MBA

Quality Planning

  1. Set quality objectives and targets
  2. Take into account customer’s wants
  3. Plan about marketability of the products.
  4. Carry out pre-production process capability or quality deliverability studies.
  5. Establish the relative importance of the quality characteristics and specifications.
  6. Communicate to the production line people and vendors supplying the raw materials.
  7. Establish statistical control techniques, charts and sampling plans.
  8. Establish training programmes.

Planning for Quality

Planning for quality starts with setting quantifiable and measurable targets. While doing this the organization needs to keep customer’s wants in mind. Once the quality objective is decided it is important to think about the market feasibility of the product. TATA Nano can prove if Ratan Tata was wrong or right when he planned for the people’s car of India. Once everything is planned the organization needs to asses its capability to deliver the target quality. If there is gap in capability then the organization needs to fill that gap by upgrading to the required technology and skill sets.

Before planning for Chandrayan ISRO must have thought about its capabilities to build and deliver such a spacecraft. A ranking chart should be developed to finalize the most important aspect of quality planning and more focus should be given to that aspect. Communicating the target and plan to frontline people is important because they are the people who will implement everything in the real life situation. They should be properly convinced before starting the new course. Plan to monitor the progress of quality programme is important. This can be done by devising ways and means to monitor progress and finding and correcting deviations.

Cost of Quality

Maintaining the quality at least possible cost.” The ultimate goal of an organization is to earn profits. So keeping the cost at minimum possible level is important. Otherwise the higher input cost may not permit the ultimate aim of the organization.

Cost of quality involves following aspects:

  1. Cost of Appraisal
  2. Cost of Prevention
  3. Cost of Failure

Cost of Appraisal: Inspection, Testing, Monitoring Control This is about assessing the current situation. This will involve man-hour and resources.

Cost of Prevention: Prevention requires man-hour as personnel need to be deployed to inspect the raw material and finished goods. As per an old saying prevention is always better than cure, so the organization should strive to prevent bad quality product from going down the supply chain.

Cost of Failure: Cost of failure needs to be planned out in advance as no matter how much precautions are taken failures are part of life.

Analysis of Costs of Quality

Category to category comparison: Comparing the relative amounts spent on each of the above mentioned cost categories.

Time to time comparison: Comparing one quarter’s operations with the previous quarter’s operations. The comparative analysis of cost of quality can give an idea about where to focus more to improve further.