Quality Management Report: Home-Concept Special Orders Analysis

This report delves into the realm of quality management, focusing on the practical application within a business context, specifically examining Home-Concept's special order process. The report meticulously outlines the step-by-step process flow for handling special orders, from initial receipt to final delivery, and includes an analysis using cause-and-effect diagrams to pinpoint delays and inefficiencies. It then identifies and discusses critical success factors (CSFs) that enable companies to enhance their quality functions, using Amazon as a case study. Furthermore, the report explores the importance of continuous improvement in today's competitive environment, the value of Six Sigma methodologies, and the crucial role of Human Resource Management (HRM) in Total Quality Management (TQM). The report concludes with recommendations for improvement and emphasizes the interconnectedness of these elements in achieving sustained competitive advantage and customer satisfaction.

Quality Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
PART 1............................................................................................................................................1
Question 1....................................................................................................................................1
Question 2
......................................................................................................................................................3
PART 2............................................................................................................................................5
Question 1........................................................................................................................................5
Question 2....................................................................................................................................6
Question 3....................................................................................................................................2
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................2
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................3

INTRODUCTION
In business context, the quality is defined as the key standard of anything that is
measured against other thing of similar nature that support to make possible adjustment for better
growth and development. Quality management is a process of monitoring, controlling each kind
of activities and relevant services within an organisation in order to maintain a subsequent level
of excellence so that profit can be maximised (Evans and Lindsay, 2013). This entire
management involves the identification of a related quality policy, developing and implementing
proper quality plans and assurance and focusing on overall control and improvement in quality of
existing goods and services within an organisation. In general, quality management is a
systematic approach that focuses on long term objective with effectual planning and
implementing short term initiative.
In this report, process flow for special order, relationship between process flow with
cause effect diagram, determinants of CSF to allow company to perform better has been
discussed. Apart this importance of continuous improvement, value of six sigma, crucial role of
HRM in TQM are disclosed in this report.
PART 1
Question 1
In business term, special order is defined as an extra order of special item that are
prepared by company on special request of a particular customer. In the given, case scenario
Home-concept manufacture special furniture at the request of specific customer. There is a
systematic manner to receive these order which help company to deliver the goods on time
fulfilling the customer needs. The specific process for flow of special order is:
Receive order: This is the very first step related to any online service provide by
company to obtain order from particular customer. In home-concept the process of receiving
order start with sales associate those record the information and obtain approval from manager to
process the order. Then the responsible person make printout of order and put in a bin for
manager to fax the same to special order department.
Check the order: In this step manager use to appoint a team, those are responsible to
check the order received by customer. Team member first check weather the order are valid or
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not and properly record each one in order to fulfil the demand of customer and avoid chances of
delay or wrong delivery. In case if order are not valid than manager of home-concept use to
cancel the order or ask customer to wait for specific time period.
Confirm and sign the order: After checking the order, the next step is related to
confirming the same with the warehouse department so that delivery can be made on appropriate
time. In home-concept management use to confirm from the warehouse team whether there is
enough stock to prepare goods as per the demand of customer or not. In case if item are missing
then product are purchased that are required to prepare special order of customer.
Wait for delivery: Once the production of furniture take place than production team
wait for other important information to be received from main department. Such as they make
sure weather the customer has made advance payment or opted the option of cash on delivery.
Deliver the product: After checking each and every step within company company use
to deliver the product to subsequent buyer. In home-concept customer are delivered with
requested goods once all the internal process is completed. Customer are given a specific date for
the delivery of goods that make them feel satisfied (Dale and Plunkett, 2017).
Cause and effect diagram
In business scenario, the cause and effect analysis aid to think and extract the actual
reasons of problems and also help the management to permanently remove the causes of problem
that delay the process. The main importance of this tool is to determine the main grounds and
indicate the most affected areas for further investigations and help the manager to better
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understand the problem more clearly. In home-concept case study the major problem is that sales
person do not fill the form in proper manner or enter the date on which delivery in impossible.
There is totally negligence form sales person as they do not take their job seriously in respective
company such as sales associate put the form in wrong bin that make issue at the time of faxed.
Moreover, respective sales person do not make any contact with customer to extracted more
information and they do not inform the manger to re-fax the form after adding additional
information received form customer (Fonseca, 2015). All these reason are responsible for delay
in delivery of special order to customer which irritate them and reduces the overall productivity
of company. In case if company do not focuses on this problem and develop meaningful methods
to deal with, them home-concept will lose its customer base and overall profit will be reduced
within a year. In home-concept the cause and effect diagram is discussed below that shows the
factors due to which company miss to deliver the goods on time.
Question 2
A) Discuss the relationship between process flow with cause-effect diagram.
