THE CONCEPT OF QUALITY

People define quality in many ways. Some think of quality as superiority or excellence, others view it as a
lack of manufacturing or service defects, still others think of quality as related to product features or
price. Followings are some of many ways to look at quality.

1 perfection
2 consistency
3 eliminating waste
4 speed of delivery
5 compliance with policies and procedures
6 providing a good, usable product
7 doing it right the first time
8 delighting or pleasing customers
9 total customers service and satisfaction

Today most managers agree that the main reason to pursue quality is to satisfy customers. The American
National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the American Society for Quality (ASQ) define quality as "“the
totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bears on its ability to satisfy given
needs.” The view of quality as the satisfaction of customer needs is often called fitness for use. In highly
competitive markets, merely satisfying customer needs will not achieve success. To beat the competition,
organizations often must exceed customer expectations. Thus, one of the most popular definitions of
quality is meeting or exceeding customer expectations.

Quality in Manufacturing

Well-developed quality systems have existed in manufacturing for some time. However, these systems
focused primarily on technical issues such as equipment reliability, inspections, defect measurement, and
process control. The transition to a customer-driven organization has caused fundamental changes in
manufacturing practices, changes that are particularly evident in areas such as product design, human
resource management, and supplier relations. Product design activities, for example, now closely
integrate marketing, engineering, and manufacturing operations. Human resource practices concentrate on
empowering workers to collect and analyze data, make critical operations decisions, and take
responsibility for continuous improvements, thereby moving the responsibility for quality from the
quality control department onto the factory floor. Suppliers have become partners in product design and
manufacturing efforts. Many of these efforts were stimulated by the automobile industry, which forced
their network of suppliers to improve quality.

Manufactured products have several quality dimensions including the following:

 Performance: a product’s primary operating characteristics.

 Feature: the “bells and whistles” of a product.
 Reliability: the probability of a product’s surviving over a specified period of time under stated
Conditions of use
 Conformance: the degree to which physical and performance characteristics of a product match
pre-established standards.
 Durability: the amount of use one gets from a product before it physically deteriorates or until
replacement is preferable.
 Serviceability: the ability to repair a product quickly and easily.
 Aesthetics: how a product looks, feels, sounds, tastes, or smells.
 Perceived quality: subjective assessment resulting from image, advertising, or brand names.

Most of these dimensions revolve around the design of the product.

Quality in Services

Service can be defined as “any primary or complementary activity that does not directly produce a
physical product–that is, the non goods part of the transaction between buyer (customer) and seller
(provider).” A service might be as simple as handling a complaint or as complex as approving a home
mortgage. Service organizations include hotels; health, legal, engineering, and other professional services;
educational institutions; financial services; retailers; transportation; and public utilities.

Today services account for nearly 80 percent of the U.S., Singapore and Sweden workforce. The
importance of quality in services cannot be underestimated, as statistics from a variety of studies reveals:

• The average company never hears from more than 90 percent of its unhappy customers. For every
complaint it receives, the company has at least 25 customers with problems, about one-fourth of which
are serious.
• Of the customers who make a complaint, more than half will do business again with that
organization is their complaint is resolved. If the customer feels that the complaint was resolved quickly,
this figure jumps to about 95 percent.
• The average customer who has had a problem will tell nine or ten others about it. Customers who
have had complaints resolved satisfactorily will only tell about five others.
• It costs six times more to get a new customer than to keep a current customer.

So why do many companies treat customers as commodities? In Japan the notion of customer is equated
with “honored guest.” Service clearly should be at the forefront of a firm’s priorities.

The service sector began to recognize the importance of quality several years after manufacturing had
done so. This can be attributed to the fact that service industries had not confronted the same aggressive
foreign competition that faced manufacturing. Another factor is the high turnover rate in service industry
jobs, which typically pay less than manufacturing jobs. Constantly changing personnel makes establishing
a culture for continuous improvement more difficult.

