Total Quality Management 

1.  Discuss the importance of quality partnering and strategic alliances.

ANS: Quality partnering and strategic alliance provide a great avenue for mutualistic relationships in the industry. Partnering is crucial for total quality mainly due to the fact that quality in the marketplace is defined by the customer. External partnering between organizations allows for continual improvements in processes and products, relationships between customers and suppliers, and customer satisfaction. Internal partnering within an organization can improve relationships among employees and among departments within an organization. As a whole, the benefits would greatly enhance the competiveness of the organization. Two companies with different Business Strategies and employing divergent IT infrastructure have to think practically about the pros and cons before entering into strategic alliances or mergers. Since the partnering philosophy is solidly grounded in the practical demands of the marketplace. The simplest way to understand partnering or the strategic alliance is to think of it as working together for mutual benefit. Various components working together may be suppliers,fellow employees,customers and event  organizations that are potential competitors. "Partnering can lead to continual improvements in such key areas as processes and products relationships between customers and suppliersand customer satisfaction. Muutual co-operation and trust between partners willfurther help in gaining competitive advantage over others. Internal partnering can improve relationships among employees and among departments within an organization.

 

2.  Discuss the various forms of quality partnering and strategic alliances.

ANS: The various forms of quality partnering and strategic alliances include:

 

Internal Partnering: Internal partnering is creating an environment and establishing mechanisms within it that bring managers and employees, teams, and individual employees together in mutually supportive alliances that maximize the human resources of an organization. Its purpose is to harness the full potential of the workforce and focus it on the continuous improvement of quality. Internal partnering can include management-to-employee partnerships, team-to-team partnerships and employee-to-employee partnerships.

 

Partnering with Suppliers: The goal is to create and maintain a loyal, trusting, reliable relationship that will allow both partners to win, while promoting the continuous improvement of quality, productivity, and competitiveness.

 

Partnering with Customers: The key to success in partnering with customers is to get them involved early in the product development cycle. Let them preview the design. Allow them to observe and even try prototype models. Get their feedback at every stage in the product development cycle, and make any needed changes as soon as they are identified.

 

Partnering with Potential Competitors: The rationale for partnering with potential competitors is the same as that for partnering with suppliers and customers: competitiveness. This is a strategy that applies more frequently to small- and medium-sized firms, but it can also be used by large organizations. A prime example is the fact that Apple uses chips manufactured by Samsung in their iPhones.

 

Global Partnering: The partnering concept, like all contemporary business concepts, has a global aspect. Companies that market to customers worldwide should examine the possibility of partnering with suppliers worldwide.

Education and Business Partnerships: Education and business partnerships are formed to help organizations continually improve their people and how well they interact with process technologies. Services in such partnerships typically include on-site customized training, workshops, seminars, technical assistance, and consulting.

 

3.  Discuss the importance of quality culture.

ANS: An organization’s culture is the everyday manifestation of its underlying values and traditions.

It shows up in how employees behave at work, what their expectations are of the organization and each other, and what is considered normal in terms of how employees approach their jobs. A quality culture is an organizational value system that results in an environment that is conducive to the establishment and continual improvement of quality. It consists of values, traditions, procedures, and expectations that promote quality.

Implementing total quality necessitates cultural change in an organization, for the following reasons:

• Change cannot occur in a hostile environment.

• Moving to total quality takes time.

• It can be difficult to overcome the past.

The steps in laying a foundation for a quality culture include: understand, assess, plan, expect, model, orient, mentor, train, monitor, reinforce/maintain, and involve everyone affected by change in making it.

 

4.  Explain the difference between traditional and modern quality cultures.

ANS: Organizations with a traditional culture differ from those with a quality culture in the following way:

 

Operating Philosophy: In an organization with a traditional culture, the primary focus is return on investment and short-term profits. Often the methods used to maximize profits in the short term have a negative effect in the long run. In an organization with a quality culture, the core of the operating philosophy is customer satisfaction. Quality organizations focus on doing what is necessary to exceed the reasonable expectations of customers.

 

Objectives: Organizations with traditional cultures typically adopt short-term objectives. The focus is on what the organization should accomplish over the next several weeks and months. Organizations that adopt a quality culture plan strategically. They develop both long- and short-term objectives, and they do so within the context of an organizational vision.