In present era, almost each organisation wants to delivery the product to customer on a
specific time that makes them, feel satisfy and become the loyal customer for company. In order
to deliver the order goods on time home-concept use to flow a systematic process that is a
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flowchart that shows the relationship between major components for company in specific time
frame. It is also crucial for the management to make sure that the goods those are prepared as per
the demand of customer must be delivered on time that makes them satisfied. There are different
problems that could be faced by company while taking online order and delivering the same to
customer. Management of companies use to apply the concept of cause and effect diagram in
order to determine the different error and make proper solution to improve these issues. With the
help to this diagram actual reason for problem are figured out and management of home-concept
make possible solution to the specific problem (Goetsch and Davis, 2014).
In business context, there is a valid relationship between the process flow of a company
and cause and effect diagram. Such as company receive the order from customer and prepare
accordantly to make them satisfied. In case if there is any problems faced by company that
impact the decision of customer them management use to make appropriate strategies and
techniques to resolve the problems. In home-concept company there is a systematic process that
is followed by manager to receive special order as per the needs of customer. With the support to
cause and effect methods management of company use to determine the factors due to which
there is delay in delivery of order. This method also help to make possible solution that support
to improve the delivery system and goods are available to customer on provided date. This help
to increase overall goodwill and increase profitability of home-concept.
B) Recommend FOUR
In order to resolve, the problem of delay in special order management of home-concept
are recommended the following solution that are discussed below:
 Manager are required to understand the customer view point such as a sound system that
help customer to define what actually they need.
 Give proper training to responsible sales associate to reduce the chances of error. This
support to reduce the cost and save time as staff member does not have to make call again
and again to customer for asking further information.
 Develop a team that will provide meaningful solution to irritated customer, like customer
are anger for late delivery than team member gives valid reason like goods ready but are
under quality assurance and checking and ask for some more time.
 Management are required to plan and schedule the disposable of problem stock so that
customer are satisfied and they purchase again from company.
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PART 2
Question 1
A) Managers identify
critical success factors (CSF) that allow company to perform quality functions
better.
Critical success factor are the activities which ensures the success of the business. Such
term is mostly used for analysing the business as well as data. Such factors are useful for
identifying the key areas or functions where improvements are required for achieving the
success. These factors vary from business to business, company to company as well as industry
to industry. Identification of the critical success factor allows the companies to formulate
strategies to build capabilities for achieving the success. These factors determine the organisation
that they have the capacity to fulfil the necessary requirements. The managers of Amazon
identifies critical success factors (CSF) to perform quality functions better. Following are the
activities which are considered to identify the factors:
 Understanding of Market: The managers understands the buying behaviour, customers
loyalty, product line coverage, technology linkages, segmenting the market and targeting
the appropriate segment, the competitors abilities to take decisions and framing policies.
All these factors helps in taking appropriate decision and perform the functions to
achieve success.
 Decision making: the managers abilities to take the appropriate decision also helps in
achieving success. The success factors includes managerial experience, abilities,
marketing research quality, organisational effectiveness, information system power,
developing human resources, learning from past strategies. The careful analysis of each
factor is done to perform the quality of functions in better manner to achieve the success
effectively as well as efficiently.
B) Is the management of CSF alone enough to sustain the competitive advantage
of the company.
At some level, the management of CSF alone enough to sustain the competitive
advantage of the company but to achieve the overall sustainability in the competitive advantage
various other professionals are also required. Such professionals provide information to the
management of selected company to formulate the plans for the whole organisation. The
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professional bodies includes strategic planners, market analysts, stakeholders, technicians and
many more. Strategic planners helps in defining the organisational plans, procedures to achieve
the desired missions. They are involved in forming a design path for achieving growth as well as
profitability to face the competition along with constant changes. They are used for analysing
and evaluating the business plans by gathering all the relevant information. Market analysts
collects the data and organise them in sequential manner related to the customers and
competitors.
They helps organisations by providing the detailed information regarding the perception
of consumers towards the products. They are also useful in taking day to day market decisions as
well as evaluate the progress in the international market. Stakeholders are the individuals who
actions define the results in business decisions. Stakeholders includes the employees, suppliers,
investors, government, regulatory authorities, shareholders, customers. All these plays crucial
role in any organisation. Technicians are the individuals who performs the working in the field of
technology for the business (Laosirihongthong, Teh and Adebanjo, 2013). They solve the
technical problems or issues pertaining in the firm. They select the required equipments and
collect data to get accurate results. Various technicians are employed within the entity for quality
control, testing equipments. Thus, other than management various other professional bodies are
also required for achieving the overall sustainability in the competitive advantage.
Question 2
A) Examine why organizations are enthusiastic on continuous improvement in
today’s environment.
