Assignment 1: Discussion—Process Design

Assignment 1: Discussion—Process Design

Differing strategies and business models deliver products and services, using diverse operating strategies and models. These varied operating models reflect optimal solutions tailored to the uniqueness of those industries, products, and customers.

An effective operating strategy links product/services decisions with investment, market share, and product/service life cycle and defines the breadth of the product line/service. Its main goal is to meet the demands of the marketplace with a competitive advantage. A successful outcome of this process can result in the formation of seemingly unique businesses by combining tools and techniques that are widely available in a very peculiar and unique way.

Using the module readings, University online library resources, and the Internet, research these tools and techniques. Based on your research respond to the following:

What are the various process strategies, and under what circumstances are they best used?
Which strategies are used in your business or a business you would like to work in? What process analysis and design tools are used? For example, a matrix may be a valuable tool for most businesses.

Write your initial response in approximately 300–500 words. Apply APA standards to citation of sources.

Assignment 1 Grading Criteria

Appropriately explained the application of at least two process strategies and showed in-depth analysis of business environment.

Analyzed the selected business to identify the process strategies, process analysis, and design tools used.

Assignment 2: LASA 2—Company Analysis Report

Review the following scenario:

Assume that you have recently been hired as the director of continuous improvement of a company. You are an outside hire with limited history of the firm and personal capital at the firm, and you are responsible for lean production, total quality management (TQM), six sigma, and best practice implementation.

Lean production means doing more with less, such as less inventory, fewer workers, or less space. A recent trade in quality management is lean six sigma (also known as lean sigma) that integrates six sigma and lean production.

The capacity for which you were hired has existed for three years with a direct line of report to the vice-president of operations and dotted line of report to the head of information technology (IT), the chief information officer (CIO), and the director of internal controls and audit. You are the second person to fill in this position. You have a team of internal consultants; half of your team has six sigma black belt or equivalent capabilities with the remainder having a solid understanding of operations and IT. You also have a budget for two external vendor resources.

You have taken six months to familiarize yourself with the organization and its people, mission, goals, strategy, and structure. In this time, you have also evaluated current operations. At the end of this period, you are assigned to deliver a report identifying the three most promising avenues for achieving best practices within the company. You have already been told that the company suffers from both aging and complex information systems and that your recommendation must include a major upgrade of those systems. The executive officers anticipate major investments in IT over the next several years. Your best practice implementations, coupled with new technology, must be measurable in terms of speed, quality, productivity, and efficiency or other key performance indicators that you identify in your report.

For this assignment, you will choose a company with which you are familiar. You are encouraged to choose a company for which you currently work or have worked, but you may choose some other firm if you believe it will be a compelling analysis.

You may choose one area of the company, such as a manufacturing plant or product design, to focus on if you can make a strong case. Your recommendations should have the following features.

Repeatable: If you “fix” three things in a manufacturing plant, you should be able to tackle the “next” three in iteration.
Scalable: If they work in one plant, they should work in all of them.
Replicable: Your process for improvement should be repeatable in different, disparate parts of the organization.

This is a key initiative at the “C” level, and your recommendation will reach the board of directors.

Your paper must include the following sections:

Strategic Overview: (1 page) Provide a brief description of the following elements:

The company, including its products or servicesMarketing strategy: target market segments, value proposition, market position, and source of competitive differentiationOrganizational structureAny other relevant facts

Analysis of the Supply Chain: (4 pages) Analyze the supply chain for your identified company by explaining the following key elements of the supply chain:

Identify key inputs, including less tangible assets, such as human resources and information. How are these key inputs sourced, reconfigured into a product or service, and delivered to your customers?Identify the key processes that add value, and evaluate the supply chain performance relative to the competition. What are the key inputs for each process? How are these inputs processed or configured into the final offering for your customers?What is the value added at each step?What is the role of information technology and e-commerce in serving your customers?What are the key performance measures for evaluating your supply chain?Research online sources to explain how the performance on these measures compares to that of your competitors?

Plan to Improve Operating Processes: (3 pages) Create a plan for improving the performance of three specific operating processes in your company. Your plan should address the following:

Identify three elements of the supply chain that you recommend as targets for improvement.State the performance improvement opportunity for each element, and indicate how it will improve process speed, quality, efficiency, and productivity.Explain what specific action or change you recommend for each supply chain element selected.

Explanation of the Results of Performance Improvements Regarding Product or Service: (2 pages) Explain the following:

How will your product or service be improved as a result of these changes to the supply chain activities?How are you altering the specific features or attributes of your product or service?Why are these specific changes important to your customers?How do these changes enhance the value proposition and competitive position of your company?What lasting capabilities and improvement are you introducing into your company through these changes?How will you measure the scope and impact of your improvements? What are your key performance indicators?

Assessment of the Impact on Human Resources: (1–2 pages) Detail how your plan impacts your company’s HR and human capital strategy by explaining how the organization’s structure supports the new process configuration you are recommending. Your response should address the following questions:

Are the roles and responsibilities in your organization properly defined and aligned to enable these changes? Who will perform these new/modified process activities, and what changes to their jobs do you anticipate?Is decision-making authority assigned so that the process changes you propose can be implemented and properly managed under the current structure? Who will own the process and the results? Based on the current structure, will they have the authority to make changes as necessary?Are the individuals with the right skills in place to implement these changes? If not, how will you attract the talent necessary to implement your changes? How will you retrain the existing employee base? How will you handle attrition? How will you reduce the risk of impacted protected classes?

Changes: Explain changes to the compensation and incentives at your company that are necessary to reinforce your recommendations and increase efforts for continuous improvement throughout the organization. Explain how your plan motivates employees, customers, and suppliers better.

Write a 10-page paper in Word format. You may rearrange the above sections if it improves the quality of your paper.

LASA 2—Company Analysis Report Rubric

NOTE: If a component is absent, student receives a zero for that component Exemplary

90–100%

(A- to A)

Synthesis includes clear discussion of company’s specific products and services; in-depth discussion of marketing strategy; and a detailed organizational structure. Discussion is supported by additional relevant facts and examples regarding the company’s structure and services. Scholarly evidence is used to support ideas throughout.

Analysis of the supply chain examines all its key inputs including source, reconfiguration, and delivery to the customer. For each step, several processes that add value, relative to the competition, are identified and compared. Synthesis examines and analyzes the role of info-technology and ecommerce in meeting customer needs. The key performance criteria used for evaluating the supply chain are accurate, measureable, and are evaluated against what many other competitors utilize for measurement. Scholarly evidence is used to support ideas throughout.

Performance improvement plan diagnoses current supply chain and isolates three or more elements in need of improvement. Several innovative improvement opportunities are explained and justified. Explanation includes multiple details regarding process speed, quality, efficiency, etc. Scholarly evidence is used to support ideas throughout.

Synthesis outlines performance results in detail based on improvement recommendations.

Related changes to the product or service are discussed including how these changes meet customer needs. A logical and detailed justification for how these changes will enhance the value proposition and competitive positioning is included. Many logical and effective means for measurement are outlined that include key performance indicators for success. Scholarly evidence is used to support ideas throughout.

Synthesis utilizes research and data to analyze how the plan affects the company’s HR and human capital strategy.

The analysis includes several details and examples regarding alignment with roles, decision-making authority, existing employee talent, and compensation.

Writing is clear, concise, and well organized. It demonstrates ethical scholarship in accurate representation and attribution of sources and displays accurate spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

hapter

Quality Management

Russell. Operations Management: Creating Value

ong the Supply Chain,

th Edition. John Wiley & Sons.

Quality Management AT MARS

Mars produces its chocolate candy products acc

ding to five principles that define a philosophy of its values that lead and guide the company. First among these principles is quality. At Mars “the consumer is the boss; quality is the work; and value is the goal.” Their commitment to quality guides their approach to delivering products that “delight their customers” while meeting uncompromising safety standards.

The Mars Quality Management

Process

(QMP) is applied to all aspects of its supply chain, from acquiring high-quality ingredients, to their manufacturing processes, to product distribution, and to measuring customer satisfaction. Mars QMP is maintained at the leading edge of quality management practices by benchmarking against the highest quality and food safety standards and best practices throughout the food industry. Continuous improvement is the foundation of Mars QMP and drives the company to continually raise its standards and learn how to do things more effectively and efficiently to bring value to its customers.

In effect, quality is an obsession at Mars. All Mars employees are committed to quality, are provided the technical skills to deliver quality excellence, and are accountable for providing their customers with the highest possible quality. An example is their fear of “incremental degradation,” a term they use to describe what can happen by using cheaper ingredients. Rather than replace a high-priced ingredient with a cheaper one, even if taste tests show that the customer wouldn’t notice the difference, Mars will forego the extra profit to avoid risking incremental degradation in product quality. In spotlessly clean Mars plants, employees are constantly tasting products to make sure they are being made properly, and an entire production run of Snickers may be thrown out because of barely noticeable nicks in the chocolate coating. A Mars salesman at a supermarket will throw out a whole product display if it’s getting too close to its freshness date. Mars considers each individual sale its most important one, and their goal is to build life-long relationships with its customers. They believe if they forget this they risk resting on their past and ignoring their future.