 

Management Approach: In organizations with traditional cultures, managers think and employees do. Managers are seen as “bosses” who give orders and enforce policies, procedures, and rules. In organizations with quality cultures, managers are seen as coaches of the team. They communicate the vision, mission and goals, provide resources, remove barriers, seek employee input and feedback, build trust, provide training, and reward and recognize performance.

Attitude toward Customers. Organizations with traditional cultures tend to look inward. They are more concerned about their needs than those of customers. Organizations with a quality culture are customer-focused. Customer satisfaction is the highest priority and is the primary motivation driving continual improvement efforts.

 

Problem-Solving Approach: There is a lot of finger pointing in organizations with a traditional culture. When problems occur, decision makers and employees tend to expend more energy on deflecting or assigning blame than on identifying the root cause of the problem. When difficulties occur in organizations with a quality culture, the focus is on identifying and isolating the root cause so that the problem, and not just its symptoms, can be systematically eliminated.

 

Supplier Relationships: In organizations with a traditional culture, suppliers are kept at arm’s length in relationships that are often adversarial. The maximum possible pressure is exerted on suppliers to bring down prices and speed up delivery. In organizations with a quality culture, suppliers are viewed as partners. Suppliers and customers work together cooperatively for the good of both. Each gets to know the other’s processes, problems, strengths, and weaknesses, and they collaborate, using this information to continually improve the relationship and the performance of both.

 

Performance-Improvement Approach: In organizations with a traditional culture, performance improvement is an erratic, reactive undertaking that is typically triggered by problems. In organizations with a quality culture, continual improvement of processes, people, products, the working environment, and every other factor that affects performance is at the very core of the operating philosophy.

 

5.  How do you understand who is a customer?

ANS: In a total quality setting, customers and suppliers exist inside and outside the organization. Any employee whose work precedes that of another employee is a supplier for that employee. Correspondingly, any employee whose work follows that of another employee and is dependent on it in some way is a customer. This concept of dependency is critical in the supplier–customer relationship. A customer, whether internal or external, depends on suppliers to provide quality work and produce quality products.

 

6.  Explain customer defined value, value analysis and retention.

ANS:

Customer-Defined Value: It is important for organizations to understand how customers define value. The value of a product or service is the sum of a customer’s perceptions of the following factors:

• Product or service quality

• Service provided by the organization

• The organization’s personnel

• The organization’s image

• Selling price of the product or service

• Overall cost of the product or service

 

Value Analysis: The process used to determine what is important to customers is called customer value analysis (CVA). The CVA process consists of the following five steps:

• Determine what attributes customer’s value most

• Rate the relative importance of the attributes.

• Assess your organization’s performance relative to the prioritized list of attributes

• Ask customers to rate all attributes of your product or service against the same attributes  of a competitor’s product or service.

• Repeat the process periodically.

 

Retention: To retain customers over the long term, organizations must turn them into partners and proactively seek their input rather than waiting for and reacting to feedback provided after a problem has occurred.

 

7.  Discuss product innovation models for customer retention.

ANS:

Innovation is key to continually improving the quality and cost of products as well as the quality of services. It is also crucial in reducing the cost of business while increasing volume of business. The five process steps of the innovation model that organizations can use to keep products up-to-date, attractive, and relevant for the customers include:

 

Target the Opportunity: Focus on identifying customer needs and use them to guide innovations.

 

Explore the Idea: Conduct a thorough research to ensure that the proposed innovation will be successful in the marketplace.

 

Develop Alternatives: Develop a variety of alternatives for the innovation—prototypes—and test them thoroughly to determine which is the best.

 

Optimize the Solution: Take the chosen alternative and optimize it for production and delivery.

 

Commercialize the innovation: Develop and deploy an effective marketing program for the innovation.

 

8.  Discuss employee empowerment.

ANS: There are important differences between involvement and empowerment. Involved employees are asked for their input, but they are not given ownership of their jobs. Empowered employees are given ownership of the processes they are responsible for and the products or services generated by those processes. Empowered employees take pride in their work and the resulting products or services produced by it. This yields dedicated, motivated employees who feel a strong sense of ownership and who are physically, intellectually and emotionally involved in their work.

