Causes of Poor Quality Products and Services: Strategies to Improve Quality in Subway and Beyond

In this discussion  we will discuss about management and below are the summaries point:- Discussion of poor product and service quality in a company, using Subway as an example. Impact of poor quality on the company's market image, customer retention, and goodwill. Strategies to improve quality, including TQM, Kaizen, vendor audits, ratings, and EFQM excellence model.

MANAGEMENT

Discuss the causes of poor-quality products or services in an organization you are
familiar with. Describe any five (5) strategies that can be implemented to improve
quality in your selected organization.
The report brings out a discussion of poor quality of products and services. The essay
describes how poor quality spoils the market image of the company. The discussion carries
out a practical example of a company, which do not perform well especially, while providing
goods and services. The essay deals with the number of reasons that has caused failure of
subway. The essay briefly focuses on applying the strategies to overcome poor product or
service quality. Subway is an American fast food restaurant chain that primarily serves
submarine sandwiches and salads. The company was founded in 1965 and headquartered in
US. With the increasing globalisation and liberalisation, the organisations started facing huge
level of competition both from domestics well as international organisations (Adam, 2016).
Each enterprise is running to get maximum stakeholders base with maximum interest of
shareholders in it. In this race, sometimes it fails to comply with its basic legal requirement
and business strategies. Therefore, in order to get maximum shareholder`s interest, the
organisations have started following an unethical way of making large profits. Moreover, it is
important to understand that good quality products and CSR activities has become integral
part of the organisation`s obligations. When company spoils its product quality, it affect the
organisation`s goodwill negatively in long term (Ali, Adam, and Baharum, 2018). It breaks
the trust of the customers and this dissatisfaction among the customers can affect the
customer retention, and goodwill at severe level. With an aim to retain the customers in the
business for repetitive sales, an organisation will have to meet the expectations of the
customers. on the other hand, if the company fails to meet the customer expectations, they
may ask for money returns and will never spend the company`s services in long-term.
Moreover, by the word of mouth, a bad experienced customer will affect the repetitive visit

that can also pull back the visit of other friends. The case of poor quality reveals that Subway
provides mystery meat with rotten vegetables (El-kest, El-Hariri, Khafaga, and Refai, 2015).
Company` customers at the franchisees which is located in all-over the world are
continuously receiving the complainants regarding their poor quality. Moreover, the
discussion will also talk of some resolution and tools that can focus to improve the quality of
products and services. Although there many quality-maintaining tools are TQM (total quality
management), Kaizen, smart vendor audit checklist, post serving rating, and EFQM
excellence model. Therefore, here TQM is given more emphasis as compared to any of the
tool. Moreover, the company will have to ensure that the raw materials provided by local
farmers is of high quality. To ensure high agricultural product quality, a company can
undertake a GAP analysis (Linton, 2018).
To achieve long-term sustainability, maintaining the product`s quality is extremely important
for a company. Product quality maintains high level of customer loyalty and satisfaction. A
product or service must reach a certain level to fulfil the expectation, manage the goodwill,
meeting the industry standards, and managing costs. Positive reviews and strong goodwill
will act an organisation`s promotional activities. Legal requirements demand high quality and
safe product that do not hamper the customers in any way it is either their health or interest.
Law such as uniform commercial code upholds the customer`s perception and when the
company does not perform well. The law also empowers to sue if company`s product has
hampered them to a great extent (Maze, 2018).
Subway has struggled with internal management conflicts and oversaturation, which have
ultimately created difficulty for some stores of Subway especially franchisees in 2018. It has
been reported that franchisees in UK braced with worse news that relate to internal conflicts.
Moreover, national sales will be severely affecting the profitability of the subway in many
franchisees in all over the world. Outbreak of quality issues was revealed when subway kept