In this chapter we will discuss how other quality-conscious companies like Mars develop effective quality management [QM] programs.

Source: Mars Web site at www.mars.com; and Craig J. Cantoni, “Manager’s Journal: Quality Control from Mars,” Wall Street Journal, January

992, pg. A12.

WHAT IS QUALITY?

Asked “What is quality?” one of our students replied “getting what you pay for.” Another student added that to her, quality was “getting more than you paid for!” The Oxford American Dictionary defines quality as “a degree or level of excellence.”

What is quality in the eye of the beholder?

The

American Society for Quality

(ASQ) defines quality as “a subjective term for which each person has his or her own definition. In technical usage, quality can have two meanings: (1) The characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs and (2) A product or service free of deficiencies.” Obviously, quality can be defined in many ways, depending on who is defining it and the product or service it refers to. In this section we provide a perspective on what quality means to customers and companies.

QUALITY FROM THE CUSTOMER’S PERSPECTIVE

A business organization produces goods and services to meet its customers’ needs. Customers want value and quality has become a major factor in the value of products and service. Customers know that certain companies produce better-quality products than others, and they buy accordingly. That means a firm must consider how the consumer defines quality. The customer can be a manufacturer purchasing raw materials or parts, a store owner or retailer purchasing products to sell, or someone who purchases retail products or services over the

Internet

W. Edwards Deming

, author and consultant on quality, says that “The consumer is the most important part of the production line. Quality should be aimed at the needs of the consumer, present and future.” From this perspective, product and service quality is determined by what the customer wants and is willing to pay for. Since customers have different product needs, they will have different quality expectations. This results in a commonly used definition of quality as a service’s or product’s fitness for its intended use, or fitness for use; how well does it do what the customer or user thinks it is supposed to do and wants it to do?

Fitness for use:

is how well the product or service does what it is supposed to.

Products and services are designed with intentional differences in quality to meet the different wants and needs of individual consumers. A Mercedes and a Ford truck are equally “fit for use,” in the sense that they both provide automobile transportation for the consumer, and each may meet the quality standards of its individual purchaser. However, the two products have obviously been designed differently for different types of consumers. This is commonly referred to as the quality of design—the degree to which quality characteristics are designed into the product. Although designed for the same use, the Mercedes and Ford differ in their performance, features, size, and various other quality characteristics.

Quality of design:

involves designing quality characteristics into a product or service.

DIMENSIONS OF QUALITY FOR MANUFACTURED PRODUCTS

The dimensions of quality for manufactured products a consumer looks for include the following1:

Dimensions of manufactured quality for which a consumer looks.

1.
Performance
: The basic operating characteristics of a product: for example, how well a car handles or its gas mileage.

2.
Features
: The “extra” items added to the basic features, such as a stereo CD or a leather interior in a car.

.
Reliability
: The probability that a product will operate properly within an expected time frame: that is, a TV will work without repair for about seven years.

.
Conformance
: The degree to which a product meets preestablished standards.

.
Durability
: How long the product lasts; its life span before replacement. A pair of L.L.

ean boots, with care, might be expected to last a lifetime.

.
Serviceability
: The ease of getting repairs, the speed of repairs, and the courtesy and competence of the repair person.

7.
Aesthetics
: How a product looks, feels, sounds, smells, or tastes.

8.
Safety
: Assurance that the customer will not suffer injury or harm from a product: an especially important consideration for automobiles.

9.
Other perceptions
: Subjective perceptions based on brand name, advertising, and the like.

These quality characteristics are weighed by the customer relative to the

cost

of the product. In general, customers will pay for the level of quality they can afford. If they feel they are getting what they paid for (or more), then they tend to be satisfied with the quality of the product.

DIMENSIONS OF QUALITY FOR SERVIC

The dimensions of quality for a service differ somewhat from those of a manufactured product. Service quality is more directly related to time, and the interaction between employees and the customer. Evans and Lindsay2 identify the following dimensions of service quality.

Dimensions of service quality.

1.
Time and timeliness
: How long must a customer wait for service, and is it completed on time? For example, is an overnight package delivered overnight?

2.
Completeness
: Is everything the customer asked for provided? For example, is a mail order from a catalogue company complete when delivered?

3.
Courtesy
: How are customers treated by employees? For example, are catalogue phone operators at L.L. Bean nice and are their voices pleasant?

4.
Consistency
: Is the same level of service provided to each customer each time? Is your newspaper delivered on time every morning?

5.
Accessibility and convenience
: How easy is it to obtain the service? For example, when you call L.L. Bean does the service representative answer quickly?

6.
Accuracy
: Is the service performed right every time? Is your bank or credit card statement correct every month?

7.
Responsiveness
: How well does the company react to unusual situations, which can happen frequently in a service company? For example, how well is a telephone operator at L.L. Bean able to respond to a customer’s questions about a catalogue item not fully described in the catalogue?

A Mercedes and a Ford pickup truck are equally “fit for use,” but with different design dimensions for different customer markets that result in significantly different purchase prices.

1 Adapted from D. A. Garvin. “What Does Quality Really Mean?” Sloan Management Review 26(1: 1984). pp. 25-43.

2 J. R. Evans and W. M. Lindsay, The Management and Control of Quality, 3rd ed. (St. Paul, MN: West, 19

QUALITY FROM THE PRODUCER’S PERSPECTIVE

Now we need to look at quality the way a producer or service provider sees it: how value is created. We already know that product development is a function of the quality characteristics (i.e the product’s fitness for use) the customer wants, needs, and can afford. Product or service design results in design specifications that should achieve the desired quality. However, once the product design has been determined, the producer perceives quality to be how effectively the production process is able to conform to the specifications required by the design referred to as the

quality of conformance

. What this means is quality during production focuses on making sure that the product meets the specifications required by the design.

Quality of conformance:

is making sure the product or service is produced according to design.

Achieving quality of conformance involves design, materials and equipment, training, supervision, and control.

Examples

of the quality of conformance: If new tires do not conform to specifications, they wobble. If a hotel room is not clean when a guest checks in, the hotel is not functioning according to the specifications of its design; it is a faulty service. From this producer’s perspective, good-quality products conform to specifications—they are well made; poor-quality products are not made well—they do not conform to specifications.

Achieving quality of conformance depends on a number of factors, including the design of the production process (distinct from product design), the performance level of machinery, equipment and technology, the materials used, the training and supervision of employees, and the degree to which statistical quality-control techniques are used. When equipment fails or is maladjusted, when employees make mistakes, when material and parts are defective, and when supervision is lax, design specifications are generally not met. Key personnel in achieving conformance to specifications include the engineering staff, supervisors and managers, and, most important, employees.

An important consideration from the customer’s perspective of product quality is product or service price. From the producer’s perspective, an important consideration is achieving quality of conformance at an acceptable cost. Product cost is also an important design specification. If products or services cannot be produced at a cost that results in a competitive price, then the final product will not have acceptable value—the price is more than the consumer is willing to pay given the product’s quality characteristics. Thus, the quality characteristics included in the product design must be balanced against production costs.

L.L. Bean’s first product was the Maine Hunting shoe, developed in 1912 by company founder, Leon Leonwood Bean, a Maine outdoorsman. He initially sold

0 pairs to fellow sportsmen through the mail, but 90 pairs were sent back when the stitching gave way. However, true to his word L.L. Sean returned their money and started over with an improved boot. In years to come L.L. Bean operated his business according to the following belief: “Sell good merchandise at a reasonable profit, treat your customers like human beings, and they will always come back for more.” L.L. Bean also guarantees their products to “give

100%

satisfaction in every way,” If they don’t, L.L. Bean will replace the item or refund the purchase price “at any time.”

A FINAL PERSPECTIVE ON QUALITY

We approached quality from two perspectives, the customer’s and the producer’s. These two perspectives are dependent on each other as shown in Figure 2.1. Although product design is customer-motivated, it cannot be achieved without the coordination and participation of the production process. When a product or service is designed without considering how it will be produced, it may be impossible for the production process to meet design specifications or it may be so costly to do so that the product or service must be priced prohibitively high.

Figure 2.1 depicts the meaning of quality from the producer’s and consumer’s perspectives. The final determination of quality is fitness for use, which is the customer’s view of quality. It is the consumer who makes the final judgment regarding quality, and so it is the customer’s view that must dominate.

Figure 2.1 The Meaning of Quality

QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

To make sure that products and services have the quality they have been designed for, strategy to achieve quality throughout the organization is required. This approach to the management of quality throughout the entire organization has evolved into what is generally referred to as a quality management system (QMS).

THE EVOLUTION OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT

A handful of prominent individuals summarized in Table 2.1 have had a dramatic impact on the importance of quality in the United States, Japan, and other countries. Of these “quality gurus” W. Edwards Deming has been the most prominent.

