What are reasons for ensuring goos quality?
- Sales will fall
- Poor reputation
- Bad PR may occur if safety standards are not met
- High quality attracts quality staff
- High quality can be sold at a premium
What is quality control?
Inspecting goods when they are finished
What are advantages of quality control?
- Faulty goods dont end up in the hands of customers
- A poor reputation is not obtained
What are disadvantages of quality control?
- High amounts of wastage if errors occur
- Faulty goods have been fully re-worked costing time and money
What is quality assurance?
This prevents poor quality by checking products at different stages if production
What are advantages of quality assurance?
- Less wastage which decreases costs spent on discarded materials
- Easily identify faults in production
What are disadvantages of quality assurence?
- Can slow down production
- Increases costs
What is continual improvements?
Attempting to improve quality even if objectives have been met
What are advantages of continual improvement?
- Consistantly higher quality than competition
- Businesses can react easily to external factors
What are disadvantages of continual improvement?
- High staff development costs
- Employees may feel pressure to continuously improve
What are quality circles?
A group of employees meet to suggest improvements for production
What are advantages of quality circles?
- Employees are motivated due to decision making power
- Suggestions are made by workers producing the product
What are disadvantages of quality circles?
- Production time is lost
- Employees require training to take part in quality circles
What are quality standards and symbols?
These prove that a product has met an agreed industry standard
What are advantages of quality standards and symbols?
- They prove to customers that a product has met a standard agreed quality
- Premium prices can be changed as they have been proven to be high quality
- Symbols can be used as a promotional deal
What are disadvantages of quality standards and symbols?
- It can be time consuming to achieve the awards
- Checks and audits by awarding bodies can disrupt production
- Awards that are removed can give the organisation a poor reputation
What is benchmaking?
This is copying the market leaders approach to ensure quality
What are advantages of benchmarking?
- Time is saved
- The product will be as good as the best on the market if successful
What are disadvantages if benchmarking?
- It can be difficult to gain information about other organisations quality methods
- The business will only be as good as its market leader
What is quality management?
The process of ensuring a variety of methods are used to ensure quality
What are advantages of quality management?
- Zero errors occur so wastage is reduced
- Staff are motivated due to being continually beign consulted on quality
- Products will be well known for high quality
- A culture of teamwork and motivation is established
What are disadvantages of quality management?
- Substancial staff training is required which increases costs and decreases work time
- Requires a stringent selecton process
- Processes need to be continually monitored which is time consuming
What is a mystery shopper?
This is someone who visits branches and purchases products to provide feedbaack to the business
