Question

What is Quality? Adapt your readings to develop your own definition/s of quality and discuss each others posts. What specific tools can be used for quality control? What is statistical process control?

Discuss process strategy with examples: How can you manage operations /create processes to produce products & services that meets customer requirements within cost and other managerial constraints? Discuss automation, robots in present OM and the future of robotics in OM.

Use examples & external (not from the text-book) references to support your posts.

Answer 1

In simple words, I would like to define quality as how good or bad something is. In organizational point of view, quality refers to the extent to which a product or service meets the requirements of the customer. In other words, quality is a state of being defect-free or presence of minimal defects in comparison with similar other products or services. Developing my own quality standards will include setting an expectation by initially researching about the product or service required, then fixing points for each characteristic of the product or service, and finally rating the product in percentage, based on the points received. Seven basic tools can be used for quality control. They are Check sheet, Control chart Stratification (alternately, flow chart or run chart), Pareto chart, Histogram, Cause-and-effect diagram (also known as the "fishbone" or Ishikawa diagram) and Scatter diagram. Statistical process control is a method for measuring the quality during the production or manufacturing and thus minimizes the chances of defects. This method employs statistical methods to monitor and control a process, and the data thus collected is used to evaluate, control, and find solutions for production issues.

Process strategy is the pattern of decisions made in managing processes in order to achieve their competitive priorities. It involves figuring out the most efficient way to produce a good or deliver a service so that processes do not need to be outsourced and that quality assurance is maximized. There are four types of process strategies: process focus; repetitive focus; product focus; and mass customization. An example of process focus is an organization working with different departments, with different functions or processes, like an IT firm which has development and testing department/team, HR department, Finance department etc. An example for repetitive focus is a product-oriented production process that uses continuous or repetitive processes, like a boutique, which takes orders for a particular item, that should be made repetitively to look the same and have exactly the same features. An example for product focus is lip balm manufacturing, which focuses on high volume and low cost, and the quality remains the same always. Mass customization focuses on unique customer desires or requirements, and an example will be the work of an event management team. Some of the ways I suggest to manage operations to produce products/services meeting customer requirements including cost and other managerial constraints are: Catering to customer requirements and suggestions; Constantly checking on quality levels and make alterations as required; Awareness about scope of improvement areas and innovations; Investing in training; and Accepting feedback and criticisms and try to make changes if required.

Automation in operations management refers to the art of making process or processes self-acting. The major advantages of automation are increased productivity, low operational variability, reduction of cost, human error and production time, and even making up for a labor shortage. I should say that there is significant future for robotics in operations management. Areas where robots replace, and are better than employees are accuracy, uninterrupted labor, flexibility, and compliance, and thus results in high quality cost-effective products/services.