In the 1940s Deming worked at the Census Bureau,

where

he introduced the use of statistical process control to monitor the mammoth operation of key punching data from census questionnaires onto millions of punch cards. During World War II, Deming developed a national program of 8- and 10-day courses to teach statistical quality-control techniques to over 10.000 engineers at companies that were suppliers to the military during the war. By the end of World War II he had an international reputation.

In 1950 Deming began teaching statistical quality control to Japanese companies. As a consultant to Japanese industries and as a teacher, he was able to convince them of the benefits of statistical quality control. He is a major figure in the Japanese quality movement, and in Japan he is frequently referred to as the father of quality control

In the 1950s, W. E. Deming began teaching quality control in Japan.

Table 2.1 Quality Gurus

Quality Guru

Contribution

Walter Shewhart

Working at Bell Laboratories in the 1920s. he developed the technical tools such as control charts that formed the basis of statistical quality control; he and his colleagues at Bell Labs introduced the term quality assurance for their program to improve quality through the use of statistical control methods.

W. Edwards Deming

A disciple of Shewart, he developed courses during World War II to teach statistical quality-control techniques to engineers and executives of companies that were military suppliers; after the war he began teaching statistical quality control to Japanese companies, initiating their quality movement.

Joseph M. Juran

An author and consultant, he followed Deming to Japan in 1954; he focused on strategic quality planning within an annual qualify program, setting goals for product quality and designing processes to achieve those goals: quality improvement is achieved by focusing on projects to solve problems and securing breakthrough solutions.

Armand V. Feigenbaum

In his 19

book, Quality Control: Principles, Practices and Administration, he introduced the concept of total quality control and continuous quality improvement as a companywide strategic commitment requiring the involvement of all functions in the quality process, not just manufacturing; discovered by Japanese in the 1950s at about the same time as Juran’s visit: from 1958 to 1968 he was director of manufacturing operations and quality control at GE.

Philip Crosby

In his 1979 book, Quality Is Free, he emphasized that the costs of poor quality (including lost labor and equipment time, scrap, downtime and lost sales) far outweigh the cost of preventing poor quality: in his 1984 book, Quality Without Tears, he defined absolutes of quality management—quality is defined as conformance to requirements, quality results from prevention, the performance standard is “zero defects.”

Kaoru Ishikawa

This Tokyo University professor promoted use of quality circles and developed the ‘fishbone’ (cause and effect) diagram to diagnose quality problems; he emphasized the importance of the internal customer, that is, that a quality organization is first necessary in order to produce quality products or services.

• Inernet Exercises

Deming’s approach to quality management advocated contineous improvement of the production process to achieve conformance to specifications and reduce variability. He identified two primary sources of process improvement: eliminating common causes of quality problems, such as poor product design and insufficient employee training, and eliminating special causes, such as specific equipment or an operator. Deming emphasized the use of statistical quality-control techniques to reduce variability in the production process. He dismissed the then widely-used approach of final product inspection as a means of ensuring good quality as coming too late to reduce product defects. Primary responsibility for quality improvement, he said, was employees’ and management’s. He promoted extensive employee involvement in a quality improvement program, and he recommended training for workers in quality-control techniques and methods.

Deming’s overall philosophy for achieving improvement is embodied in his 14 points, summarized in Table 2.2.

Deming is also credited for development of the Deming Wheel, or plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle, although it was originally formulated by Walter Shewhart and renamed by the Japanese.

W. E. Deming is the most famous of all “quality gurus.” He introduced statistical quality control to the Japanese, which served as the catalyst for a worldwide quality movement. His “14 points” were the foundation for modem TQM and QMS processes.

The Deming Wheel—plan, do. check, act.

Table 2.2 W.E. Deming’s 14 points

1. Create a constancy of purpose toward product improvement to achieve long-term organizational goals.

2. Adopt a philosophy of preventing poor-quality products instead of acceptable levels of poor quality as necessary to compete internationally.

3. Eliminate the need for inspection to achieve quality by relying instead on statistical quality control to improve product and process design.

4. Select a few suppliers or vendors based on quality commitment rather than competitive prices.

5. Constantly improve the production process by focusing on the two primary sources of quality problems, the system and employees, thus increasing productivity and reducing costs.

6. Institute worker training that focuses on the prevention of quality problems and the use of statistical quality-control techniques.

7. Instill leadership among supervisors to help employees perform better.

8. Encourage employee involvement by eliminating the fear of reprisal for asking questions or identifying quality problems.

9. Eliminate barriers between departments, and promote cooperation and a team approach for working together.

10. Eliminate slogans and numerical targets that urge employees to achieve higher performance levels without first showing them how to do it.

11. Eliminate numerical quotas that employees attempt to meet at any cost without regard for quality.

12. Enhance worker pride, artisanry, and self-esteem by improving supervision and the production process so that employees can perform to their capabilities.

. Institute vigorous education and training programs in methods of quality improvement throughout the organization, from top management down, so that continuous improvement can occur.

14. Develop a commitment from top management to implement the previous 13 points.

The Deming Wheel is a four-stage process for continuous quality improvement that complements Deming’s 14 points, as shown in Figure 2.2.

Deming’s approach to quality embodied in his 14 points and PDCA cycle are the foundation for today’s quality management systems employed by many successful companies.

Figure 2.2 The Deming Wheel (PDCA

Cycle

)

ALONG THE SUPPLY CHAIN Applying Deming’s PDCA Cycle in Baldrige Award-Winning Schools and Hospitals

Jenks Public Schools (JPS), a

200

5 recipient of the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, serves 9,400 students with nine schools in the city of Jenks and portions of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The school district’s continuous quality improvement model is based on the work of W. E. Deming, and a central part of its model was its application of Deming’s PDCA cycle to procedures related to key performance measures, such as improving test scores. All staff members participate in the district’s goal setting process and incorporate the PDCA cycle into their plans for achieving these goals. The PDCA process provided a systematic approach for continuous improvement in teaching, learning, student achievement, and student and faculty well-being. It also supported process efficiency and effectiveness. As a result of its improvement efforts its teacher turnover rate for 2004 was 6% as compared to the national average of 20%; its academic performance scores exceeded state and national levels; 37% of the district’s class of 2004 earned an AP test score of 3 or better compared to 13% nationally and 21 percent in the state; and its dropout rate was only slightly over 1%.

Baptist Hospital. Inc. (BHI), which includes hospitals in Pensacola and Gulf Breeze, Florida with 2.270 employees, was a recipient of the 2003

Malcolm Baldrige Award

. One of the primary quality improvement tools used by BHI was Deming’s PDCA cycle. BHI used several metrics to determine if hospital processes were maintaining organizational value. If any of the metrics fell below target values, a PDCA team made up of physicians and front-line employees was quickly initiated to address the deficiencies using the PDCA process. In various surveys and health databases BHI’s patient care, patient satisfaction, emergency department and ambulatory surgery, as well as other health-related areas, ranked well ahead of benchmarked programs.

Iredell-Statesville Schools located in southwestern North Carolina with 21,000 students in 35 schools was a

2008

Baldrige Award Winner. Despite ranking 107 out of 115 school systems in North Carolina in per pupil expenditures, it ranked in the top 10 in the state in academic achievement; its average SAT scores ranked seventh in the state and were better than the national average; its graduation rate was

%; its attendance rate of

96%

ranked third in the state; and its teacher turnover rate was well below the state average. As part of its continuous quality improvement program called the “Model to Raise Achievement and Close Gaps (RACG).” it establishes targets in key classroom learning categories. When student performance does not meet the targets in a school the gap is addressed using the PDCA cycle to develop and implement improvements, which are then shared with other schools in the district.

Mercy Health System, a

2007

Baldrige Award recipient, includes three hospitals, a network of 64 facilities, and nearly 4,000 employees serving six counties in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois. The PDCA cycle is used in all quality improvement projects at Mercy. In one specific project, customer satisfaction with the emergency department at its hospital in Janesville. Wisconsin, fell below

, and a group was created to develop an action plan for improvement. The drop in satisfaction was determined to be caused by an increase in patient volume resulting from intermingling urgent care and emergency room patients. This resulted in a misperception that patients who came in later were seeing medical staff sooner than those already waiting, when, in fact, they were from two different groups; some were urgent care patients and others were emergency room patients. The quick solution was to move urgent care out of the emergency room, which required a capital expenditure. In addition it was determined that urgent care patients expect to be seen within 30 minutes, so this was established as a service goal and a tracking mechanism was established to make sure it was being met. PDCA was considered to be such a valuable tool in this process because it wasn’t overwhelming or mysterious to the physicians, nurses, and managers involved in improvement projects.

In these examples the PDCA cycle is used in four service organizations; can you think of specific processes in a service organization you are familiar with that the PDCA cycle might be applied to, perhaps even your own university?

