Quality and Productivity in Supply Chain Management

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QUALITY IN PRODUCTIVITY
Quality refers to the use of the appropriate measures that describes what customers
anticipate to get from the company. Productivity on the other hand has the basic definition of the
relationship that exists between a given amount of output and the exactly needed input required
in production. Quality and productivity are very mandatory for all companies that are actively
involved in production of various products (Jackson,2013 p.57). The addition of advanced
technology is quite important but not that much significant when quality and productivity cannot
be fully assured since this makes the customer to boycott and refrain from purchasing the
product. It’s always advisable that after companies determine the needs of their customers and
what it is exactly that the customers want, then they should be able to try and meet these needs
accordingly by provision of high quality products and at an efficient rate. These companies can
ensure the improvement on quality and productivity by instilling the virtue of commitment in the
top lives of their management. An evident example is the Toyota company. Its cars once won a
race but crushed in the process and this really arose a lot of worries about quality since when
quality misses then damage is guaranteed and can be very fatal (Jackson,2013 p.67).
Toyota suffered a major crisis in 2009 that resulted from an unimaginable massive recall.
The Japanese car maker Toyota had to embark on massive cutting of costs so as to avoid the
fiscal deficit that had already grown after the 2008 financial crisis that befall them. This focus on
cost reduction and improving productivity simultaneously made them neglect the importance of
quality and quality control which eventually resulted to product defects. Toyota has been
involved in a number of such cases; in August 2009 four people died in an accident
(Jackson,2013 p.87). This was a s a result of an accelerator pedal failure in the Lexus ES350
which saw Toyota company being criticized in almost all the aspects. This act was actually

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among one of many that caused a great crisis to Toyota and saw the sales of Toyota drop very
significantly. On addition to this crisis Toyota has at some point also faced a crisis with a recall
of more than 9 million units due to component defects (Thierfelder & Wall,2012 p.90). Toyota
also recalled in the US, Europe and China due to defects in some of its automobile parts this
went ahead into forcing them to suspend sales in the US.
Shown below is a diagram of the recalls and a representation of the crisis that befall Toyota.
(Goetsch & Davis,2014 p.46).
The following were identified from the diagram above.
In August 28 ,2009 there were four people who died during the Lexus vehicle accident.
After recalling 4.26 million units from the accelerator pedal problem on November 2009, other
recalls were also made to 5.3 million units including the additional 109 ,000 units which were
recalled on 27th (Goetsch & Davis,2014 p.48).

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Five plants in Toyota North America entered production halt for a week on February 4 ,2010.
Toyota recalled additional 109,000 units and other 75,000 units were also recalled from the
Chinese market on February 4,2010.
US department of transportation (USDOT) launched a full-fledged on February 4,2010.
Toyotas share price in the New York stock market reduced from $91.78 on Jan 19 to $71.78 on
4th February giving a fall down of 21% from the previous year.
Toyota is also involved in innovation through the use of the various techniques. The company is
the best in cost saving in the world and some of its production methods are the JIT, Kanban, and
the Kaizen (Goetsch & Davis,2014 p.56). The JIT for instance eliminates waste by producing
only what is needed, it also aims at a shortened production time and minimization of inventory. It
achieves this by use of a pull-base material flow where parts are produced in accordance to the
production schedule. It basically attempts to eliminate defects and rework to keep the material
flow uniform. To however operate the JIT system efficiently, it’s important to keep product
standard and implement all statistical techniques such as Total Quality Management. Workers in
this process control quality from source by acting as quality inspectors (Vasilescu et al,2015
p.78).
The Kanban system on the other hand ensures thorough elimination of waste. It
automatically comes in with JIT. One distinct feature of the Kanban system is that the entire
process is directly visible. Usually the system can be linked to all work places and vendors thus
allowing almost all the production materials have a high visibility through visible on-site control
systems (Filatova et al,2011 p.56). The other way of overcoming a low growth and depression