), who use manufactured products, services and ideas. To win the loyalty of customers, companies are continuously investing in strategic quality improvement. In paper “Quality follows quality: add quality to the business and quality will multiply the profits”, author had mainly focused on the importance of quality which ultimately helps the business to survive successfully and win the hearts of customers in long-run. In this regard, a large number of companies are using quality management as the strategic tool to improve the quality of product, increase profits, and win the rivalry wars in competition. Quality and Total Quality management are not limited to product quality. Quality covers all corners of an organization which not only increases the profits, but also productivity, customer base and constant product appearance in the market. However, this causes some direct and indirect costs which are coverable from sales revenue.

Definitions of used concepts in the Article

Author Gill, (2009, pp.530-539) has given the shortest and most suitable definition of quality. It says quality depends upon the customers' expectations and companies should manufacture products on the requirements of customers. Resultantly, there is customer satisfaction and loyalty. In the contemporary business environment, there are various factors which compel managers to think seriously about the quality e.g. future market trends, behaviour of competitors, low-price wars, customers' requirements, and for branding the company. There are various International Organization for Standardized (ISO) fresh and revised standards which give the process and philosophy of quality rather than the product quality. It is also impossible to define each product quality standard. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the respective industry to define the standards for their products. It must not be forget that quality is always a continuous process, customer centred, futuristic and multi-functional.

The second important concept in this article is the: Total Quality Management” (TQM). It is the strategy, philosophy as well as operation process in an organization to improve the quality of a product and mechanism of production. It is not only the responsibility of manager to implements the TQM, but all the workers have to participate in the working culture according to their capacity and skills. In modern times, TQM is the single most important factor for the success of many organizations like Motorola, Solectron and AT&T. According to the Creech (1994), there are five pillars in the TQM namely Product, Process, Leadership, Commitment and Organization. In the TQM, the concept of quality play a central role, and we have discussed in above lines that it vary from customer to customer, people to people and organization to organization. So, for the successful strategy of TQM, it is necessary that organization must do comprehensive research to define the quality with respective to customers and industry.

The third concept is productivity; it is the total usable output by employing input. The input can be land, labour and ...