Focus on Quality in Operations Management

Focus on Quality in Operations Management

Damion Martin

Operations Management - MGMT 4804

Mrs. Sophia Thomas

Turks and Caicos Islands Community College

October 22, 2012

Why should root problems be identified in addressing quality issues?

It is very important for operations manager to identify the problems affecting the quality of a particular product or service but of most importance is to identify and correct the root cause of the problem. This will prevent problems from recurring, reduce possible injure to personnel, reduce rework and scrap, increase competitiveness, promote happy customers and stock holders and ultimately reduce cost and saved money.

One of the most important parts of an operations manager’s job is to deliver healthy, safe and quality products and services to customers. The development of poor-quality products, because of inadequate design and production processes will result not only in higher production cost but also leads to injuries, lawsuits and tarnished brand loyalty. (Heizer & Render, 2008)

Genich Taguchi used a mathematical function to identify all cost that is connected with poor quality and shows how these cost increase as the product moves away from being exactly what the customer wants. These costs include not only the customer dissatisfaction but also warrant service cost; internal inspection, repair and scarp cost; and costs that can be described as cost to society. Taguchi realized that the best opportunity to eliminate variation is during the design of a product and its manufacturing process. (Heizer & Render, 2008)

Describe a poorly designed product or service that you feel could have been improved significantly if the designers had talk to you beforehand as someone with a Bachelor’s Degree in Operations Management.

The controller for the Nintendo Wii can be considered a poorly designed product. The controller is slip-prone, which often times slips from the hands of over-eager Wii Sports players...