The production of services differs from manufacturing in many ways, and these differences have
important implications for managing quality. The most critical differences are:

1 Customer needs and performance standards are often difficult to identify and measure, primarily
because the customers define what they are, and each customer is different.
2 The production of services typically requires a higher degree of customization than does
manufacturing. Doctors, lawyers, insurance salespeople, and food-service employees must tailor their
services to individual customers. In manufacturing, the goal is uniformity.
3 The output of many service systems is intangible, whereas manufacturing produces tangible,
visible products. Manufacturing quality can be assessed against firm design specifications, but service
quality can only be assessed against customers’ subjective, nebulous expectations and past experiences.
Manufactured goods can be recalled or replaced by the manufacturer, but poor service can only be
followed up by apologies and reparations.
4 Services are produced and consumed simultaneously, whereas manufactured goods are produced
prior to consumption. In addition, many services must be performed at the Quality control in
manufacturing is usually based on conformance, specifically conformance to specifications.
Specifications are targets and tolerances determined by designers of products and services. Targets are the
ideal values for which production strives; tolerances are acceptable deviations from these ideal values.
For example, a computer chip manufacturer might specify that the distance between pins on a computer
chip should be 0.095 + 0.005 inches. The value 0.090 and 0.100 would be acceptable

4 Customers often are involved in the service process and present while it is being performed,
whereas manufacturing is performed away from the customer. For example, customers of a quick-service
restaurant pace their own orders, carry their food to the table, and are expected to clear the table when
they have finished eating.

Challenges involved in Service offering include the following;

1 Services are generally labor intensive, whereas manufacturing is more capital intensive. The
quality of human interaction is a vital factor for services that involve human contact. For example, the
quality of hospital care depends heavily on interactions among the patients, nurses, doctors, and other
medical staff. Hence, the behavior and morale of service employees is critical in delivering a quality
service experience.
2 Many service organizations must handle very large numbers of customer transactions. For
example, on a given business day, Equity Bank of Kenya might process more than 2 million transactions
for 4.5 million customer through it’s branches and cash machines, or Fed Ex might handle more than 1.5
million shipments across the globe. Such large volumes increase the opportunity for error.

These differences have made it difficult for many service organizations to apply total quality principles.

Many service organization have well-developed quality assurance systems. Most of them, however, are
based on manufacturing analogies and tend to be more product-oriented than service-oriented. Many of
the key dimensions of product quality apply to services. For instance, “on time arrival” for an airline is a
measure of service performance; frequent flyer awards and “business class” sections represent features. A
typical hotel’s quality assurance systems focus on technical specifications such as properly made-up
rooms. However, service organizations have special requirements that manufacturing systems cannot
fulfill. The most important dimensions of service quality include the following; you may remember the
most important ones by RATER:

• Reliability: How much reliable is the service provider?

• Accessibility and convenience: Is the service easy to obtain?
• Timeliness: Will a service be performed when promised?
• Completeness: Are all items in the order included?
• Consistency: Are services delivered in the same fashion for every customer, and every time for
the same customer?
• Tangibility: after the service is over, is there any thing to take home to remind the service
experience?
• Empathy or Courtesy: Do frontline employees greet each customer cheerfully?
• • Responsiveness: Can service personnel react quickly and resolve unexpected problems? Service
organizations must look beyond product orientation and pay significant attention to customer transactions
and employee behavior. Several points that service organizations should consider are as follows:

• The quality characteristics that a firm should control may not be the obvious ones. Customer
perceptions are critical although it may be difficult to define what the customer wants. For example,
speed of service is an important quality characteristic, yet perceptions of speed may differ significantly
among different service organization and customers. Marketing and consumer research can play a
significant role.

• Behavior is a quality characteristic. The quality of human interaction is vital in every transaction
that involves human contact. For example, banks have found that the friendliness of tellers is a principal
factor in retaining depositors.

• Image is a major factor in shaping customer expectations of a service and in setting standards by
which customers evaluate that service.

• Establishing and measuring service levels may be difficult. Service standards, particularly those
relating to human behavior, are often set judgmentally and are hard to measure. In manufacturing, it is
easy to quantify output, scrap, and rework. Customer attitudes and employee competence are not as easily
measured.
• Quality control activity may be required at times or in places where supervision and control
personnel are not present. Often work must be performed at the convenience of the customer. This calls
for more training of employees and self-management.

These issues suggest that the approach to managing quality in services differs from that used in
manufacturing. However, manufacturing can be seen as a set of interrelated services, not only between
the company and the ultimate consumer, but within the organization. Manufacturing is a customer of
product design; assembly is a customer of manufacturing; sales are a customer of packaging and
distribution. If quality is meeting and exceeding customer expectations, then manufacturing takes on a
new meaning, far beyond product orientation. Total quality provides the umbrella under which everyone
in the organization can strive to create customer satisfaction.