Advanced Quality Methods, Coursework Example

Quality – “fitness for purpose”

Whenever one goes out to purchase something, there is always one thing in mind; quality. People would always wish go get value for their money through quality products and services. A quality pair of shoes, for example, serves for along as the owner wishes, in other words, there is fitness for purpose in that pair of shoes. The same applies to any other product may it be edible, or not edible.  A quality product always serves for the service meant.

Products and services offered to a customer ought to meet customer needs. A company, organization, agency, shop, or any other outlet dealing directly or indirectly with customer ought to give quality products, services, and processes. Difference in quality makes an organization superior to others. Quality calls for an excellent design, maintenance of the highest order, and continued improvement of the excellent services. An organization that tends to offer products and services fit for the purpose of the consumer are likely to have higher purchases. This means more sales revenue to the organization.

1. In greater terms fitness for purpose summarized as:
2. No matter the product, whether a good or a service, it must fit for the meant purpose.
3. The good must have the right features to satisfy the customer needs.
4. It must be effective, with no failures, and delivery must be as agreed.
5.  The good must have superior quality of design
6. The good or service must possess superior quality of conformance
7. The good or service must be the availability at the time required
8. The good or service must be guaranteed
9. The good or service must have a warrant
10. The good or service should be free from failures, and good customer service should the failure occur.

Common strategies for organizations in creating superiority in quality

1. Becoming superior in quality for companies and organizations does not just come in vain. There should be employment of various strategies. The commonly employed strategies to gain superiority in quality include:
2. Giving customers top priority- in any business, customers are the top most important, as without them, that business would not be there. Their needs, and the way they wish to receive services to meet their satisfaction should be the chief goal. This ought to be a goal, vision, and a policy.
3. Creating a performance and excellence system – this is a change program or rather, a systematic model that bring in change, thus enabling occurrence of organizational breakthroughs.
4. Performing strategic planning for quality – yearly quality goals made in the business plan.
5. Recognition and award of best practices – This approach enables achievement of set goals where every employer would wish to receive an award.
6. Continuous innovation and process improvement- businesspersons should have in mind that quality is just but a moving target, thus, continuation should be the key as there is no marked end in the improvement processes.
7. Trainings and seminars – for achievement of quality, training needed, not only for the quality management team but also to all other departments
8. Creating an assurance focus – This helps in ensuring that all processes, functions, goods, and services within in an organization are of the highest quality possible
9. Creation of multifunctional team for every individual project- this is as a strategic way of assigning duties, as every team would focus on giving a result rather than a function. The teams would create a breakthrough to surpass their current performance.
10. Empowerment of employees- empowering the workforce, allowing them take part in decision-making, planning and improvement of the organization is a tool that makes everyone feel important and powerful, thus focus on performing best.
11. Building an adaptable, friendly, and sustainable organization- Generally, customers are responsible for defining quality. The business environment should be safe, friendly, and with sustainable cost of products.

Set of universal methods to attain superior results

To attain superior results, a set of universal methods need employment by organizations. The Six Sigma approach checks on the quality, quantity, elimination of errors, and checks on the reduction of waste. It employs the use of two acronyms, DMAIC and DMADV.

DMAIC is an approach applied to already existing projects that are experiencing issues in quality reduction. In this case, a team of qualified personals employed to search, augment, and eliminate the cause of what brings in the defect by using the DMAIC system.

DMAIC stands for:

• Defining- define the problem
• Measuring – measure the vital aspects of the project
• Analyzing- examine relevant information
• Improving – add value and improvement of the process by employing data analysis
• Controlling- consider the likely future outcome, and use the forecast to eliminate possible l errors

DMADV is an approach applied to inventing new products or process. The new product or process in question examined from different angles using the DMADV

DMADV stands for:

• Defining – define the intended goal for the new product or process.
• Measuring- identify the characteristic with respect to CTQ’s (critical to quality)
• Analyzing – obtain data and if possible, design alternatives
• Design – do the designing and optimization of the details, as there could be a need for simulations
• Verifying – if everything is okay, then implement the process or product