Quality Improvement Strategy for Engineering Tooling Company

UGB 262 QUALITY
MANAGEMENT FOR
ORGANISATIONAL
EXCELLENCE

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY.................................................................................................................................................3
Strategy for Quality improvement in Engineering Tooling Company......................................................3
Total Quality management in ETC...........................................................................................................4
Quality Assurance in ETC.........................................................................................................................6
Quality control.........................................................................................................................................7
Sustainability of the culture of quality.....................................................................................................8
CONCLUSION & RECOMMENDATIONS........................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
The case study revolves around a company based in North East of England named as
Engineering Tooling Company or ETC, which was established by a young engineering graduate
in the beginning of the year 1960. The company is into the manufacturing of basic engineering
items in the initial stage which includes calipers, rules and scribes and some specialist items like
micrometers (Iyer, 2018). After some time, North East of England experienced a sudden fall in
the engineering industry due to the consequences of higher competition given by globalization.
At this point of time, it was realized that the business of ETC is not capable for surviving for the
long run and to in order to ensure there is a need of strategic improvement.
In 2010, a hospital management of the region approached ETC for manufacturing some medical
equipment along with a two year contract in 2012 which was signed between ETC and hospital
management board for manufacturing certain medical equipment for them on a large scale,
where it has been realized by ETC that it need to now project its customers, investors and
suppliers as a world class business full of energy, conscience and vision (Ershadi, Najafi and
Soleimani, 2019).
Now, in this report, emphasize will be on requirement of developing strategy for improving
companywide quality in ETC. Appointed as a quality manager in Engineering Tooling Company,
the strategy for quality improvement will be developed by giving consideration to various
aspects like Total Quality Management, Quality control, Quality assurance and description of
how the culture of quality can be sustained in ETC through the development of quality
improvement strategy.
MAIN BODY
Strategy for Quality improvement in Engineering Tooling Company
Quality can be defined as keeping up with the or over and above the expectations of the
consumers. Such expectations can be with regards to products, services, environment, people and
processes. The biggest point here for consideration is the continuous change that is required to be
ensured for maintaining good and highest quality of the product (Fundin and et.al., 2018). In
other terms, it can be regarded as a state which is ever changing with the passage of time. So, it
is up to the manufacturer to maintain and keep on changing the products in terms of those

characteristics which are meant for defining the quality of the product. For Engineering Tooling
Company, in order to maintain the quality of their product to the utmost level they are advised to
work on the four essentials with respect to quality of the product which are known as
introduction of innovation from time to time, improving the customer experience through
innovative services, reducing the volume or number or defects during production in order to
enhance productivity and finding alternative measures for productivity enhancement (Manatos,
Sarrico and Rosa, 2017). Such essentials which are meant for quality improvement will bring
many benefits for ETC which includes building of their brand image and company reputation in
the marketplace which therefore leads to the sales and revenue increment for the company. And
thus more production will take place which is further helpful in achieving economies of scale
and many other costs associated with the internal operations of the company will consequently
reduce. Therefore, all these advantages leads to the reduced competition for ETC in the market
as they can now be able to offer their products at a competitive price. Certain costs that would be
reduced due to improvement in quality are warranty costs, compliant costs, rework costs, testing
costs, inspection costs, scrap and service costs (Sahoo and Yadav, 2017). Reduced costs will
lead to higher productivity and hence will lead to more and more profits for the ETC.
ETC can consider three major stakeholder’s for whom they can ensure higher and improved
quality that is, shareholder satisfaction, customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction. Quality
management in a concern has been evolved as a four step process beginning from inspection,
quality control, quality assurance and the last is total quality management. With the help of these
four steps, ETC can be able to ensure quality improvement. Inspection will be helpful in sorting,
grading, blending, identification of those sources leading to non-compliance of quality standards
and thus taking corrective actions for the same (Putri and et.al., 2017). So, elimination of those
materials can be possible which is causing poor quality standards for the products in future.
Total Quality management in ETC
Total Quality Management or TQM is an approach towards maximizing competitive advantages
for the company by making continuous improvement for the quality of the products, services,
processes, environment and people in the organisation (Parsons, 2017). The TQM approach
emphasizes on adoption of scientific approach for decision making and problem solving along