Management refers to the practice of planning, organizing, leading and controlling resources such as land, labor, capital and information in a firm. One of the major functions of this docket is quality management, which involves the effort to achieve the best standard of goods and services to meet the customers’ satisfaction. This enhances the marketability of their products, which in turn attracts a high market demand, and increases profitability of the firm. Achieving Quality management is a considerable challenge in many companies, hence resulting to a rise in the need to come up with adequate strategies to achieve it. This article covers the BJB Manufacturing Company Quality Management Implementation strategy. It elaborates on the factors that can be used to measure the success of quality management initiatives, as well as some of the strategies that can be applied to achieve it. Finally, it illustrates how these approaches affect productivity of the company.
To measure the results of a quality management initiative implemented by the BJB Manufacturing Company Quality management committee, several factors need to be considered. First, it is crucial to concentrate on the customers’ feedback by paying close attention to their suggestions concerning to the quality of goods or services (Irianto, 1962). This information can be used to rate the quality of goods and services offered by the company as compared to the consumers’ expectation. A successful quality initiative should focus on satisfying the consumers’ tastes and preferences. This means that a positive feedback from consumers is a sign of successful quality management initiative.
Secondly, it is necessary to evaluate the competitiveness of products in the market (Bennet &Kerr, 1996). Goods of high standards are preferable to those of low standard. Moreover, the demand for high quality products tend to increase progressively with time is because these goods will withstand the test of time. In this view, it can be concluded that the success of a quality initiative strategy can be attached to the ability of the goods to outdo other similar products in the market (Irianto, 1962).
Another factor that can be used to test the wellbeing of a quality management initiative is the revenue returns. Good quality products attract high sales and minimum losses. High sales will be achieved due to the high demand for the product and losses will be minimized because less damage is expected for high quality goods. Therefore, the company will optimize its profit (Flynn & Schroeder, 1994).
One of the various approaches used in the deployment of the quality management initiatives is leadership strategies. The top-level management is responsible for designing the quality policy, management of the labor force, as well as the resources. Leaders should start by evaluating the problem at hand, its severity, and design the best policies to implement. Design of policies should be followed by organization of the labor force, and allocation of available resources with an aim to meeting the set target of desired quality of goods and services. Finally, leaders should supervise the implementation of these policies to ensure that employees follow them to the latter. In brief, leadership is the most crucial factor in the strategy deployment stage (Kouzes & Posner, 1995).
Organized leadership would ascertain high quality goods and services, which in turn would minimize their chances of failure (Irianto, 1962). Therefore, this ensures that all sold products will give the consumer a long and satisfying service, and it will earn the company a solid reputation leading to a higher demand for their products. If the company satisfies the consumers’ tastes, they are likely to recommend the same products to other potential buyers. Consequently, the company has a sustained supply of goods and services to customers in the long run.
As the leaders strive to achieve quality products, they should also set a priority to minimize the production cost and maximize sales. Consequently, the production cost as compared to the sales becomes minimal, and some time may even be negligible. This implies that labor and material costs become minimal in the long run, as the company achieves a higher operating efficiency. This in turn, will guarantee maximum profit for the company (Johnson, 1987).
In addition, leaders should hold open forums with their customers to enhance intimate relations. With this, customers will be able to air their views about the products, and suggest on the areas of improvement. Alternatively, suggestion boxes can be provided for customers as a channel to express their opinions as well as any complains. This would significantly facilitate customer complains management, and in turn enable them to focus on more satisfying products (Irianto, 1962).
Quality products should comply with environmental regulations act, which demands that all products be environmental friendly. Thus, the products should not be a cause of environmental pollution. In view of this, leaders should obtain adequate information concerning environmental conservation from the environmentalists. Consequently, they can efficiently strategize on how to free their products of any pollutants (Yusof & Aspinwall, 2000).
The other major role of the leaders is to organize the entire workforce to maximize productivity. It is appropriate to instill principles of teamwork and cooperation. This can be achieved by ensuring an efficient intercommunication among all departments of the company. This will ensure that they all work towards the target goal rather than having a spirit of competition amongst themselves. In this way, coordination would be improved among the various departments (Cummings & Worley, 1993).
It is the duty of managers to maintain the inventory levels, which ensuring that the inventory levels are neither too many nor too few. Inventories in a manufacturing company should be kept for the number of goods held for sale (CliffsNotes, 2012). In case they are too many, there are unnecessary costs of storage and security, though if the inventory is too low, level of sales may be low. In addition, it is the role of the leaders to check for inventory shrinkage and damage. Inventory shrinkage occurs when the physical inventory has few items than the number present in the inventory books. For instance, possible causes of shrinkage are shoplifting or theft, which reduces the number of items in the inventory.
In conclusion, quality management is a challenging process, and it requires well-structured strategies for implementation. Leaders should be in the forefront leading the customer satisfaction campaign. They should be involved extensively in the deployment stage in order to supervise the process with the aim of achieving maximum output from their labor force. It is also clear that, the revenue of a company highly depends on the quality of their products. High quality products will fetch more customers, hence leading to high profit margins.
References
Bennet, L., & Kerr, M. (1996). A System Approach to the Implementation of Total Quality Management. Total Quality Management, 7(4), 631-665. CliffsNotes, (2012). Determining Inventory Levels. Web.
Cummings, T. & Worley, C. (1993). Organization Development and Change. Minneapolis: West Publishing.
Flynn, B. & Schroeder, G. (1994). A framework for Quality-Management and an Associated Measurement Instrument. Journal of Operations Management, 2(3), 339–366.
Irianto, D. (1962). Quality management implementations: a multiple case study in Indonesian manufacturing firms. Web.
Johnson, G. (1987). Strategic Change and the Management Process. Blackwell: Oxford.
Kouzes, J. & Posner, B. (1995). The Leadership Challenge: How to Keep Getting Extraordinary Things Done in Organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Yusof, M. & Aspinwall, E. (2000). Total Quality Management Implementation Frameworks: Comparison and Review. Total Quality Management, (2)3 448-462.