Importance Of Quality Control In Project Management: Literature Review Essay.

Factors Related to Quality Control in Projects

Question:

Discuss about the Constraints of Quality Control.

Quality control is defined as the activity that is undertaken to ensure that the quality of an end product of a manufacture (from industry) or project is according to the pre-set standards. However, recently, quality control is mostly ignored by the project managers in order to save time and money in the project. In order to analyse and address this issue, this literature review has been conducted that is mainly based on the quality control of a project. The entire study has been conducted on different factors related to the quality control and issues related to a project. The study first starts with the analysis of the importance of quality control in a project and then the role of project managers or organization leaders in ensuring the quality of the project and finally the adverse effects that may be occur in a project due to lack of quality control. Furthermore in this report, the use of technology for quality control has been suggested and for that purpose, the different technological processes that can aid the quality control and management of a project have been analysed.

In this assignment, a literature review has been conducted on the quality control factors and the constraints that prevent application of quality control in a project. Following the literature review study and analysis, suitable recommendations have been provided for the purpose of quality control of a project.

Quality control is a system that is needed more and more with the progress of time as the needs for setting a certain standard of outputs are growing. This is mainly because, these days, most of the manufactures are only after profits and hence, in order to maximize it; they are continuously using poor quality materials for the manufacture of the products. As a result, the outcome of the manufacture is of the poor quality and this is resulting in the depletion of customer satisfaction that in turn negatively affects the business of the retailers. Researchers have studied this issue for some time and have developed the concept of quality control. A literature review has been conducted based on the works different researchers as follows.

According to Munier (2013), some manufacturers, especially in the countries with developing economy ignore the quality factor and aims for producing the materials at the least possible expense for gaining maximum possible profits. As a result, they are delivering poor quality products to the retailers who are in turn selling poor quality products to the customers. This in turn angers the customers and the customer base of the retailer starts to decrease. However, this does not affect the manufacturer much as they find other retailers to sell their products. According to the researcher, this is significantly affecting the retailers and the customers whereas the manufacturer is earning huge amounts from selling poor quality products at low cost.

Constraints of Quality Control

As per the works of Corona-Suárez, AbouRizk and Karapetrovic (2014), not only the retail industry, quality factors are also becoming rising issues in projects as many project managers are not undertaking sufficient measures for the quality control of the project. As a result, the quality of the project is getting severely affected. It is the duty of the project manager to control the quality of the project in order to ensure complete success of the project. Without quality control, the project may be successful but after sometime, various faults and loopholes of the project become noticeable.

Phillips (2013) said that quality control is a problem that is adversely affecting all the industries as this is the age of capitalism and each and every company is looking to earn maximum amount of profits irrespective of the quality of the product or service outcome. Quality control requires extra expenses and project manager himself has to conduct the quality control steps which also incur a lot of time. Project management is all about the cost and time efficiency and hence, quality control is easily one of the activities that can excluded from a project by the project manager.

However, Sallis (2014) reiterates the importance of the project quality management in his works regarding quality control. According to him, instead of considering project quality management as waste of time and money, the project managers should see it as one of the most important and integral parts of the project that should never be ignored in order to satisfy the clients and maintain the customer base. Moreover, ignoring quality control saves time and money but has only short term effect whereas suitable quality control reduces the profit but the advantages are applicable for a long term. Moreover, initially, the company has to bear some costs whereas in the long term, their profits will continue to grow exponentially.

Kerzner (2013) researched about the constraints of quality control that are mainly faced by the project managers during the course of a budget. According to him, the following are the main constraints faced by the project managers.

Time Constraint: Often, the projects have extremely limited amount of time and the project managers consider quality control as a waste of time and an excess to the requirements. Moreover, before starting the project, the company instructs the project managers to earn as much profit as they can as an outcome of the project. Hence, the project manager generally emphasizes on maximizing the cost benefit factors of the project instead of analysing the quality aspects of the project.

Suitable Recommendations for Quality Control

Cost Constraint: Again, like the previous point, cost constraint is an important behind the lack of quality control implementation in the project. Most of the projects have limited budgets and the project managers are to gain maximum amount of profits and cost benefit from the project as well as not to exceed the project budget during the project. Hence, quality control is also considered by the managers as waste of money and they emphasize on maximizing the cost benefit factors for the project.

Scope: According to the researcher, scope is another main constraint that for the lack of quality control in the project. While preparation of the project scope, the project manager emphasizes on the main deliverables of the project and generally ignores the quality control of the project as it is considered as waste of time and money. Hence, after the preparation of the project scope, the quality control is ignored and not included as a part of the project.

As per the works of Low and Ong (2014), there are certain steps that can be taken to improve that quality of the project and maintain the limits of time, scope and budget as well. These are discussed as follows.

During the preparation of a project plan, the organization chairman and the project manager should consider quality control as an integral part of the project. They should know the importance of quality control in the project as well as maintaining a good customer base and act accordingly during the course of the project. While preparing the project plan document, the project manager should include quality control at different parts of the project to ensure all the project activities are conducted according to plan and a sufficient quality is maintained.

