2-2 Short Paper: Starwood Hotels' Quality InitiativesAssignmentUpdatedAs an operations management professional, you will be asked to examine companies' operational processes, identify performance gaps

Quality Improvement Initiatives

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Introduction

Customers define quality making them the center of an organizations universe. They always expect reliability, competitive price, on-time delivery of products and services, explicit transactions and more. Satisfaction of customers’ needs has become a strategic imperative for most businesses. Satisfaction programs have increasingly become result oriented at the same time. Firms and organizations subscribe to the satisfaction profit chain principle composed of: attribute performance, customer satisfaction, customer retention and profit.

The logic underlying the satisfaction profit chain is simple and intuitive. When companies improve product and service delivery, customer satisfaction increases. Increased customer satisfaction leads to customer retention. Improving customer retention leads to greater profits for the business. According to Customer satisfaction studies, overall satisfaction is a function of performance on various attributes. Firms can increase their overall satisfaction by managing performance rating on the primary attributes. Research has shown that increasing overall satisfaction leads to greater repurchase intentions as well as actual purchase behavior by customers (Creveling, Hambleton, & McCarthy, 2006).

Customer loyalty remains to be one of the most significant engines of success for any business. Firms with high customer retention expect to get high profits. The necessity for quality and safety improvement initiatives permeate every business venture. The primary goals of measuring quality improvement are to determine the effects of the firm on desired outcomes and to assess the degree to which the company adheres to processes based on scientific evidence agreed to by professionals and other business institutions. System failures cause errors it is important to adopt various process improvement techniques to identify inefficiencies.

Each of these techniques involves assessing the performance and using the findings to effect the necessary change. This paper will discuss strategies and tools for quality improvement including failure modes and effects analysis, plan to do a study, six sigma, and cause analysis that has been used to improve the quality and safety of any business (Chapman, & Hopper, 1997).

Donabedian proposed measuring the quality of any business by observing its structure about 40 years ago, procedures, and end product. The structure measures the accessibility, availability and quality resources. Process measures assess the delivery of services and goods using outlaid guidelines. Environmental and behavioral factors can influence the outcome. Deming, the founder of Total Quality Management (TQM), promoted constancy of purpose, systematic analysis and measuring of process steps about outcome The TQM model is an organizational approach involving corporate management, teamwork, systematic thinking, and change to create an environment for progress (Morfaw, 2009).

This approach involves the view that the entire organization must commit to quality and success to achieve the best results. In business, continuous quality improvement is used interchangeably with TQM. Many quality assurance programs focus on issues identified by regulatory organizations such as checking and reviewing the work of the oversight committees and studying credentialing process. There are several other strategies proposed for improving business processes. CPI attempts a comprehensive understanding of the complexity of business and product delivery. From these models management of business and involvement have been found to be essential for the successful implementation of change (Morfaw, 2009).

Quality improved is defined as precise data-guided activities designed to bring about an immediate improvement in delivery in particular environments. A quality improvement strategy is defined as any interventions aimed at minimizing the quality gap from a group of customer representative of those encountered in routine practice. The choice of the quality improvement strategy and methodology is dependents upon the nature of the quality improvement project, many other strategies, and tools for quality improvement can be accessed quickly today.

Quality improvement projects and policy are different from research. Quality improvement projects can include the use of small samples frequent change in interventions and the adoption of a new plan that will be effective, while research attempts to assess and address a problem that produces generalized results (Adams, Gupta, & Wilson, 2003).

Six Sigma involves improving designing and monitoring business processes to minimize waste while maximizing satisfaction and increasing financial stability. The performance of a process is used to measure success by comparing the baseline process capability after surveying potential solutions for quality improvement. Six Sigma uses two primary methods, one inspects process outcome and counts the damages. The second method is only applicable to pre-analytic and posts analytic process. It uses estimates of process variation to predict process performance by calculating a metric from the defined tolerance limits and the difference observed from the process. This method is suitable for the analytic process in which the precision and accuracy can be estimated by the experimental process.

According to (Adams, Gupta, & Wilson, 2003) One complete Sigma uses five-phased processes structured and rigorous formally known as the Define, measure, analyze, improve and control DMAIC. To begin the project is identified, past data are reviewed, and the measure of returns is noted .continuous total quality performance standards is selected, performance objectives are then defined, and sources of variabilities are laid out. As implementation goes on data is collected to assess how well changes improved the entire process.

A strong leadership support consistent commitment to quality improvement and visibility both physically and in writing. The inevitability of resource demand associated with changing process requires senior leadership to ensure adequate funding resource identification sourcing for funds and purchasing, testing new innovative technologies and equipment. The leader needs to facilitate and enable key players to have the needed time to be involved in the process of bringing change. Supporting the time-consuming project by granting enough time for the work and emphasize safety as an organizational priority and reinforce expectations especially when the process delayed.

Senior leadership needs to understand the impact of high level decision on work processes and staff time more so when efforts were underway to change practice and the quality improvement needs to be incorporated into system-wide leadership development Leadership is needs to make patient safety key aspect for all meetings to create a formal process for identifying annual patient safety goal for the company and hold themselves accountable for the outcomes

Some people within the organization may be hesitant to participate in quality improvement efforts despite having a vigorous and committed leadership. Previous attempts to create change were hindered by various factors for instance lack of organizational committee, weak corporate relationship, and poor communication (Creveling, Hambleton, & McCarthy, 2006).

Improvement process needs to engage all stakeholders and gain their trust that the investment in quality improvement could be recouped with efficiency gains and fewer advertising. Additionally, it is important to take into account every different perspective from all stakeholders and gain their support for critical changes in the entire process. Communicating and sharing information with the parties concerned and staff is essential to specifying the purpose of the quality improvement initiative.

The success of these strategies is dependent upon having a motivated and empowered team. The team needs to be composed of the right people. Specific stakeholders have to be supported to make the change and solve the problem for the interventions to success. Implementation of quality initiatives requires a change in daily work, consideration of the attitude and willingness of front line staff to make specific changes needed (Chapman, & Hopper, 1997).

Another factor to improve success is implementing protocols that could be adapted to customers’ needs based on experience training and culture. It is important to test different approaches that can converge and arrive at the desired success. Team leaders and the composition of the team is equally important. These teams need dedicated team leaders who have a significant amount of time to put into the business.

According to (Creveling, Hambleton, & McCarthy, 2006) Data and availability of information are required to understand the magnitude of adverse events and helps to evaluate the initiative. Reporting of errors and hazardous conditions need to be encouraged because error reporting is weak and associated with the culture of the organization. Organizations that does not prioritize reporting or not strongly emphasize the culture of safety may have a tendency of not reporting errors, and they may harm humans and damage property worth lots of cash.

Despite the benefits afforded by the initiatives, many challenges identified in the implementation of the initiatives. Despite the challenges, it is important to persevere and stay focused because introducing a new product can be difficult.

References

Adams, C., Gupta, P., & Wilson, C. (2003). Six Sigma deployment (1st ed.). Amsterdam: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Chapman, C., & Hopper, D. (1997). Achieving Business Excellence, Quality and Performance Improvement (1st ed.). London: Thorogood.

Creveling, C., Hambleton, L., & McCarthy, B. (2006). Six sigma for marketing processes (1st ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Morfaw, J. (2009). Total quality management (TQM) (1st ed.). Lanham [Md.]: University Press of America.