Sources: S. Daniels, “Oklahoma School District Goes Over the Top.” Quality Progress 39 (5; May

2006

). pp. 51-59: K. Johnson. “Two Hospitals Improve Performance.” Quality Progress 37 (9: September 2004), pp. 46-55; S. Daniels, “Eyes on the Dashboard at Mercy Health System,” Quality Progress 41 (4; April 2008), pp. 42-44; and National Quality Program at the

National Institute of Standards and Technology

Web site http://www.quality.nist.gov.

QUALITY TOOLS

The seven well-known tools for identifying quality problems and their causes are sometimes called the “magnificent seven.”

A major cornerstone of the commitment to quality improvement prescribed by Deming and the other early quality gurus is the need to identity and prevent the causes of quality problems, or defects. These individuals prescribed a number of “tools” to identify the causes of quality problems that are still widely used today, including Pareto charts, process flowcharts, checksheets, histograms, scatter diagrams, statistical process control charts and cause-and-effect diagrams. In fact, as noted previously. Deming traveled to Japan primarily to teach statistical process control techniques. These popular tools became the basis for the quality management programs developed by many companies. In this section we will briefly describe some of these tools, which are summarized in Figure 2.3.

Figure 2.3 Quality Tools

• Inernet Exercises

A flowchart is a diagram of a job operation or process.

PROCESS FLOWCHARTS

process flowchart

a diagram of the steps in a job, operation, or process.

It enables everyone involved in identifying and solving quality problems to have a clear picture of how a specific operation works and a common frame of reference. It also enables a process improvement team to understand the interrelationship of the departments and functions that constitute a process. This helps focus on where problems might occur and if the process itself needs fixing. Development of the flowchart can help identify quality problems by helping the problem solvers better understand the process. Flowcharts are described in greater detail in Chapter 6 (“Processes and Technology”) and Chapter 8 (“Human Resources”).

process flowchart:

a diagram of the steps in a job, operation, or process.

CAUSE-AND-EFFECT DIAGRAMS

A cause-and-effect diagram, also called a fishbone or Ishikawa diagram, is a graphical description of the elements of a specific quality problem and the relationship between those elements. It is used to identify the causes of a quality problem so it can be corrected. Cause-and-effect diagrams are usually developed as part of brainstorming to help a quality team of employees and managers identify causes of quality problems.

Cause-and-effect diagram or fishbone diagram:

a chart showing the different categories of problem causes.

Figure 2.4 is a cause-and-effect diagram for a Six Sigma project at a hospital to reduce delays in patient bed turnaround time, which creates a patient flow problem throughout the hospital. The primary cause of the problem is suspected to be related to the “bed tracking system” (BTS), an electronic system that indicates the status of each bed to the registered nurse (RN) who admits patients and assigns them to a room. (See the “Along the Supply Chain” box for the North Shore University Hospital on page 79.)

The “effect” box at the end of the diagram is the quality problem that needs correction. A center line connects the effect box to the major categories of possible problem causes, displayed as branches off of the center line. The box at the end of each branch (or fishbone) describes the cause category. The diagram starts out in this form with only the major categories at the end of each branch. Individual causes associated with each category are attached as separate lines along the length of the branch during the brainstorming process. Sometimes the causes are rank-ordered along the branches in order to identify those that are most likely to affect the problem. The cause-and-effect diagram is a means for thinking through a problem and recording the possible causes in an organized and easily interpretable manner.

Figure 2.4 A Cause-and-Effect Diagram

Figure 2.5 A Cause-and-Effect Matrix

A complementary tool related to the fishbone diagram is the cause-and-effect matrix, which is used to prioritize the potential causes of quality problems in a process that might first be identified using a cause-and-effect diagram. The output (or Y) variables are listed along the top of the matrix. These are also referred to as CTQs or CTQCs. (i.e., “critical-to-quality characteristics”) and they are measurable characteristics that express the key requirements defined by a customer. CTQCs are what the customer expects from a product, and accordingly they have a significant impact on customer satisfaction. The input (or X) variables that might affect the outcome of process, (i.e., the potential causes of an outcome) are listed along the left side of the matrix (or grid). The CTQCs are ranked or weighted in terms of importance to the customer; then, the relationship between causes and effects (CTQs) are weighted or ranked; and finally, an overall score is calculated for the causes (or X variables). The causes with the highest score should be addressed first in improvement efforts because they will have the largest impact on customer satisfaction. Figure 2.5 shows a cause-and-effect matrix for the hospital bed turnaround time example. Note that staff communication has the highest score, and thus, the greatest impact on how satisfied the customers are with the overall process.

Cause-and-effect matrix:

grid used to prioritize causes of quality problems.

CHECKSHEETS AND HISTOGRAMS

Checksheets are frequently used in conjunction with histograms, as well as with Pareto diagrams. A checksheet is a fact-finding tool used to collect data about quality problems. A typical check sheet for quality defects tallies the number of defects for a variety of previously identified problem causes. When the check sheet is completed, the total tally of defects for each cause can be used to create a histogram or a Pareto chart, as shown in Figure 2.6.

A check sheer is a list of causes of quality problems with the number of defects resulting front each cause used to develop a bar chart called a histogram.

PARETO ANALYSIS

Pareto analysis

is a method of identifying the causes of poor quality. It was devised in the early 1950s by the quality expert Joseph Juran. He named this method after a nineteenth-century Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, who determined that a small percentage of the people accounted for most of the wealth. Pareto analysis is based on Juran’s finding that most quality problems and costs result from only a few causes. For example, he discovered in a textile mill that almost 75% of all defective cloth was caused by only a few weavers, and in a paper mill he studied, more than 60% of the cost of poor quality was attributable to a single category of defects. Correcting the few major causes of most of the quality problems will result in the greatest cost impact.

Pareto analysis:

most quality problems result from a few causes.

Pareto analysis can be applied by tallying the number of defects for each of the different possible causes of poor quality in a product or service and then developing a frequency distribution from the data. This frequency distribution, referred to as a Pareto diagram, is a useful visual aid for focusing on major quality problems.

Figure 2.6 Pareto Chart

The quality problem for hospital bed turnaround time described in the previous section on cause-and-effect diagrams (Figure 2.4) in this case a defect is anytime the turnaround time exceeds

150

minutes for a patient out of a sample of 195 patients. Some of the causes of this problem are as follows.

Cause

Number of Defects

Percentage

Staff communication

64%

BTS system

Room cleaning

13
10

Beepers

7
6

Laundry

Patients

Family

130

100%

For each cause of poor quality, the number of defects attributed to that cause has been tallied. This information is then converted into the Pareto chart shown in Figure 2.6 above.

This Pareto chart identifies the major cause of poor quality to be poor staff communication. Correcting the problem will result in the greatest quality improvement. However, the other problems should not be ignored. Continual quality improvement is the long-term goal. The Pareto diagram simply identifies the quality problems that will result in the greatest immediate impact on quality improvement.

A scatter diagram is a graph showing how two process variables relate to each other.

SCATTER DIAGRAMS

Scatter diagrams graphically show the relationship between two variables, such as the brittleness of a piece of material and the temperature at which it is baked. One temperature reading should result in a specific degree of brittleness representing one point on the diagram. Many such points on the diagram visually show a pattern between the two variables and a relationship or lack of one. This diagram could be used to identify a particular quality problem associated with the baking process.

PROCESS C

ONTROL CHARTS AND STATISTICAL QUALITY CONTROL

We discuss control charts and other statistical quality-control methods in Chapter 3, “Statistical

Process Control

.” For now, it is sufficient to say that a control chart is a means for measuring if a process is doing what it is supposed to do, like a thermostat monitoring room temperature. It is constructed with a horizontal line through the middle of a chart representing the process average or norm. It also has a line below this center line representing a lower control limit and a line above it for the upper control limit. Samples from the process are taken over time and measured according to some attribute. In its simplest form, if the measurement is within the upper and lower control limits, the process is said to be in control and there is no quality problem, but if the measurement is outside the limits, then a problem probably exists and should be investigated and corrected.

Process control involves monitoring a production or service process using statistical quality-control methods.

Statistical quality-control methods such as the process control chart are important tools for quality improvement. Employees who are provided with extensive training in statistical quality-control methods, are able to identify quality problems and their causes and to make suggestions for improvement. (See the “Along the Supply Chain” box on page 79 to see how a control chart is used to monitor hospital bed turnaround times).

TQM AND QMS

Total

quality management (TQM)
has been the most prominent and visible approach to quality to evolve from the work of Deming and the early quality gurus. TQM originated in the 1980s as a Japanese-style management approach to quality improvement, and became very popular during the 1990s, being adopted by thousands of companies. Although it has taken on many meanings, it was (and still is) a philosophy for managing an organization centered on quality and customer satisfaction as “the” strategy for achieving long-term success. It requires the active involvement, participation and cooperation of everyone in the organization, and encompasses virtually all of its activities and processes. To achieve and sustain this pervasive focus on quality requires a significant long-term commitment on the part of the organization’s leadership. Deming’s 14 points and the philosophies and teachings of the early quality gurus are clearly embodied in the basic principles of TQM:

Total Quality Management (TQM):

customer-oriented, leadership, strategic planning, employee responsibility, continuous improvement, cooperation, statistical methods, and training and education.