advertising it`s mission that the company provides fresh and healthier fast food but it was
running short of quality in many franchisees. After the outbreak of E.coli, general public
strictly denied to consume lettuce because it was spreading harmful bacteria and spoiling the
kidney and here is a reason where the employees got stuck and they could not find and check
the quality of lettuce which they were using and soon it turned into a massive problem.
Customers have stated that they have found that lettuces in the salads and sandwiches tasted
like shredded paper. Customers stood against poor quality in the stores as these days
customers have become very sensitive in regards to cleaner labels and preservatives used in
the food. Identification of poor lettuce used in the food was not the only reason of outbreak.
There are many other reasons of the failure of Subway and poor quality can be grouped in six
main categories such as Man, Machine, material, management, method and environment. By
briefing all the six categories, it can said that man category includes lack of motivation,
shortage of workforce, lack of training sessions, people opting shortcut, and unqualified
personnel. Machine category includes lack of capability, wear and tear of machines, improper
setup, and lack of maintenance of the processing machines, outdated technology, and
unavailability of spares. On the part of material that affects the quality of the products can be
low-grade material, variation, and unspecified material. Moreover, at last, irresponsible
management who can manage any risk after its exposer? Sometimes poor quality is the result
of Management who lacks vision, mission, flawed incentives and indicators, lack of
supervision, attitude towards change, lack of fact-based decision making. Subway was also
manipulated due to interpersonal conflicts in the internal business environment. Whereas,
subway tried to justify and prove its position by saying that particular suppliers were guilty
and they refused to answer media report as it has already stated in its vision and mission to
serve fresh food. The scandal was not limited to one franchisee, it was found in another
franchisee also where employee said lot of lettuce was of expiry date and it has already

turned brown even when they were in vacuum sealing. The employees has also noticed poor
quality of vegetables such as brown lettuce and rotten tomatoes. As company collects its raw
material from various suppliers and local farmers who ensures whether produced shipment is
delivered once or twice in a week. Due to sourcing the raw material form the local suppliers
by one of the franchisee, it proved to be threat to the company and became a doubt area for
improper raw material. Sometimes to save time and waiting for the raw material for one to
two week, the company started taking it from local suppliers who provide fresh at faster pace
rather than following a long way of distribution process. Moreover, the company served low
quality bread and the condiments. With the growing era of competition, various local fast
food chains restaurant, super-fresh chains have been increasing that turned customer
preference for local restaurants rather than subway (Yekini et al., 2018).
It is extremely important for the organisation to maintain the quality of its products. In order
to manage and control the quality to improve the business service, a business can use various
quality management tools. Providing quality products can ensure customer satisfaction and
maintain customer loyalty and this will reduce the cost of replacing the cost associated with
faulty products. Companies can build goodwill and reputation by maintaining quality. The
company is able to meet customer expectation, manage reputation, retain the previous
customers regularly, and increase the customer base that will ultimately improve the
profitability and maintain maximum sales revenue (Schwarz, 2017).
Here are some of the ways that can improve the consistency and product quality in
manufacturing the food. A manager strives to find how he/she can use cost effective
strategies to increase the profitability. Excessive cutting down the cost can lead to insufficient
workforce and use of cheap raw material can lead to damaging the quality of overall product
(Thomas, Francis, Fisher, and Byard, 2016). To reduce the waste and improve the quality, a
manager must maintain strategic approach that incorporates some of the action given below-

Promotes organisational understanding of cost of quality- as soon as a defected product
reaches customer, the cost of fixing becomes so high due to quality problems. It is critical for
staff members to get proper training to understand that cost of poor quality keep multiplies if
once it spoils the organisational image. Once the staff understands the opinion that how
important is to improve the product`s quality and drill down several quality issues that has
become the main cause of the problem (FAO, 2011).
Implementation of statistical processing tools- statistical process control was founded as a
way to quality control. This concept weighs the raw material and products in order to produce
the statistical tool that includes histograms, frequency diagrams, scatter diagrams, and Pareto
diagrams that reduce the variations in the process. This will result in reduction of defects and
overall waste in the production line. Modern technology has enabled the integration of SPC
system, which will remove faulty manual aspects starting from recording. The scaling system
integrated with SPC software can configure the required tolerance (TAYLORDEC, 2017).
Maintaining high level of visibility in the supply chain- Maximum employees are limited to
meet their needs in the supply chain. Each stage and level of supply chain is not visible to
few levels. However, by creating a high level of transparency in the manufacturing process,
the company will affect the quality. For instance- to keep an eye on key performance
indicators (KPI) and track them, which will give insight into all the employees as a guide
how organisation is performing, form quality point of view (Newton, 2017).
Regular analysis of performance- quality and safety checks are important for improving the
quality of the product. Even the local suppliers must have the understanding of basic food
safety requirements. It can be said reliably that large retailers have more resources to
establish a formal audit process whereas, SMEs (small and medium-sized companies) should
also have an auditing system that will maintain the strict food safety practises (Black, 2018).

