Analysis of Baby Shop's Total Quality Management Practices

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Total Quality Management (TQM) at Baby Shop, a prominent children's retail store and a business venture of the Landmark Group. The report begins with an overview of Baby Shop, detailing its global presence, product offerings, and commitment to child safety. It then delves into the organization's product and service quality, highlighting the wide range of products, design, and customer service. The report further examines the cost of quality measures employed by Baby Shop, including quality planning, training, and inspection. It explores the quality tools used by the company, such as cause-and-effect diagrams, check sheets, control charts, histograms, Pareto charts, scatter diagrams, and stratification. Finally, the report discusses the quality measures adopted by Baby Shop, emphasizing their focus on product excellence, supplier relationships, and online customer experience, concluding that Baby Shop prioritizes quality as a key driver of revenue and customer satisfaction. The report is based on research of the company, and uses at least two outside sources.

TOTAL
QUALITY
MANAGEMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Overview of Company.....................................................................................................................1
Organization products and their service quality..............................................................................2
Cost of quality ............................................................................................................................2
Quality tools ...............................................................................................................................3
Quality measures which organization uses ................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Total Quality Management (TQM) is considered as a structured approach towards the
organization that generally seeks to improve product quality by getting continuous feedback
from customers. TQM also helps the business ventures to increase their customers base by giving
them quality in products (Oakland, 2012). This process eventually results into the increase in
revenue and profitability for business enterprise. By considering the above scenario, this present
report has been prepared on Baby shop store which is children retail store and also the first
business venture of the Landmark Group. Their major products are Barbie, Disney, baby bottles,
breast pumps, and other baby feeding-health accessories. This present report will focus on
products, service and cost quality and quality tools preferred by the cited business organization.
OVERVIEW OF COMPANY
Baby Shop is considered as one of the biggest retail stores which develop and sells baby
products. Further, mentioned organization serves in 19 different countries and with more than
230 stores around the globe. Apart from their physical store, they also retail around more than
10,000 online products which are their major key for success. Mentioned business venture has
expanded their business to UAE and opened their first store in Sharjah. Apart from it,
organization has also started a campaign in order to focus on child safety and also to increase
more awareness among users (Llorca and et.al., 2010).
Cited firm have varied range of different product categories. They focus on developing
the best of kid’s products to attract the children from age 0-16 years. Further, company comes
with excellent designs and shades in the clothing segment which attracts children towards the
products. Moreover, the price of these accessories are generally negotiable and always in the
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budget of parents. This is the only reason why organization possess immense goodwill whole
around the globe.
ORGANIZATION PRODUCTS AND THEIR SERVICE QUALITY
Baby Shop deals in the large range of products and their range starts from infant baby
products to toys and clothing. Apart from this, baby beds, cribs & cradles, nursing & health care,
strollers, car seats, toys, books and various other goods are available in the vast range. These all
mentioned products comes in varied design, shapes and sizes which meets the expectations level
of the customers and provide the best of comfort to the infant and children (Worsley, Chun
Wang and Hunter, 2011). Moreover, mentioned organization also has lot of expectations from
their suppliers as they render good quality of raw material which helps them in increasing their
revenue and productivity year-by-year.
The services given by the organization are also up to the mark as if any defect comes in
the product sold from organization side, and then it is easily replaced within the warranty period.
However, if any product is defected from customer side, then it is corrected by taking a
minimum charge or can be replaced by choosing the new one at the lowest cost. So, it is evident
that customer is always in front foot and this is the main reason of success of the organization.
Cost of quality
In the process improvement cycle, quality cost is a mean to quantify the total cost of the
quality related efforts and varied deficiencies. Here, Baby Shop management decides the
maximum cost which will be incurred to them in order to prepare the things. It includes various
measurement and some of them have been discussed down as under:
 Quality planning
 Statistical procedure control
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 Quality training and workforce development
 Product-design verification
 Systems development and management
 Inspection
 Testing
 Checking
 Setup for test or inspection
 Test and inspection equipment
 Quality audits
Quality play a crucial role in making customers available with p0.10" products of
excellent quality. They are available to them at an affordable price as well.
Quality tools
Quality tools are used by cited firm in order to identify the problems which they are
facing within the business organization. They can solve troubleshoots with the best of the
measures in order to improve the quality (Ghirardelli, Quinn and Sugerman, 2011). There exist
seven basic quality tools which will help mentioned organization in improving their quality of
products and services. These are: Cause and effect diagram: It identifies the major causes for the problems and
management take ideas and imply them within their business venture. Check sheet: Check sheet is a structured form of collecting data which can be taken into
consideration for different purposes (The 7 Basic Quality Tools for Process Improvement,
2016).
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 Control Chart: Graphs are used for studying how things changes from one time period to
another. Histogram: This is the most common tool to show the frequency distribution. This helps
the mentioned firm to tally the past results with the present ones. Pareto Chart: These are made on chart in order to see that which factor is more
dominating than another. Scatter diagram: Here, graphs are paired in numerical data where one variable exists on
each axis and focus has been made on developing an effective relationship (Francey and
et.al., 2010).
 Stratification: This is a technique which separates gathered data from various sources so
that a unique pattern is seen.
Quality measures which organization uses
Baby Shops consider quality as their main source of revenue and they focuses on
developing the best of products at an affordable price. Moreover, they majorly rely on their
suppliers as they give them the excellent quality products which increase their turnover and
develop an immense brand image. Moreover, organization sells more than 10,000 products
online. For that, they have their official website which is planned in very simple, clean and with
intuitive design. Further, all the products are beautifully presented in a detailed manner (Völkel,
Kiranoglu and Fromme, 2011). Further, different categories have been developed so that it will
become easier for the audience to click the desired category and choose their best of the
products.
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Moreover, cited roll their products from various quality checks and then present the same
for the purchase. Product testing, quality of material used, development processes are all taken
into the consideration.
CONCLUSION
From the above report, it is clearly inferred that the Body shop is the global company
which produces products for the children and have their operations around the globe. This report
also showcase that organization focuses on developing the standard of the product and therefore
they move their product through different steps of quality process.
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REFERENCES
Journals and Books
Francey, M. and et.al., 2010. New insights into the quality of urban storm water in South Eastern
Australia. Journal of Environmental Engineering. 136(4). pp. 381-390.
Ghirardelli, A., Quinn, V. and Sugerman, S., 2011. Reliability of a retail food store survey and
development of an accompanying retail scoring system to communicate survey findings
and identify vendors for healthful food and marketing initiatives. Journal of nutrition
education and behavior. 43(4). pp. S104-S112.
Llorca, M. and et.al., 2010. Infant exposure of perfluorinated compounds: levels in breast milk
and commercial baby food. Environment international. 36(6). pp. 584-592.
Oakland, J. S., 2012. Oakland on quality management. Routledge.
Völkel, W., Kiranoglu, M. and Fromme, H., 2011. Determination of free and total bisphenol A in
urine of infants. Environmental research. 111(1). pp. 143-148.
Worsley, T., Chun Wang, W. and Hunter, W., 2011. Baby boomers' reasons for choosing
specific food shops. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management. 39(11).
pp. 867-882.
Online
The 7 Basic Quality Tools for Process Improvement. 2016. [Online]. Available through:
<http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/seven-basic-quality-tools/overview/overview.html>.
[Accessed on 4th March, 2016].
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