Ensuring Consistent Quality (AQA GCSE Business)

Total Quality Management (TQM)

• Total quality management is a whole-business approach to ensuring quality, with the aim of eliminating problems before they occur

• All employees are involved in ensuring quality is achieved in every business process

• Inefficiency and waste are removed from every business activity or function, including those that are not directly related to production

• Features of TQM include:

  • Teamwork as a key way to solve problems

  • Zero defects, the business culture of ‘getting it right first time’

  • Ongoing monitoring of quality standards using statistical measures

    • e.g. Defect rate, reject rate etc

  • A focus on meeting changing customer needs

  • Committed workers who receive ongoing training

Evaluation of TQM

Methods of Maintaining Consistent Quality

• Consistent quality means that products always meet expected standards

  • Maintaining consistency as a business grows is particularly challenging, as it may franchise its brand or use subcontractors to complete tasks on its behalf

• Businesses can take a range of steps to improve the consistency of quality

Diagram: Ways to Improve Quality Consistency

Inspection of work in progress and finished goods

• Checking the quality of products during manufacturing processes and once products are finished

  • If quality problems are identified during the process, it may be possible to rework products to reduce waste

  • Quality checks play a significant roles in preventing defective products reaching customers

  • Specialist inspectors may be employed to carry out these tasks

Staff training

• Training staff to improve their working practices and focus on expectations, as well as ways to correct errors, can reduce quality issues

• Staff that feel valued are more likely to engage in efforts to improve quality

Working with suppliers

• Developing close working relationships with trusted suppliers is likely to lead to better quality raw materials and components being delivered

• Sharing quality standards with suppliers and raising quality issues promptly can reduce the instances of defective materials entering production processes

Using IT systems

• Automation can speed up quality inspection and reduce the chance of human error

• Very precise checks can be carried out using closely calibrated sensors, meaning defects undetectable by humans can be identified

Involving all workers

• Making quality the responsibility of all staff embeds a culture of quality within a business

• Kaizen and TQM teams can operate across business departments, sharing their knowledge of and solutions to quality issues

Zero tolerance for defects

• Setting clear targets that focus on achieving excellent output, first time and every time

• By refusing to accept any level of defects in materials, components or finished goods, employees focus on the causes of quality issues rather than managing the effects

Costs & Benefits of Maintaining Quality

• Maintaining high quality can provide significant long-term benefits to a business

Benefits of Maintaining High Quality

• However, improving systems to achieve greater quality consistency can be costly

Costs of Improving Quality