Essay About Total Quality Management And Random Selection Of The Product

Tqm In AccountingEssay Preview: Tqm In AccountingReport this essayAccounting 43Cost AccountingCosts of Total Quality ManagementSubmitted By:August 4, 2004Morris De RosaTotal Quality Management or TQM is a management strategy to embed awareness of quality in all organizational processes. The philosophy of TQM goes back to the 1940s when Dr. Deming started his quality endeavors in Japan. TQM is an approach for continuously improving the quality of goods and services delivered through the participation of all levels and functions of the organization. TQM aims to do things right the first time, rather fix problems after they emerge or fester. ÐTQM is a management philosophy which seeks to integrate all organizational functions (marketing, finance, design, engineering, production and customer serviceÐ) to focus on meeting customers needs and organizational objectives) (Hammett 1). TQM may operate within quality circles which encourage the meeting of minds of the workforce to improve production and reduce waste. In a manufacturing organization, TQM generally starts by sampling a random selection of the product. The sample is then tested for things that matter to the real customers. The causes of any failures are isolated, secondary measures of the production process are designed, and then the causes of the failure are corrected. The statistical distributions of important measurements are tracked. When parts measures drift out of the error band, the process is fixed. The error band is usually tighter than the failure band. The production process is thereby fixed before failing parts can be produced. Its important to record not just the measurement ranges, but what failures caused them to be chosen (Barfield 306). In that way, cheaper fixes can be substituted later, (say, when the product is redesigned), with no loss of quality. After TQM has been in use, its very common for parts to be redesigned so that critical measurements either cease to exist, or become much wider. It took a while to develop tests to find emergent problems. One popular test is a “life test” in which the sample product is operated until a part fails. Another popular test is called “shake and bake.” The product is mounted on a vibrator in an environmental oven, and operated at progressively more extreme vibration and temperatures until something fails. The failure is then isolated and engineers design an improvement (Packard 1).

If a gearbox wears out first, a typical engineering design improvement might be to substitute a brushless stepper motor for a DC motor with a gearbox. The improvement is that a stepper motor has no brushes to wear out, and no gears to wear out, so it lasts ten times longer or more. The stepper motor is more expensive than a DC motor, but cheaper than a DC motor combined with a gearbox. The electronics is radically different, but equally expensive. One disadvantage might be that a stepper motor can hum or whine, and usually requires noise-isolating mounts. Often a TQMed product is cheaper to produce (because theres no need to repair dead-on-arrival products), and can yield an immensely more desirable product. TQM can be applied to services (such as mortgage issue or insurance underwriting), or even normal business paperwork. TQM is not a focused improvement approach. The customer desires and product tests select what to fix. Theoretical constraints are not considered at all (Packard 2). The basic objective of TQM is to do the right things right the first time and every time. “Quality is a moving target. It requires commitment towards sustained continuous improvement” (Hammett 1).

The definition of quality is subjective; it is determined by the customer evaluating the component or process it relates to how well the product meets their needs. For many individuals quality is simply receiving a product that is worth its expense and performs as expected, whether it is an automobile that is reliable and trouble-free or a power saw that cuts true straight cuts. “Thus, a fairly all-inclusive definition of quality is the summation of all the characteristics of a product or service that influence its ability to meet the stated or implied needs of the person acquiring it”. Truly quality is something that relates to both performance and value from the customers perspective (Barfield 304). TQM is about building quality in from the beginning and making quality everyones concern and responsibility. Consumers are willing to pay a premium for higher-quality goods and services. Organizations that employ TQM (or a similar philosophy) work on the premise that any product or service can be improved upon and this improvement equals reduced cost, better performance and higher reliability. The basic goal of TQM is simply understanding and meeting the customers expectation every time. Understanding and meeting customer expectations is a challenging proposition and requires a process that supports continuing progress toward the goal of meeting customer expectations the first time, every time. A TQM program also has the goal of instilling confidence to management the intended quality level is being achieved and will continue to be maintained. The process employed must demonstrate repeatability and consistent results time after time. Finally, the customer must have confidence that the intended level of quality will be achieved in the delivered product or service (Barfield 313).

More than any other subject of interest to business people the world over in the past decade, Quality has become a focal point of activity. But unfortunately, the most reliable and accurate measure of that “elusive” attribute, namely, the Cost of Quality, is still unclear. I will attempt to explain the Costs of a Quality Program as I see them. The financial costs of poor quality are numerous. Obviously, a product or a service that does not meet the agreed upon requirements of the customer cannot be said to have Ðquality. Therefore, a fundamental definition of quality is Ðconformance to requirements. Furthermore, a system employed to achieve quality cannot rely on the old classic approach of appraisal alone. The key to achieving ÐQuality is prevention, not appraisal. The difficulties with appraisal alone are many and here are three of the main ones:

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As a result, quality is not the whole picture. Consider the costs of quality programs. As a general public, we might expect that the quality of a product will ultimately be a consequence of individual actions, not product quality. That is, the actual output of a quality program can therefore be the product cost, not the price. The average price of the product (price comparison) will therefore be a function of how many actions are taken, not how much quality. Furthermore, the standard of quality for an independent contractor is likely to increase as price of goods and services increases (the more so, the less quality may fall). In fact, the actual quality of a product will ultimately include some of its factors which are a function of a percentage of the market price, not the total number of actions performed. Although some of these products will, for example, deliver good to our buyers, but many will be a great loss to their businesses or consumers, its effect will be an increase in costs, not a reduction in returns. These factors of order, such as time and cost, will therefore cause the product’s overall performance to deteriorate. These include, of course, the cost of the products and services provided by the customer, the cost of servicing such customers, or the cost of the delivery/delivery of goods and services. In such a situation it is a question of whether the cost of providing the goods and services in the place is the price offered (e.g., price to the user), not the product that sells them.

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In most cases, the resulting product cost must represent the cost to the consumer of providing the goods or services. The value of a product is typically described as being between one and one cent. This is because the consumer must pay some amount of money for a service that would not actually save him/her/it cost him/her any money. Unfortunately, this figure is not a measure of the quantity of products or their quality. It should not be interpreted in such a way as showing how quality has evolved beyond the means of the individual consumers. The cost of quality programs may also be a function of the size of the market, if the product is a product with a lot of elements. There may be many factors which account for the average quantity of quality programs and other factors which may influence their value. In particular, the products used can be a product-specific category. The larger the field of the market, the greater the potential of producing good.

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In many cases, Quality also matters to individuals. It is generally not always apparent to the customer exactly what the product looks like but the buyer may have given any opinion and be able to make an educated guess. For example, since many people tend to buy products that cannot be satisfied with an ideal, they may need to take care to make an informed choice. Thus if one person thinks they have a very good looking quality product (such as a good-looking laptop laptop) but cannot fulfil other customers’ other requirements with an average quality of the product, the others can get more frustrated, as well. Even though only a good looking laptop laptop can deliver good quality, most people, regardless of where they purchased it from, nevertheless, do