1. Quality can and must be managed.

2. The customer defines quality, and customer satisfaction is the top goal: it is a requirement and is not negotiable.

3. Management must be involved and provide leadership.

4. Continuous quality improvement is “the” strategic goal, which requires planning and organization.

5. Quality improvement is the responsibility of every employee; all employees must be trained and educated to achieve quality improvement.

6. Quality problems are found in processes, and problems must be prevented, not solved.

7. The quality standard is “no defects.”

8. Quality must be measured; improvement requires the use of quality tools, and especially-statistical process control.

Quality Management System (QMS):

A system to to achieve customer satisfaction that complements other company systems.

TQM has been supplanted to a large extent by what is most commonly referred to as a

quality management system (QMS)

. This approach (or term) has evolved out of the ISO certification process that many companies around the world have gone through; essentially ISO certifies a company’s “quality management system.” and much of the ISO’s written materials refer directly to “quality management systems.” (ISO certification is discussed in greater detail in a separate section later in this chapter.) A QMS is not as much of a philosophy as TQM: rather, it is a system that complements a company’s other systems and functions. It is a systematic approach to achieving quality and hence customer satisfaction, and while it suggests no less commitment to that goal than TQM, it maintains less of a core strategic focus that TQM. Further, since a QMS is not a “philosophy.” it more naturally is designed to meet the individual needs and circumstances of a particular company. It outlines the policies and procedures necessary to improve and control specific (but not all) processes that will lead to improved business performance. A QMS tends to focus more on individual projects that have a quantifiable impact (i.e., increased profitability). Some companies have adopted the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria as its QMS; another well-known QMS is Six Sigma (which we will discuss in greater detail in a later section).

Regardless of the term a company uses to identify its approach to achieving quality improvement, and the possible differences between TQM and a QMS or other approaches, there are certain common characteristics of company-wide approaches to quality improvement, such as customer satisfaction and employee involvement, topics we will talk about next.

THE FOCUS OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT—CUSTOMERS

The main focus of Deming’s 14 points, TQM and all QMSs is to achieve customer satisfaction. The reason is simple; customers who are very happy and delighted are less likely to switch to a competitor, which translates to profits. A high level of satisfaction creates an emotional bond instead of simply a rational preference. Research by companies has shown that there is a direct link between customer satisfaction and attrition rates, indicating that delighted customers are less likely to defect than dissatisfied customers. Figure 2.7 highlights some of the “facts” that are generally known to exist about customer satisfaction.

Figure 2.7 The Impact of Customer Satisfaction

QUALITY MANAGEMENT IN THE SUPPLY CHAIN

Most companies not only have customers they want to satisfy, but they are also customers of other companies, their suppliers, within a company’s supply chain. Companies know that to satisfy its customers requires not only their own commitment to quality, but also the support and resources of its suppliers. This is especially true of companies that outsource many of their activities to suppliers. Companies and their suppliers joined together in a supply chain must work together to meet the needs of the company’s customers. A partnership exists between the supplier and its customer wherein the supplier is expected to manage its own quality effectively so that the company it supplies can count on the quality of the materials, parts, and services it receives.

Many companies reduce their number of suppliers in order to have more direct influence over their suppliers’ quality and delivery performance, which was one of Deming’s 14 points. It is based on the notion that if a company has a major portion of a supplier’s business, then the supplier is more willing to meet the customer’s quality standards. The company and supplier enter into a business relationship referred to as partnering, in which the supplier agrees to meet the company’s quality standards, and in return the company enters into a long-term purchasing agreement with the supplier that includes a stable order and delivery schedule.

In order to ensure that its supplier meets its quality standards, a company will often insist that the supplier adopt a QMS similar to its own, or a company’s QMS will include its suppliers. Still other companies require that their suppliers achieve

ISO 9000

certification (see page 95), an international quality standard that ensures a high industry standard of quality as its QMS; some companies require their suppliers to follow Baldrige National Quality Award guidelines or even enter the Baldrige Award competition as their QMS.

At the other end of a company’s spectrum from its suppliers is its direct relationship with its own customers. An important component of any QMS is the company’s ability to measure customer satisfaction; to “hear” what the customer wants. The company needs to know if its QMS is effective. Is the company meeting customer expectations? Are its products or services meeting their fitness for use definition? Is it what the customer wants, does the customer like it, does the customer need it, would the customer like it changed? A QMS requires that some form of measurement system be in place to answer these questions and provide data about the customer’s level of satisfaction. It is a well-established fact of consumer behavior that unhappy customers will tell almost twice as many others about their quality problems as they will tell others about satisfactory products or services.

Partnering:

a relationship between a company and its supplier based on mutual quality standards.

MEASURING CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

For most companies, figuring out what satisfies customers (i.e., what they want and need) is easier said than done. It requires that a company somehow gather information on what the customer wants and needs, disseminate that information throughout the company, use that information to improve its products and processes and develop new products, and then monitor customer satisfaction to ensure that the customer’s needs are being met. The primary means for garnering information from customers, and measuring customer satisfaction is the customer survey. The customer survey is a means for companies to listen to what is often referred to as the “voice of the customer (VoC).” Applicants for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award are expected to provide measures of customer satisfaction typically through customer surveys. Motorola, a two-time Baldrige Award winner, contracts with an independent survey firm to conduct regularly scheduled surveys with its customers around the world to help Motorola determine how well it’s meeting its customers’ needs.

J.D. Power and Associates is an independent, third-party, company that provides companies in the automotive, energy/communications, travel, financial, and home-building industries with feed back from their customers based on surveys that they conduct. They also annually present awards to companies that have excelled in their industry based on independently financed consumer opinion studies. Award-winning companies are allowed to license the use of J.D. Power and Associates awards in advertising. For example, their 2006 automotive performance award winner for the “large car” was the Hyundai Azera: their 2006 award winner for the “highest guest satisfaction among mid-scale hotel chains” was Hampton Inns.

• Inernet Exercises

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) was established in 1994 through a partnership of the University of Michigan Business School, the American Society for Quality (ASQ), and the international consulting firm, CFI Group. The ACSI is funded in part by corporate subscribers who receive industry benchmarking data and company-specific information about financial returns from improving customer satisfaction.

ACSI measures customer satisfaction with the goods and services of 7 economic sectors. 39 industries (including e-commerce and e-business), and more than 200 companies and 70 federal and local government agencies. The ACSI reports scores on a 0 to 100 scale, which are based on econometric modeling of data obtained from telephone interviews with customers. From random-digit-dial (RDD) telephone samples (and Internet samples for e-commerce and e-business), more than 65,000 consumers are identified and interviewed annually.

ACSI scores are posted on their Web site at www.theacsi.org. For example, in 2008 Amazon.com had an ACSI score of 86, one of the highest scores ever recorded in any service industry. Apple was the leading company in the computer industry with a score of 85. Lexus and BMW were the highest-scoring car companies at 87, followed by Toyota and Honda at 86.

ALONG THE SUPPLY CHAIN Measuring Customer Satisfaction with “Voice of the Customer [VoC]” at Two Baldrige Award Winners

The U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC), a 2007 recipient of the Baldrige National Quality Award, develops

90%

of the Army’s armaments and ammunition such as firearms, explosives, warheads, and advanced hi-tech weaponry. ARDEC, headquartered in Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey, has nearly 3,000 employees and annual net revenues over $1 billion. In addition to serving the Army, its customers include the U.S. Special Operations Command and the Department of Homeland Security. It has been applying Baldrige criteria since the 1990s, and since 2005 it has used such practices as Lean Six Sigma and ISO 9000 to continually improve its processes and its products, which has resulted in a

91%

increase in quality, a reduction in cost of 70%. improved scheduling of 67%, and overall cost avoidance of

2 billion. In addition, ARDEC’s customer satisfaction ratings, a key Baldrige criterion, increased from 3.

(on a 4-point scale) in 2000 to 3.75 in 2007. This increase is primarily a result of its “Voice of the Customer (VoC)” program.

Measuring customer satisfaction is literally a matter of life and death for an organization like ARDEC; the security of the United States and the safety of its soldiers depend on ARDEC’s ability to continually improve and achieve the highest quality possible. ARDEC’s VoC program includes a 400-person conference with soldiers just returned from the war zone who talk about what worked (and didn’t work) for them in the field. The discussion also leads to possible innovations; products are designed for one thing, but soldiers get creative and often find out they work for something else. ARDEC’s quick reaction task force (QRTF) also developed a formal process using a Web-based tracking tool that gathers questions and needs from soldiers in the field, and works quickly to develop quick answers and solutions. In a nine-month period in 2006-2007 responses to 80% of soldier inquiries were developed in less than

hours, which contributed to customer satisfaction ratings well above government best-in-class benchmarks. Other Web-based survey tools generate over 60 pages of comments every quarter that are immediately accessible to everyone in the organization.

