Course: Operations Management There are three assignments in total, in the attachment, please refer to the tutors, thank you!

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Critical Thinking

Chapter 9

A product's or service's quality is determined by its ability to consistently meet or exceed consumer expectations. Performance, appearance, unique characteristics, conformity, dependability, durability, perceived quality, serviceability, consistency, and expectancy are some of the qualities that are frequently used to evaluate quality. Every employee in the company is accountable for quality, but several areas—such as design, procurement, production/operations, quality assurance, packing, shipping, marketing and sales, and customer service—are particularly crucial (Stevenson, 2019). An improved reputation, the opportunity to charge premium rates, more market share, stronger customer loyalty, lower liability costs, fewer production or service issues, cheaper production costs, and higher profitability are just a few advantages of excellent quality. Yet, poor quality can have negative effects, such as decreased revenue, liability, productivity, and expenses.

Ethics and accolades are also ways to measure quality. In terms of ethics, it's crucial for businesses to accept responsibility for faulty designs, shoddy workmanship, defective goods, and subpar parts and materials, as well as to report any problems promptly (Pambreni et al., 2019). There are numerous other quality honors available, like the Baldrige Award, the Deming Prize, and the EFQM Excellence Award. Furthermore, crucial to the supply chain is quality. Customers' opinions of quality must be measured in order for business management to pinpoint and address issue areas. Collaboration with suppliers can aid in information exchange, quality assurance initiatives, and aiding suppliers with quality assurance efforts.

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a philosophy that encourages continuous quality improvement and customer satisfaction throughout a business. Continuous improvement, competitive benchmarking, employee empowerment, a team approach, fact-based decision-making, tool knowledge, supplier quality, and quality at the source are all components of TQM (Stevenson, 2019). A work ethic known as "quality at the source" holds each employee accountable for the quality of their product. While Six Sigma is a corporate method for enhancing quality, cutting costs, and raising customer satisfaction, the plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycle is a tool used to assist with issue solving and process improvement. Last but not least, techniques for coming up with ideas, including benchmarking, quality circles, and brainstorming, are crucial in quality management.

A crucial element in any company's success is quality. Quality must be a top concern, and everyone in a company should be held responsible for upholding quality standards in order to guarantee that customers are satisfied and that firms remain competitive. Many criteria can be used to evaluate quality, including performance and appearance, standard compliance, reliability, durability, and serviceability. Increased market share, customer loyalty, higher prices, and greater profitability can all be the outcomes of excellent quality. On the other hand, poor quality might result in reduced sales, increased responsibility, and higher costs (Pambreni et al., 2019). Organizations must accept responsibility for subpar labor, flawed goods, subpar designs, and subpar workmanship if they want to maintain quality. Organizations can be honored for their achievements in quality management with honors like the Baldrige Award, the Deming Prize, and the EFQM Excellence Award. In order to achieve high quality, company leaders must assess customer views of quality and collaborate with suppliers. Quality is also crucial in the supply chain. In an organization, TQM motivates all employees to pursue continuous improvement, competitive benchmarking, and customer satisfaction. Two instruments used to aid in issue solving and process improvement are the PDSA cycle and Six Sigma.

The ability to think critically is crucial to quality management. Leaders must be able to see areas that need improvement and then create plans to deal with those problems. All employees must work together to manage quality, and leaders must be able to effectively convey their quality vision to the company as a whole (Stevenson, 2019). Leaders must also have the ability to foresee prospective issues and act quickly to avert them.

Chapter 10

When output does not meet standards, corrective action is taken as part of the quality control process, which involves comparing the product to a standard. To make sure that products and services fulfill client needs, quality control is typically used in conjunction with other procedures and techniques. Although quality control is primarily concerned with preventing problems, it can also be applied to enhance currently offered goods and services. Inspection, sampling, and corrective action are the three main elements of quality control. The process of inspection involves evaluating products or services against a standard (Stevenson, 2019). When sampling yields results that are undesirable, remedial action is conducted to improve the quality of the product or service (Lee et al., 2020). Inspection by itself typically isn't enough to reach an acceptable level of quality; hence, the majority of firms rely on a mix of inspection and process control.

Inspection, centralized vs. on-site inspection, statistical process control (SPC), control charts, test runs, and process capability improvement are a few of the phases of quality assurance. Depending on the kind of product or service, inspection is frequently done at various stages of the process. Centralized vs. on-site inspection relies on the cost and extent of interruption. SPC is a tool for determining if a process is under control or requires improvement (Stevenson, 2019). Control charts are used to establish control limits and differentiate between random and non-random variability. Run tests are employed to find trends in a succession. Process capability can be raised through simplification, standardization, error-proofing, equipment upgrades, and automation.

For quality control to be implemented successfully, critical thinking is a crucial tool. The goal of quality control is to make sure that goods and services satisfy consumers (Stevenson, 2019). To do this, production must be assessed in relation to a standard, and when output does not meet standards, remedial action must be taken. A quality problem's underlying causes can be found and remedies for preventing its recurrence can be developed with the aid of critical thinking.

To evaluate products or services to a standard, an inspection is the first stage in quality control. For instance, a manufacturer may check a product's parts to make sure they meet the necessary requirements. By exercising critical thinking, one can look past the obvious and uncover any potential issues with the product (Lee et al., 2020). This can entail assessing the product's design, construction methods, and materials. This can assist in seeing any possible problems before they arise. The next stage is to sample a product or service to assess its quality. In this situation, critical thinking can be utilized to make sure that the sample is carried out in a methodical and objective way. This will make it possible to guarantee that the sample fairly represents the population.

When undesirable results are discovered after the product or service has been sampled and examined, corrective action is required. The root causes of the issue can be found through critical thinking, and remedies that will prevent it from happening again can be created. This could entail streamlining, standardizing, eliminating errors, improving hardware, and automating procedures. Also, it is crucial to apply controls to keep the process under control (Stevenson, 2019). Setting control limits and separating random from non-random variability can both be done using a control chart. Patterns in a sequence can be found by running tests. One can spot potential concerns before they become problems by using critical thinking. Ultimately, it's critical to work continuously to enhance process capability. Critical thinking can be used to spot areas that need improvement and create strategies to deal with them (Lee et al., 2020). One could, for instance, try to find ways to squander less and use resources more effectively.

References

Lee, C. W., Shin, Y. H., Shang, M., & Ryu, Y. S. (2020). A study on improvement of organizational culture of the members of manufacturing and service industry quality control: Focused on mediation effect of job satisfaction. Journal of the Korean Society for Quality Management, 48(1), 29-50.

Pambreni, Y., Khatibi, A., Azam, S., & Tham, J. J. M. S. L. (2019). The influence of total quality management toward organization performance. Management Science Letters, 9(9), 1397-1406.

Stevenson, W. J. (2019). Operations management. Measurement, 288, 325-326.