Quality Management and Business Improvement Strategies - Case Study

Question A1: Evaluation of Quality Management Concepts

A-Team Company is a manufacturing company established in 2000. The company was very profitable. The company does not have any quality department in the organization. However, lately due to price cutting from the competitor, the company suffered losses. The top management has decided to launch a Quality project to look into methods to improve the total organization. However, due to the lack of expertise in quality management the management has decided to hire XYZ Consulting Company to improve the current situation. After investigation, the consultant suggested to go with the “project-by-project approach”.

XYZ Consulting Company suggests that A-Team Company should initiate a project to look into the manufacturing issues first as it has a very significant impact to A-Team Company in terms of cost benefits. After investigation, XYZ Consulting Company found that for each 100 units of production, a certain process yields 85 conforming units, 5 units that must be scrapped, and 10 must be reprocessed. Each scrapped unit results in a $60 loss; each reprocessed unit requires an extra half hour of processing time. The resource time of producing the original unit is 20 hours.

Question A1:

Evaluate the roles of total quality management (TQM) and the Kaizen system of continuous improvement in XYZ. Explain what benchmarking is and why a XYZ may choose benchmarking as a strategy to improve quality. Explain how quality assurance is different to quality control

Question A2:

Explain the benefits of the “project by project approach” which was suggested by XYZ Consulting Company. Explain the reasons on why it is important for the company to eliminate the cost of poor quality and how it will change the business conditions. Justify your answer operationally and academically.

PART B

Question B1:

Name three Quality Tools that are commonly used. Explain the purpose and objective of the Quality Tools that you have mentioned. Imagine that you are working in a privately owned company that does not have any ideas on and do not understand Quality Management or Quality tools. What do you think are important quality techniques in Quality Management or Quality project to be applied in order to convince the top management? Justify your answer operationally and academically

Question B2:

Explain the importance of the Business Process Re-Engineering to the organization and how it affects the customers in the organization. Also explain the focus and the emphasis of the Functional Department and Process Management. What are the expected benefits of implementing Business Process Management? How do you suggest these expected benefits will help the organization? Kindly provide five examples with elaboration. Justify your answer operationally and academically.

Question B3:

The inspection of the project through the implementation phase is critical to ensure that quality standards are being met. The use of vendors is most often required to obtain critical materials, components, or sub-assemblies. To determine a vendor's capabilities to produce to the specifications, a "shop survey" or audit of the vendor may be required.

PART C

Question C1:

You were hired as a Quality Manager to head a Quality Management Department. The company does not have a Quality Management department and you are facing many obstacles. How do you approach the management to implement changes in the company and ensure the success of implementing a Quality culture in the company? Justify your answer operationally and academically.