Poudre Valley Health System (PVHS), a 2008 Baldrige Award recipient, also uses a VoC program to gauge customer satisfaction. PVHS is a not-for-profit health-care organization headquartered in Fort Collins, Colorado, serving Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming residents, with annual revenues over $

330

million and a workforce of 4,000. According to various surveys, PVHS patient loyalty ranks in the top 1% of U.S. hospitals, overall physician satisfaction ranks in the 99th percentile in the nation, is consistently in the top 10% of national performance standards for treating heart failure and pneumonia, and consistently maintains lower health-care charges than its competitors.

PVHS actively involves its customer through its VoC program to provide guidance for strategic planning, goal setting, and quality improvement initiatives. In one instance customer input was incorporated in the planning and building of its newest hospital, the Medical Center of the Rockies, including the layout of emergency rooms, patient room window views (with most facing the mountains), healing gardens, and family amenities such as showers and kitchens.

Examples were given of how each of these organizations used VoC tools to assess customer satisfaction. What other tools do you think they (or other organizations) might employ to get customer feedback?

Sources: B. Krzykowski “Customer Servicemen,” Quality Progress 41 (6; June 2008), pp. 30-34; and National Quality Program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology Web site, http://www.quality.nist.gov.

THE ROLE OF EMPLOYEES IN QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

Job training and employee development are major features of a successful quality management program. Increased training in job skills results in improved processes that improve product quality. Training in quality tools and skills such as statistical process control enable employees to diagnose and correct day-to-day problems related to their job. This provides employees with greater responsibility for product quality and greater satisfaction for doing their part to achieve quality. When achievement is reinforced through rewards and recognition, it further increases employee satisfaction. At Ritz-Carlton, first-year employees receive over 300 hours of training. Marriott employees are trained to view breakdowns in service as opportunities for satisfying customers; for example, they may send a gift and note of apology to customers who have experienced a problem in the hotel.

In our previous discussions, the importance of customer satisfaction as an overriding company objective was stressed. However, another important aspect of a successful QMS is internal customer (e.g., employee) satisfaction. It is unlikely that a company will be able to make its customers happy if its employees are not happy. For that reason, many successful companies conduct employee satisfaction surveys just as they conduct customer surveys.

When employees are directly involved in the quality management process, it is referred to as

participative problem solving

. Employee participation in identifying and solving quality problems has been shown to be effective in improving quality, increasing employee satisfaction and morale, improving job skills, reducing job turnover and absenteeism, and increasing productivity.

Participative problem solving:

employees are directly involved in the quality management process.

Participative problem solving is usually within an employee-involvement (El) program, with a team approach. We will look at some of these programs for involving employees in quality management, including kaizen, quality circles, and process improvement teams.

KAIZEN AND CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

Kaizen
is the Japanese term for continuous improvement, not only in the workplace but also in one’s personal life, home life, and social life. In the workplace, kaizen means involving everyone in a process of gradual, organized, and continuous improvement. Every employee within an organization should be involved in working together to make improvements. If an improvement is not part of a continuous, ongoing process, it is not considered kaizen. Kaizen is most closely associated with lean systems, an approach to continuous improvement throughout the organization that is the subject of Chapter 16.

kaizen:

involves everyone in a process of continuous improvement.

Employees are most directly involved in kaizen when they are determining solutions to their own problems. Employees are the real experts in their immediate workspace. In its most basic form, kaizen is a system in which employees identify many small improvements on a continual basis and implement these improvements themselves. This is actually the application of the steps in the Deming Wheel (Figure 2.2) at its most basic, individual level. Employees identify a problem, come up with a solution, check with their supervisor, and then implement it. This works to involve all employees in the improvement process and gives them a feeling that they are really participating in quality improvement, which in turn keeps them excited about their jobs. Nothing motivates someone more than when they come up with a solution to their own problem. Small individual changes have a cumulative effect in improving entire processes, and with this level of participation improvement occurs across the entire organization. No company-wide quality management program can succeed without this level of total employee involvement in continuous improvement.

With today’s foucs on healthcare costs, quality in healthcare is a major issue in the service sector. Its importance is signified by the fact that it is one of five categories in which the Baldrige National Quality Award is annually given.

Employees at Dana Corporation’s Spicer Driveshaft Division, North America’s largest independent manufacturer of driveshafts and a 2000 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award winner, participate in a kaizen-type program. On average, each employee submits three suggestions for improvements per month and almost 80 percent of these ideas are implemented. The company also makes use of kaizen “blitzes” in which teams brainstorm, identify, and implement ideas for improvement, sometimes as often as every three or four weeks. Company-wide, Dana Corporation employees implemented almost 2 million ideas in one year alone.

QUALITY CIRCLES

One of the first team-based approaches to quality improvement was

quality circles

. Called quality-control circles in Japan when they originated during the 1960s, they were introduced in the United States in the 1970s. A quality circle is a small, voluntary group of employees and their supervisor(s), comprising a team of about 8 to 10 members from the same work area or department. The supervisor is typically the circle moderator, promoting group discussion but not directing the group or making decisions; decisions result from group consensus. A circle meets about once a week during company time in a room designated especially for that purpose, where the team works on problems and projects of their own choice. These problems may not always relate to quality issues; instead, they focus on productivity, costs, safety, or other work-related issues in the circle’s area. Quality circles follow an established procedure for identifying, analyzing, and solving quality-related (or other) problems. Figure 2.8 is a graphical representation of the quality circle process.

Quality circle:

a group of workers and supervisors from the same area who address quality problems.

Figure 2.8 The Quality Circle Process

A process improvement team includes members from the interrelated functions or departments that make up a process.

PROCESS IMPROVEMENT TEAMS

Process improvement teams, also called quality improvement teams (QIT), focuses attention on business processes rather than separate company functions. It was noted previously that quality circles are generally composed of employees and supervisors from the same work area or department, whereas process improvement teams tend to be cross-functional or even cross-business between suppliers and their customers. A process improvement team would include members from the various interrelated functions or departments that constitute a process. For example, a process improvement team for customer service might include members from distribution, packaging, manufacturing, and human resources. A key objective of a process improvement team is to understand the process the team is addressing in terms of how all the parts (functions and departments) work together. The process is then measured and evaluated, with the goal of improving the process to make it more efficient and the product or service better. A key tool in helping the team understand how the process works is a process flowchart, a quality tool we discussed in greater detail in the section on “Quality Tools.”

ALONG THE SUPPLY CHAIN Customer Focus and Employee Empowerment in a Baldrige Award-Winning City

Coral Springs, located in Broward County (north of Miami), is the 13th largest city in Florida with a population of over 1

,000

, a workforce of 770 full-time and 300 part-time employees, and an annual budget of $

135

million. A 2007 recipient of the Baldrige National Quality Award, it is the first state or local government agency to do so. Operated much like a business, the city’s quality management program is based on four core values: customer focus, leadership, empowered employees, and continuous improvement. Coral Springs’ two-year strategic planning process, which sets objectives and its budget, is based on input from its customer base—residents and businesses. To provide information to its customers and get customer feedback it uses a call center and Web site, email, a city magazine, podcasts. CityTV, CityRadio, a consumer-friendly “City Hall in the Mall” (for bill payments permit applications), annual neighborhood meetings, 27 advisory committees and boards comprised of residents and business people, customer surveys, demographic trends, and analyses of strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.

A key component of Coral Springs’ success has been an empowered, motivated, and high-performing workforce. The city strives to retain its excellent staff through job security, competitive pay and benefits, a safe and positive work environment, and recognition programs. Employees are encouraged to be innovative and make “on-the-spot” improvements. Employee teams work together to solve problems and review processes. Employees are recognized and rewarded in several ways including “applause cards” given by one employee to another for exemplary customer service, restaurant and movie certificates for employees who display outstanding initiative, and bonuses for extraordinary service. For the past decade employee satisfaction was above 90%, and the turnover rate in 2006 was only 4.5%.

As a result of its quality improvement initiatives, Coral Springs’ resident satisfaction is above 95%, and its business satisfaction is 97%. In 2006 Money magazine named it as one of the “Best Places to Live.” and during the past decade its crime rate dropped by nearly half; for a city its size it has the lowest crime rate in the state and the fourth lowest in the nation.

Since 2000 it has maintained a AAA credit rating from all three of the nation’s largest bond rating agencies.

Compare the quality programs in the city you are from (or that your university is in) with the quality program in Coral Springs. How do you think your city stacks up against Coral Springs? What initiatives used in Coral Springs do you think would work in your city?

Sources: B. Krzykowski, Quality Progress 41 (6; June 2008), pp. 33-35; and National Quality Program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology Web site http://www.quality.nist.gov.

