Principles of modern quality management and their repercussions

Question

Hi everyone I'm looking for some help with my upcoming exam, I'm struggling to think of answers relating to quality management..

A question on my previous project management exams goes like so: "Modern quality management requires customer satisfaction, prefers prevention to inspection and recognises management responsibility for quality. Explain, with examples, why each of these is important for quality management. What problems would you expect if these aspects of quality management were ignored?"

What are some examples of why these things are important? And what problems would you expect if these principles were ignored?

I can think of one: Inspection of produced units would take much longer than assuming prevention.

But otherwise, I'm struggling.

Answer 1

Probably too late for your use, but this was a fun exercise. You asked:

^{"Modern quality management requires customer satisfaction, prefers prevention to inspection and recognises management responsibility for quality. Explain, with examples, why each of these is important for quality management. What problems would you expect if these aspects of quality management were ignored?"}

Customer satisfaction

Explain, with examples, why this is important for quality management.

If you don't have customer satisfaction, then you will not get any feedback; if nobody wants to use your product, they will not inform you of quality issues.

For example, if you sell a bad quality camera, then people will simply return it without explanation. You won't even discover what they didn't like.

What problems would you expect if these aspects of quality management were ignored?"

You would get no feedback from the field; users will either return the product or stop using it, but not ask for improvements. Your sales will plunge, and your business will suffer.

Prefers prevention to inspection

Explain, with examples, why this is important for quality management.

Finding problems is harder than preventing them. Some quality issues may only be detected after long periods of use or under certain conditions.

For example, if you use low-quality brake pads on a vehicle, inspecting them will not find any problem, unless you drive the vehicle thousands of miles before inspecting them.

What problems would you expect if these aspects of quality management were ignored?"

Your users may find serious quality issues; it may not be a few users but all users who used the product for a long time. Then you'll have to do a worldwide callback or upgrade.

Recognises management responsibility for quality

Explain, with examples, why this is important for quality management.

When management takes responsibility for quality then everybody involved in the production of the product will realize that it's an important aspect of the production process.

For example, when Google's motto is do no evil then the entire company realizes that the Google Search results must be fair and balanced; they know what management expected of them.

What problems would you expect if these aspects of quality management were ignored?"

When management does not take responsibility for quality then - even inadvertently - they will cause quality to be "a corner that can be cut". Once it's not their responsibility, they may pressure the teams to deliver - and ignore the facts that a speedier delivery may come at the expense of quality.

Answer 2

Principles of modern quality management - in the manufacturing context

Let me try to explain these in the context of automobile or similar mass manufacturing:

Modern quality management requires customer satisfaction

In the shopfloor, any discussion of whether a batch of components are of good quality or not is based on the component specs. However, if after making it conforming to specs, you find the customer is not happy, you should listen to that feedback and change the specs, as needed.

prefers prevention to inspection

When you manufacture a batch of components, if there are wide variation in dimensions, some people push for more and closer inspection. This is not enough. You must study whether the underlying process is capable of delivering consistently within spec. This is the way to prevent defects. As Harold F. Dodge said, “You can not inspect quality into a product.”

and recognises management responsibility for quality.

When a batch of components are rejected, the tendency is to blame the operator/first-line-supervisor. Not necessarily. The management is resposible for procuring raw materials of right quality, assigning that job to the right machine, providing the right tools, providing necessary training and so on.