 

9.  Discuss leadership for quality.

ANS: Leadership for quality is leadership from the perspective of total quality. It is about applying the principles of leadership in such a way as to continually improve the performance of people, processes, and products. Leadership for quality is based on the philosophy that continually improving people, processes, and products will, in turn, improve the following:

• Quality

• Value

• Productivity

• Service

• Market share

• Longevity

• Business expansion (more jobs and opportunities for advancement)

• Return on investment

 

The key elements of leadership for quality include the following:

• Customer focus

• Obsession with quality

• Recognizing the structure of work

• Freedom through control

• Unity of purpose

• Looking for faults in systems

• Teamwork

• Continuing education and training

• Emphasis on best practices and peak performance

 

10.  How to lead for a better quality change?

ANS: Leading people in organizations through change initiatives require a concerted and systematic effort. The following change-implementation model is designed to help leaders systematically overcome the various factors that inhibit organizational change:

• Develop a compelling change picture

• Communicate the change picture to all stakeholders

• Conduct a comprehensive roadblock analysis

• Remove or mitigate all roadblocks identified

• Implement the change

• Monitor and adjust

 

 

SOCIAL NETWORKING ARTICLES SUMMARY: 

 

Executive sumary 1: Boeing’s First-Ever 727 Makes Its Final Flight

 

The articles portrays about the Boeing 727 and its last flight. The main Boeing 727 model to take off of creation made its last flight Wednesday following 25 years of ended use. The last flight of the three-motor plane made a fifteen moment flight from Paine Field to Boeing Field in Washington before turning into a changeless showcase at the Museum of Flight. Not at all like most models of the time, the Boeing 727-00 N7001U — the first of 1832 727 Trijets worked in Boeing's Renton, Washington, plant wasn't kept as a test plane. The boeing 727 first took to the skies on Feb. 9, 1963, this tri plane has following conveyed around 3 million travelers, made 48,060 arrivals and flown for 64,495 hours, as indicated by the Museum of flight. United Airlines then got the plane on Oct. 6, 1964, for $4.4 million, however the plane produced more than $300 million for the airline. The plane hadn't been airborne since United Airlines gave to the gallery of flight in 1991 in light of the fact that United kept numerous real parts to use as extras. A couple of years after the fact, after a noteworthy remodel with the parts of two extra gave 727s — the air ship was regarded airworthy for this brief outing. The flight, which went easily, occurred under a special permit and included just the essential team.

 

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Executive Summary 2: The Futuristic $4 Billion World Trade Center Transit Hub

 

At the point when the World Trade Center towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001, the train station underneath them was likewise pulverized. Presently, the station has been updated, remade and is set to open Thursday, March 3. The $4 billion sticker price makes the transportation center the most costly ever assembled, notwithstanding beating development expenses of One World Trade Center, Gizmodo reports. At the point when the venture was initially declared in 2004, it was required to cost $2.2 billion and be finished by 2009. With engineering by Santiago Calatrava, known for his striking sculptural plans, the new stark-white center point has taking off roofs and various windows to fill the far reaching subterranean lobby with characteristic light, including a 350-foot-long sky facing window, as indicated by the Wall Street Journal. The over the ground part, called the Oculus, gloats gigantic ribbed wings displayed to summon pictures of a bird. Altogether, the structure utilized around 22,000 tons of steel, and a lot of that was for stylish advance, faultfinders say.

 

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Executive Summary 3: Takata Airbag Recall Largest In History

 

According to federal regulators, Takata Corp. has consented to proclaim 33.8 million airbags imperfect, a move that will twofold the quantity of autos and trucks incorporated into what is currently the biggest auto review in U.S. history. The synthetic that expands the airbags can blast with an excessive amount of power, blowing separated a metal inflator and sending shrapnel into the traveler compartment. The defective inflators are in charge of six deaths and more than 100 wounds around the world. Takata and 11 automakers that utilization its airbags, including Honda Motor Co. what's more, Toyota Motor Corp., will need to deal with which vehicles are secured by the extended reviews. Safety regulators competed with Takata for as long as year over the measure of the reviews and the reason for the issue. Generally, the airbag creator declined to announce the inflators deficient and even scrutinized the office's power to request it to lead a review. It is continually shocking and alarming when a huge partnership initiates a recall. It is clear that quality is an idea that is according to the viewer. For this situation, what Takata figured as sheltered and dependable was of low quality according to customers. Takata overlooked the notice signs when just a little number of airbags indicated imperfections and at last permitted the deformities to develop and bring about the deaths. I trust it is not just Takata who ought to hold up under the brunt of this circumstance however all the organizations who utilize their items too. The organizations who utilize Takata's items like Toyota and Honda ought to guarantee that they are getting quality items from their sellers with a specific end goal to meet quality principles and client necessities.

 

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