QUALITY IN SERVICES

From our discussion so far it is clear that most quality management approaches evolved in manufacturing companies like Toyota, GE, and Motorola. However, in the 1980s and 1990s service companies began to embrace quality management. This is important because the service sector is the largest segment of the U.S. economy, employing almost three times as many people as manufacturing industries.

Service defects are not always easy to measure because service output is not usually a trangible, physical item.

Service organizations and manufacturing companies both convert inputs into outputs—products or services—through a productive process. Both manufacturing and services use the same kinds of inputs—resources such as physical facilities, capital, materials, equipment, and people. In some instances the processes and products are similar. For example, both Toyota and McDonald’s produce a tangible, physical product (cars and hamburgers) assembled from component parts. However, in pure service industries such as law, hotels, entertainment, communication, engineering, education, clubs, real estate, banks, retail, health care, and airlines, the processes are less similar and the products are not as tangible. The “products” provided by these organizations are not typically a physical item that can be held or stored. The customer of a manufacturer tends to interact only at the output end of the production process. The customer of a service often interacts directly with the production process, consuming services like legal advice, a classroom lecture, or an airline flight as they are being produced. Services tend to be customized and provided at the convenience of the customer: for example, doctors prescribe individually to patients. In addition, services tend to be labor intensive, while manufacturing is more capital-intensive. Thus, human contact and its ramifications are an important part of the process of producing services.

Services tend to be labor intensive.

If a manufactured item is defective, the defect can usually be felt or seen, and counted or measured. The improvement (or deterioration) in a product’s quality can likewise be measured. It’s not the same for service. A service cannot be held, felt, stored, and used again. A service output is not always tangible; thus, it is not as easy to measure service defects. The dimensions of service quality include timeliness, courtesy, consistency, accuracy, convenience, responsiveness, and completeness—all hard to measure beyond a subjective assessment by the customer. This does not mean that the potential for quality improvement is any less in services. Each day thousands of travelers check into and out of Ritz-Carlton Hotels, UPS handles and delivers millions of packages, and VISA processes millions of credit transactions worldwide. However, it is sometimes more difficult to assess defects in service and thus more difficult to measure customer satisfaction.

Disney World, for example, has had to develop a “different” view of quality than a manufacturing company. In some ways, a theme park is similar to an assembly line except that Disney’s rides have to work flawlessly all the time. However, the Disney experience is not just about defect-free rides. It is also about customer emotions and expectations, which are likely to vary widely. Customers have different tolerance levels for things that go wrong. When there is a long line at a ride, the issue is not just the length of the wait, but how a customer feels about waiting. Disney addresses this problem by being innovative: costumed characters entertain customers waiting in line.

Services and manufacturing companies have similar inputs but different processes and outputs.

QUALITY ATTRIBUTES IN SERVICES

Timeliness is an important dimension of service quality.

Professional football player Drew Brees and wife Brittany check in as the first guests of the Ritz-Cartton in New Orleans when it reopened after Hurricane Katrina. The Ritz-Carlton is the only two-time winner of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the service category and its goal is a totally defect-free experience for its guests.

Timeliness, or how quickly a service is provided, is an important dimension of service quality, and it is not difficult to measure. The difficulty is determining what is “quick” service and what is “slow” service. How long must a caller wait to place a phone catalogue order before it is considered poor service? The answer, to a large extent, depends on the caller’s expectations: “too long” is not the same for everyone. Varying expectations make it difficult to determine an exact specification.

Quality management in services must focus also on employee performance related to intangible, difficult-to-measure quality dimensions. The most important quality dimensions may be how correctly and pleasantly employees are able to provide service. That is why service companies such as Federal Express, Starbuck’s, Avis, Disney, and Ritz-Carlton Hotels have well-developed quality management programs that focus on employee performance, behavior, and training, and serve as “
benchmarks
” for other companies. Service companies lose more customers because either their service is poor or their competitor’s is better, than for any other reason, including price.

The principles of TQM apply equally well to services and manufacturing.

Benchmark:

“best” level of quality achievement in one company that other companies seek to achieve.

McDonald’s has a reputation for high-quality service resulting from its application of established quality management principles. It provides fresh food promptly on demand. Restaurant managers meet with customer groups on a regular basis and use questionnaires to identify quality “defects” in its operation. It monitors all phases of its process continuously from purchasing to re-strooms to restaurant decor and maintenance. It empowers all employees to make spot decisions to dispose of unfresh food or to speed service. The McDonald’s workforce is flexible so that changes in customer traffic and demand can be met promptly by moving employees to different tasks. Food is sampled regularly for taste and freshness. Extensive use is made of information technology for scheduling, cash register operation, food inventory, cooking procedures, and food assembly processes—all with the objective of faster service. All of these quality improvement procedures are standard and similar to approaches to quality improvement that could be found in a manufacturing firm.

ALONG THE SUPPLY CHAIN Ritz-Carlton Hotels: Two-Time Baldrige National Quality Award Winner

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company is the only two-time recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the service category, having won in 1992 and 1999. An independently operated division of Marriott International, Inc., it manages luxury hotels around the world. All have received four- or five-star ratings from the Mobil Travel Guide and diamond ratings from the American Automobile Association.

The goal for customer satisfaction is a defect-free experience for guests and 100% customer loyalty. The hotel employs a measurement system to chart progress toward elimination of customer problems, no matter how minor. To meet its goal of total elimination of problems, the Ritz-Carlton has identified over 1000 potential instances for a problem to arise during interactions with guests. To cultivate customer loyalty the hotel has instituted an approach of “Customer Customization.” which relies on extensive data gathering. Information gathered during various types of customer contacts, such as responses to service requests by overnight guests or post-event reviews with meeting planners, are systematically entered into a database, which holds almost a million files. The database enables hotel staff worldwide to anticipate the needs of returning guests. The “Greenbook” is the Ritz-Carlton handbook of quality processes and tools, a nearly constant reference that is distributed to all employees. Any employee can spend several thousand dollars to immediately correct a guest’s problem or handle a complaint.

More than 85% of the company’s 28,000 employees— known as “The Ladies and Gentlemen of the Ritz-Carlton”— are front-line hotel workers. The hotel’s “pride and joy” program gives employees a larger role in the design of their jobs. First-year managers and employees receive over 300 hours of training. As a result, the hotel’s employee turnover rate, in an industry in which employee turnover is a chronic problem, has declined over a long period, and levels of employee satisfaction are very high.

In an independent customer survey, more than 80% of guests said they were extremely satisfied and 99% said they were satisfied with their overall Ritz-Carlton experience, compared with under 70% for their nearest luxury hotel competitor. Revenue per available room (the industry’s measure of market share) has exceeded the industry average by more than 300%.

The Ritz-Carlton is an expensive luxury hotel chain. Do you think this enables it to have an approach to quality that less-expensive, economy-class hotel chains cannot afford? Is revenue a factor in implementing a successful QMS, or is it a result?

Source: National Quality Program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology Web site, http://www.quality.nist.gov.

The “Ladies and Gentlemen of the Ritz-Carlton” are the key factor in Ritz-Carlton’s receipt of two Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards and the highest guest satisfaction level in the luxury hotel industry.

SIX SIGMA

• Inernet Exercises

Six Sigma was first developed at Motorola, and they and other companies have had a great deal of success with it as reported in the “Along the Supply Chain” box on page 77. A number of companies have credited Six Sigma with billions of dollars in cost savings and increased profits, and these reported successes have led many other large and small companies to adopt all or some of the Six Sigma methodology. As a result Six Sigma is currently one of the most popular quality management systems in the world.

• Inernet Exercises

Basically, Six Sigma is a project-oriented methodology (or system) that provides businesses with the tools and expertise to improve their processes. This increase in performance through a decrease in process variation leads to defect reduction (to near zero) and an increase in product and service quality and increased profits. In its simplest form, Six Sigma is based on Deming’s PDCA cycle and Joseph Juran’s assertion that “all quality improvement occurs on a project-by-project” basis, with elements of kaizen-type employee involvement. In this section we will provide a more detailed description of the elements and components of Six Sigma. Figure 2.9 illustrates the primary elements of a Six Sigma program.

THE SIX SIGMA GOAL −3.4 DPMO

Six Sigma

is a process for developing and delivering virtually perfect products and services. The word “sigma” is a familiar statistical term for the standard deviation, a measure of variability around the mean of a normal distribution. In Six Sigma it is a measure of how much a given product or process deviates from perfection, or zero defects. The main idea behind Six Sigma is that if the number of “defects” in a process can be measured, then it can be systematically determined how to eliminate them and get as close to zero defects as possible. In Six Sigma “as close to zero defects as possible” translates into a statistically based numerical goal of 3.4 defects per million opportunities (DPMO), which is the near elimination of defects from a process, product, or service. This is a goal far beyond the quality level at which most companies have traditionally operated. Through the reduction of variation in all processes (i.e., achieving the Six Sigma goal), the overall performance of the company will be improved and significant overall cost savings will be realized.

Six Sigma:

measure of how much a process deviates from perfection.

