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

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