Improving Performance And Quality

Question 1

Why is quality important

Answer 1

• Lack of trust from customers.
• can help gain a competitive advantage
• under the consumer rights act 2015 all products must be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described.
• refunds it products are not satisfactory or fit for purpose

Question 2

Producing quality

Answer 2

T6 produce good quality product a firm must:
- identify exactly what customers are looking for
- specify exactly what the product has to do.
- make sure these specifications are achieved every time

Question 3

Benefits of good quality

Answer 3

• Better customer satisfaction means more customers
• higher quality equals higher price
• more customers and higher prices can lead to higher profit
• belter image means better competitive advantage

Question 4

Drawbacks of poor quality

Answer 4

• Poor quality leads to mistakes that have to be fixed
• poor quality means wastage, which means higher costs
• customers will return goods
• lose customer loyalty
• effects of poor quality is expensive (brand name, image, wastage, sales)

Question 5

Methods of improving quality

Answer 5

• There are two main ways a business can improve their quality
• quality control
• quality assurance

Question 6

Quality control

Answer 6

Traditional way of managing quality and means a business will be checking and reviewing work that has already been done. For example quality control includes: inspection, testing, and sampling. Quality control is mainly about “detecting” faulty output - rather man preventing it. Quality control can also be a very expensive process as there may se a large number of rejects before a problem is spotted.

Question 7

Quality assurance

Answer 7

Is about now a business can design the way a product of service is produced or delivered to minimise the chances that output will be sub-standard. Focuses on the product design/development stage. They should focus on these stages because it the production process is well controlled then quality will be “built in”. If the production process is reliable there is less need to inspect production output (quality control)
Quality assurance builds quality into every stage of the production process-every worker is responsible for meeting standards. This is more time consuming and each worker may have different standards - inconsistencies

Question 8

Benefits of improving quality

Answer 8

If a business improves the quality of their processes or the products and services offered it may:
- Motivate the employees to be working with better machinery or systems
- reduce the cost from waste and reworking faulty goods
- less time wasted sorting customer complaints

Question 9

Difficulties of improving quality

Answer 9

• Once a quality assurance system has been implemented it will need to be checked regularly to ensure employees are filling in the paperwork and following new principles
• may require an entire company culture shift which will take time
• can be expensive at the start especially if better machinery has to be purchased