In today's environment every company wants to satisfy their customer by offering and
delivering the best quality of goods. In order to do management of companies are focusing on
continuous improvement in manufacture goods and services so that customer are provided with
best. Every organisation wants to perform th operations in different and efficient manner.
Continuous improvement helps in improving the manner in which operations are performed
related to the day to day activities. It is an ongoing effort which plays a crucial function in
improving the products as well as services for the motive of reducing the wastages and optimum
utilisation of the available resources. As the environment is changing so are the expectations of
customers and market. To deal with the changes and to remain in the competition it is very
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necessary for the organisations to change the strategies, plans and procedures and improve them
to achieve the customers satisfaction and organisational growth.
B) Approach and value of six sigma in driving continuous improvement
Six sigma refers to data driven, disciplined and statistical based approach and the
continuous improvement methodology in order to eliminating the defects from service, process
and product. It is set of tools and techniques for improvement in process. It is related to
connection among number of standard deviation and defects per million opportunities found with
in process specifications. It is an adaptive as well as innovative set of the methodologies which
geared towards make improvement in effectiveness and efficiency of the corporate processes.
There are two different approaches of Six sigma which helps in driving continuous improvement
mention below:
DMAIC- It is explained as data- driven quality strategies for the process improvement. It
is mainly used to make improvement of existing process of business for defect free performance
and for predictable. It consists five steps:
Define- Under this, explain issue that require to be addressed.
Measure- There is a need to measure issues from which it was developed.
Analyse- Analyse process to identify root defect causes.
Improve- Improvement in process through searching effective solutions to fix, refuse and
and also prevent the future issues.
Control- Execute, control and also sustain improvement solutions in order to keep
process on new course.
DMADV- It is related to data-driven quality strategy for the purpose of designing
processes and products. It is mainly used to develop- new goods and process that is more mature
and predictable. It includes five steps:
Define- Explain issues that require to addressed (Mosadeghrad 2014 )
Measure- In this step, there is a requirement to identify needs of consumers as well as
specifications.
Analyse- There is a need to analyse process in order to meet demands of consumers.
Design- Design process that will meet with needs of customers.
Verify- Under this last step, verify design ability and performance to meet with
requirements of customers.
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Question 3
A) Three strategic roles of HRM in a total quality management
organisation.
Total quality management is an approach which is used by the organisation to enhance
the quality of its products and services in order to satisfy the demands of consumers. A coffee
barista can use strategic roles of HRM in context to total quality management. There are
following roles which are associated to it such as:
 The human resource manager of organisation can provide training to the employees and
give directions that they have to perform as per the requirement.
 There is a quality standard set by the company which is helpful to enhance the quality of
its product which is coffee.
 There is a quality inspection team can be formulate which check the quality of material
so that quality products can be provided to the consumers. As a result people will attract
towards the company. (Topalović, 2015)
B) Describe the quality tools that you will be used during
a meeting to reduce the defective rate.
To reduce the defective rate it is important for the organisation to use quality tools so that
quality products can be produce and defective rate can be reduce. Quality tools are the
mechanism which are used by the organisation to improve the quality so that needs of consumers
can be satisfy. As Coffee barista can use different quality tools in order to minimize the defective
rate and it involves: Pareto chart, which is a bar graph of data showing the largest number of
frequencies to the smallest which is helpful to identify the defects. A check sheet is a basic
quality tool which is used to collect data. As a result management of company can track the
number of times a certain incident happen and what is the reason behind it so that effective
decisions can be taken in order to enhance the quality (Ross, 2017).
CONCLUSION
From the above report, it has been concluded that with the help effective process to
delivery goods company are able to satisfy customer and increase customer base in a specific
time frame. In order to improve the quality of services company applies the six sigma approach
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so that goods are manufacture and deliver in appropriate manner. There are various quality tools
that are used by management in order to improve the overall quality of goods.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journal
Dale, B. G. and Plunkett, J. J., 2017. Quality costing. Routledge.
Evans, J. R. and Lindsay, W. M., 2013. Managing for quality and performance excellence.
Cengage Learning.
Fonseca, L. M., 2015. From Quality Gurus and TQM to ISO 9001: 2015: a review of several
quality paths. International Journal for Quality Research (IJQR). 9(1). pp.167-180.
Goetsch, D. L. and Davis, S. B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Laosirihongthong, T., Teh, P. L. and Adebanjo, D., 2013. Revisiting quality management and
performance. Industrial Management & Data Systems. 113(7). pp.990-1006.
Mosadeghrad, A. M., 2014. Essentials of total quality management: a meta-analysis.
International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance. 27(6). pp.544-558.
Ross, J. E., 2017. Total quality management: Text, cases, and readings. Routledge.
Topalović, S., 2015. The implementation of total quality management in order to improve
production performance and enhancing the level of customer satisfaction. Procedia
Technology. 19. pp.1016-1022.
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