Arrange Time and Money for Quality Control – When the plans of most of the projects are prepared, the organization owners estimate the cost and time requirements excluding the quality control during the project. Hence, the budget and time get limited and as a result, there is no scope of inclusion of quality control within the project. However, if the quality control factor is considered early during the project planning, there will be no shortage of time and budget (Oakland 2014). However, first, the organization owner should be able to value the importance of quality control and ensure a specific quality of the project output that will also not negatively affect the customer satisfaction rating.

Another important factor that stands as an obstacle to the quality control factor of the project is the company’s emphasis of the cost and time benefits instead of fulfilling the requirements of the client. Although the company reiterates that their sole focus is solely on the client’s needs, in reality, their sole focus is earning maximum amount of profits. Hence, simply preparing a strong mission and vision statement is not enough for the company, they should be able to understand the importance of quality in maintaining a strong customer base and implement it accordingly in the project.

Nowadays, quality control in a project is also aided by the advanced technologies that also save a lot of time and money. Different technical projects like electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and others are now aided by advanced simulation and software driven technologies that can help to control the quality of the project if applied properly (Botje et al. 2014). For instance, during the design of water flow tanks controlled by a PID Controller, the researchers generally prepare a theoretical model and apply the model in the real design accordingly. However, the quality of the final design becomes poor and inefficient. However, with the help of MATLAB (a simulation software), the researcher can easily prepare the final design of the project, simulate it to get the results and then prepare the same for the real design. Again, there are several simulation tools that are utilized by the mechanical engineers in order to ensure the quality of the outcomes of the project.

Hence, it has been seen that quality control is not a very impossible job for the project managers neither it is a waste of time and money. The companies should be able to value the opinions and requirements of the customers and should take suitable steps to ensure the quality of the services or the products provided to the customer are always of the best quality. This will not only help increase the customer base but will also strengthen the customer base that will result in slow but exponential increasing in the annual revenue of the company (Shaari et al. 2015). Moreover, since technology is here to aid the process of quality control, the companies and organizations should fully utilize its help and implement quality control in the project. Moreover, quality control of the project should be done by the project manager and accordingly, the project monitoring should be done. Furthermore, the company should not consider quality control as waste of time and money and should spend the money for quality control no matter what in order to ensure best quality outcome of the project.

Conclusion

In this assignment, a literature review has been conducted on the quality control factors and the constraints that prevent application of quality control in a project. Quality control is a system that is needed more and more with the progress of time as the needs for setting a certain standard of outputs are growing. This is mainly because, these days, most of the manufactures are only after profits and hence, in order to maximize it; they are continuously using poor quality materials for the manufacture of the products. As a result, the outcome of the manufacture is of the poor quality and this is resulting in the depletion of customer satisfaction that in turn negatively affects the business of the retailers. Researchers have studied this issue for some time and have developed the concept of quality control. Instead of considering project quality management as waste of time and money, the project managers should see it as one of the most important and integral parts of the project that should never be ignored in order to satisfy the clients and maintain the customer base. Moreover, ignoring quality control saves time and money but has only short term effect whereas suitable quality control reduces the profit but the advantages are applicable for a long term. Furthermore, initially, the company has to bear some costs whereas in the long term, their profits will continue to grow exponentially.

References

Botje, D., Klazinga, N.S., Sunol, R., Groene, O., Pfaff, H., Mannion, R., Depaigne-Loth, A., Arah, O.A., Dersarkissian, M., Wagner, C. and DUQuE Project Consortium, 2014. Is having quality as an item on the executive board agenda associated with the implementation of quality management systems in European hospitals: a quantitative analysis. International journal for quality in health care, 26(suppl_1), pp.92-99.

Burke, R., 2013. Project management: planning and control techniques. New Jersey, USA.

Corona-Suárez, G.A., AbouRizk, S.M. and Karapetrovic, S., 2014. Simulation-based fuzzy logic approach to assessing the effect of project quality management on construction performance. Journal of Quality and Reliability Engineering, 2014.

Kerzner, H., 2013. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Leach, L.P., 2014. Critical chain project management. Artech House.

Levin, G., 2014. Project Quality Management: Why, What and How. Project Management Journal, 45(5).

Low, S.P. and Ong, J., 2014. Quality Management. In Project Quality Management (pp. 29-36). Springer Singapore.

Low, S.P. and Ong, J., 2014. Research Design and Methodology. In Project Quality Management (pp. 69-77). Springer Singapore.

Mir, F.A. and Pinnington, A.H., 2014. Exploring the value of project management: linking project management performance and project success. International journal of project management, 32(2), pp.202-217.

Munier, N., 2013. Project Quality Management. In Project Management for Environmental, Construction and Manufacturing Engineers (pp. 201-208). Springer Netherlands.

Oakland, J.S., 2014. Total quality management and operational excellence: text with cases. Routledge.

Phillips, J., 2013. PMP, Project Management Professional (Certification Study Guides). McGraw-Hill Osborne Media.

Sallis, E., 2014. Total quality management in education. Routledge.

Schwalbe, K., 2015. Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.

Shaari, N., Abdullah, M.N., Asmoni, M., Lokman, M.A., Hamid, H.A. and Mohammed, A.H., 2015. Practice for project quality management systems (PQMS) in construction project. Jurnal Teknologi, 77, p.26.

Turner, R., 2016. Gower handbook of project management. Routledge.