Improved sustainability- when considering the customer preferences, many surveys reveals
that customers want to know about food safety, working conditions, distance travelled,
wages, environmental impact, and nutritional level. Majority of the customers are ready to
spend money to know that sustainability efforts are to be used in distribution and
manufacturing. For example- Kroger is a natural brand of food in US with a business plan to
expand the market of organic food. The company has focused to work with the suppliers,
manufacturers, and the farmers to transform the manufacturing by promoting sustainable
practises (Ross, 2017).
Quality management tools helps the company to collect and examine the data for the
employees to understand easily and analyse the information. These tools needs extensive
forecasting and collecting the related data about the customers. Customer expectation and
Consumer feedbacks are needed to be carefully monitored and evaluated to convey the
greater quality products. These tools will help the employees to understand and allow them to
develop the processes and finally find solution to any specific problem (Mason, Nicolay, and
Darzi, 2015). Here are some quality management tools-
Check list- this is useful in collecting and evaluating the information. It also helps the
employees to recognize the problem that is hindering the organisation to deliver the quality
products that will be able to meet and move above customer expectations. Check lists is a
long-list of recognised problems that are needed to be addressed. Once an effective solution
is figured out to a problem, mark it. Employees refers to this checklist to cope up whether the
changes made and incorporated in system can bring permanent solutions in the organisation
(Furterer, 2016).
Pareto Chart- It helps the organisation to recognise the problem, prioritise them, and test how
frequently they happened in the organisation. Bar graphs, charts, and line graphs often

represent it, which aims to know the main reason of problems and frequently occurred
defects. It also records the main reason that had led to maximum customer dissatisfaction and
finally enables the organisation to make related strategies to fix the common problems
(Duggan, 2018).
Scatter diagram, graphs, and histogram- all three are different quality management tools that
helps the organisation to examine and check the relationships between two different
variables. Histogram focuses intensity of any particular problem by indicating through the
width of the distribution. Scatter diagram is a tool that help to examine the relations between
the two variables. Graphs are used to recognise whether the process applied will be able to
give a certain expected level (Black, 2018).
(Source: What is six sigma, 2018)
TQM (total quantity management) - The success of TQM depends on eight elements that is
further classified into four groups named as foundation, roof, building bricks, and binding
mortar. All these four elements plays an important role maintaining the quality of products
and services in the organisation. Foundation includes ethics, trust, and the integrity (Azar,
Vashist, and Vashishtha, 2015). TQM involves each employee irrespective of his level in the

hierarchy. Ethics is human`s basic understanding of what is good or bad on the working
place. Every organisation has a code of conduct to adhere their own rules and regulations and
complying them with the basic ethical theories. Trust is an important factor for implementing
TQM. Employees will have to trust each other for the active participation of each employee.
Valuing individual`s honesty, sincerity on the working place is important as a respect for
each other always lie. Subway faced problems in the internal management of the organisation
due to unnecessary humours about each other and the company. Bricks are placed to
strengthen the foundation to attain a roof of identity (Azhar, 2018).
(Source: Smartsheet 2019)
By using all the above methods and tools, it can be said each tool is very much effective but
the choice of the method depends on the nature of the organisation. Effective management
programme leads into quality results and outcomes, which helps the organisation to achieve
greater customer satisfaction with improved profitability. In the process of improving the
quality, the organisation culture enhances the productivity (CGMA, 2013).
Conclusion

From the above discussion on poor quality of products and services, it can be concluded that
best managers always find out cost saving opportunities in the production process. Therefore,
in order to mitigate the cost at maximum level, there is other way rather than reducing the
quality of products. To reduce the cost, a manager can minimise the number of the employees
to reduce the salary expense. Moreover, another way can be using the scrapping food material
that contributes zero value to organisational objectives because poor quality will damage the
image. On the concluding not, it can be said that subway can achieve its quality again by
working with any of the tool given above. By applying scattering charts and graphs, it will be
clearly identify the width of the problem and scattered dots on the graph says that there are
less variables are vulnerable and rest of them are favourable.

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