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How to
Enhance Quality in Your Business
by: Abdallah Khamis Abdallah
Every
business must strive to provide quality products and services to
customers. To achieve that objective the company must draw well thought
out policies and procedures to ensure 100% achievement of the targets.
Here are some
tips to ensure that your business attains and enhance quality:
Document
Quality Objectives and Procedures
Quality
management objectives, policies and guidelines must be set and published
in manuals, in the business newsletter, on the notice board and wherever
appropriate. This is to educate and remind employees and management and
serve as guidelines. Even suppliers and customers should be informed on
the company’s quality management policies and where appropriate be advised
to adhere to them.
Educate
Employees on Quality Requirements
For total
quality management to work everyone in the business must be educated and
trained in its principles. Everyone must be brought on board – from the
cleaner, the gardener, the electrician, the clerk, and manager etc.
Employees should be made to own the process and not to feel left out of
the action. Employees should be organised in quality circles (groups)
within departments to brainstorm and implement quality issues.
Foster a
Policy of Zero Tolerance to Defects
One error
could cause a thousand corresponding errors or negative consequences.
Let’s take a typical example of a car. A loose nut on the tyre can cause
the tyre to run inappropriately and cause an accident. The accident may
affect you and whoever you are carrying in the vehicle and probably
passers by and other vehicles. It may lead to deaths and injury. The
multiplier effect may affect your life and other people’s lives without
your knowledge just from a single defect. This is therefore to show every
aspect of your business must be taken seriously.
All products
and services must be checked for compliance to specifications and
procedures. The business must foster a policy of zero tolerance to defects
and all efforts should be made towards that end.
Use TQM Tools
and Statistical Techniques to Measure Quality
Total Quality
Management Tools (TQM) tools are a necessary component if you want to
measure and enhance quality. Tools such as checklists, flowcharts, Gantt
charts, Ishikawa diagrams and the like are important in the quality
management process. Statistical techniques help to measure quality levels.
By applying such techniques you would have set your business on the
quality path. Ensure that you have minimum and quality levels for your
products and services. You can use industry, national or international
quality standards. If your business attains such standards, inform your
customers by publishing your attainment or displaying the quality mark
appropriately.
BRAINSTORM
PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS
A good
approach to solving problems and technical challenges is to form quality
circles, which will brainstorm problems and solutions and forward to
management for approval. Root problems should be brainstormed, key
solutions to them proposed and forwarded to management for approval.
REDUCE
WASTAGE
Research has
shown that most businesses have a 20% wastage rate. Check your dustbin.
What do you see? What about the stores? How many goods have been returned
because of defects in the past three months? You should work to attain
zero defect in your products or services. Ensure that goods are made to
specifications. Use statistical techniques to measure quality. Reduce
paperwork. Improve the design and substance of your goods and services.
Tighten controls. Reduce pilferage.
DELIGHT THE
CUSTOMER
Quality
management is not static but is a continuous process with the aim of ever
delighting the customer. Remember that your competitors are working
overtime to get your customers and stay on top. You should work ever
harder to get their customers and delight your customers often. You can do
that by anticipating customers’ needs. Do surveys and research on
customers’ needs and expectations. Check what competitors are offering.
Take action to continuously improve your goods and services.
LEARN FROM
THE GURUS
Total quality
management embodies a set of rules, policies and guidelines which are best
learned from the pioneers. Get yourself books and manual quality
management especially from the gurus such as Deming, Juran Crosby,
Ishikawa, Fergenbaum and the like to learn more. Most of their ideas may
be about manufacturing or not directly relevant to your business but they
could be adapted to your business needs and requirements.
BE ACTION
ORIENTED
A problem
plaguing many people and businesses is their failure to take positive
action and be mired by rhetoric and apathy. Management is tied down in
endless meetings, conferences ad seminars whose recommendations are never
implemented.
Prepare an
action plan of your recommendations and solutions with set time frames and
review periods. Check what makes action impossible to implement or
bottlenecks to implementation.
Your action
plan should be divided into short term, medium term and long-term
activities. It should be backed by a budget for financing it.
Quality
management or TQM is a broad subject and you require to learn more than
what is provided briefly here. TQM is not the panacea for all business
problems but they can be reduced by 50% if you adopt it appropriately.
To succeed in
business you need the right business plan backed by adequate capital, the
right product or service, the right marketing strategy, the right location
and the right implementation strategy.
Quality
management if well implemented could set your business on the path to
profitability and success.
Abdallah
Khamis Abdallah is a freelance copywriter .He provides quality marketing
solutions that can boost your business sales and website
traffic. Participate in contests to win prizes and get free gifts. For
details visit his website at:
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