Figure 2.9 Six Sigma

• Inernet Exercises

ALONG THE SUPPLY CHAIN Motorola’s Six Sigma Quality

Motorola began in the late 1920s as a small manufacturer of car radios (hence the name Motorola). It has grown to a $30 billion corporation with more than 68,000 employees at 320 facilities in 73 countries around the world, manufacturing such products as semiconductors, integrated circuits, paging systems, cellular telephones, computers, and wireless communications systems. Motorola was an engineering-oriented company that focused on product development to create new markets. In the mid-1970s it changed its focus from products to customers, with an objective of total customer satisfaction. Motorola is now recognized as having one of the best quality management systems in the world. In 1988 it was among the first group of winners of the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and in 2002 it was one of very few companies to win the Baldrige Award a second time.

In 1986 it invented Six Sigma and in 1987 Motorola announced its goal of “Six Sigma” quality. This goal effectively changed the focus of quality in the United States, where quality levels had traditionally been measured in terms of percentages or parts per hundred. Motorola’s Six Sigma has since become a benchmark standard that many other companies have adopted. Six Sigma has evolved from a metric (or standard) achieved through the application of various methodologies into a complete quality management system (QMS). GE, Ford, Coors, Boeing, Xerox, Bank of America, Honey-well, Kraft Foods, Intel, Microsoft,

NASA

, Dannon, UPS, Sony, and Texaco are just a few of the companies that have adopted Six Sigma as their quality management system, Motorola has reported over $17 billion in savings with Six Sigma. The companies that have adopted Six Sigma see it as the basis for a “best-in-class” philosophy and a long-term business strategy to achieve overall business improvement. The fundamental objective of Six Sigma is to focus on improvement in key processes and transactions within a company. In this way, waste and cost are driven out as quality and processes improve, and customer satisfaction and loyalty, and thus profits, are increased through continuous business improvement.

All of the companies cited above are large, well-known, national, or international firms. What do you think some of the obstacles might be for a smaller company to implement a Six Sigma program? Are certain features and components of Six Sigma more applicable than others to a small company?

Source: Motorola Web site, http:www.motorola.com.

THE SIX SIGMA PROCESS

As implemented by Motorola, Six Sigma follows four basic steps—align, mobilize, accelerate, and govern. In the first step, “align,” senior executives create a balanced scorecard (see Chapter 1) of strategic goals, metrics and initiatives to identify the areas of improvement that will have the greatest impact on the company’s bottom line. Process owners (i.e, the senior executives who supervise the processes) “champion” the creation of high-impact improvement projects that will achieve the strategic goals.

In the second step, “mobilize,” project teams are formed and empowered to act. The process owners select “black belts” to lead well-defined improvement projects. The teams follow a step-by-step, problem-solving approach referred to as DMAIC.

In the third step, “accelerate,” improvement teams made up of black belt and green belt team members with appropriate expertise use an action-learning approach to build their capability and execute the project. This approach combines training and education with project work and coaching. Ongoing reviews with project champions ensure that projects progress according to an aggressive timeline.

In the final step, “govern,” executive process owners monitor and review the status of improvement projects to make sure the system is functioning as expected. Leaders share the knowledge gained from the improvement projects with other parts of the organization to maximize benefit.

In the next few sections we describe some components of the Six Sigma process in greater detail.

Six Sigma process:

the four basic steps of Six Sigma—align, mobilize, accelerate and govern.

ALONG THE SUPPLY CHAIN Six Sigma

High

lights

• A Six Sigma team at North Carolina Baptist Hospital reduced the time for getting heart attack patients from the emergency room into the cardiac catheterization lab for treatment by an average of 41 minutes.

• CIGNA Dental insurance company reduced the volume of pending claims by 50% through Six Sigma projects for cycle time reductions and outstanding premiums reductions.

• A Bechtel project team working on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link in the United Kingdom used Six Sigma to save hundreds of hours on different tunneling jobs.

• A Six Sigma project for truck modification at Volvo’s North American Truck Division resulted in cost savings of over $1 million; other projects improved forecasting processes and reduced fuel tank replacement down time.

• A Six Sigma team at Ford fixed a body-side molding problem and the resulting process improvements saved

$10

0,000 annually in waste elimination and eliminated customer complaints about the body-side molding lifting off of the car.

• A Six Sigma project at HSBC Securities (USA) to improve the bottom line performance of its U.S. futures business increased net income from $1.9 million to $7.1 million, a 2

% increase, with a 10% reduction in staff.

• A Six Sigma project at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha successfully reversed a decline in the patient volume in its interventional radiology department (resulting from dissatisfied referring physicians), reducing complaints from referring clinics to zero and increasing patient volume in one year by 21%, and increasing revenues.

• Since implementing Six Sigma in 1999, Ford experienced a 27% decrease in warranty spending in a two-year period and credits Six Sigma with savings of over $2 billion.

• Royal Mail, one of the United Kingdom’s largest employers with over 196,000 employees, used Six Sigma for one project to centralize a key process and halved the process workforce from

0 to 220.

• Since implementing Six Sigma on a corporate-wide basis in 1997, Citibank has seen five- and ten-time defect reductions; examples include decreased response times for credit card applications and fewer errors in customer statements.

• Houston’s Memorial Hermann Hospital used Six Sigma to increase its reimbursement percentage from Medicare services resulting in savings of

2 million, an almost 50% improvement.

• A Six Sigma probject at Sharp HealthCare facilities in San Diego led to a program to manage blood sugar levels among all of its impatient and intensive care patients, thus avoiding negative outomes in diabetics.

• Six Sigma projects at Bank of America saved the company in excess of $2 billion in 2005 and over $1 billion in

2009

; the company completes thousands of Six Sigma projects each year.

IMPROVEMENT PROJECTS

The first step in the Six Sigma process is the identification of improvement projects. These projects are selected according to business objectives and the goals of the company. As such, they normally have a significant financial impact. These projects are not one-time, unique activities as projects are typically thought of, but team-based activities directed at the continuing improvement of a process.

Once projects are identified, they are assigned a

champion

from upper management who is responsible for project success, providing resources and overcoming organizational barriers. Champions are typically paid a bonus tied to the successful achievement of Six Sigma goals.

Champion:

an executive responsible for project success.

THE BREAKTHROUGH STRATEGY: DMAIC

At the heart of Six Sigma is the breakthrough strategy, a five-step process applied to improvement projects. The five steps in the breakthrough strategy are very similar to Deming’s four-stage PDCA cycle (Figure 2.2), although more specific and detailed. The breakthrough strategy steps are define, measure, analyze, improve, and control, (DMAIC) shown in Figure 2.9.

Breakthrough strategy:

define, measure, analyze, improve, control.

Define: The problem is defined, including who the customers are and what they want, to determine what needs to improve. It is important to know which quality attributes are most important to the customer, what the defects are, and what the improved process can deliver.

Measure: The process is measured, data are collected, and compared to the desired state.

Analyze: The data are analyzed in order to determine the cause of the problem.

Improve: The team brainstorms to develop solutions to problems: changes are made to the process, and the results are measured to see if the problems have been eliminated. If not, more changes may be necessary.

Control: If the process is operating at the desired level of performance, it is monitored to make sure the improvement is sustained and no unexpected and undesirable changes occur.

ALONG THE SUPPLY CHAIN North Shore University Hospital: A Six Sigma

Project

Example

North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York is part of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, the third largest nonsectarian health system in the United States with 14 hospitals. The hospital used Six Sigma on a project to reduce delays in bed assignment turnaround time. The problem analysis showed that delays in the post-anesthesia care unit and the emergency department resulted in the hospital not always having the staff or beds available to accept additional patients, which resulted in delays in start times in the operating room and a decrease in patient and physician satisfaction. It was subsequently realized that staff were incorrectly using the bed tracking system (BTS), the electronic system that indicates the status of each bed. Delays in bed turnaround time resulted in delayed notification of a ready bed to the RN (registered nurse) responsible for the patient admission process. This led to delays in the operating room and emergency department and impacted the patient flow throughout the hospital. The bed turnaround time was from the time discharge instructions were given to a patient to the time the admission RN was made aware of a ready bed, a process involving many people. The project focused on one surgical nursing unit which had 2,578 discharged patients in one year.

During the “define” stage of the Six Sigma DMAIC process the project team developed a process map that described in detail the steps of the discharge-admission process. The admissions RNs were identified as the primary customers of the process and they were surveyed to establish process targets. These “voice of the customer (VoC)” responses helped establish a target turnaround time of 120 minutes with an upper limit of 150 minutes. In the “measure” stage of DMAIC a defect was defined as anytime the turnaround time exceeded 150 minutes. The team measured the process by having a team member on the surgical unit monitor the process for one week, which yielded data on 195 patients. Based on this data (which showed 130 defects) the team calculated a DPMO of 672,725, which translated to a score of 1 sigma. The average turnaround time was 226 minutes. The team then developed a cause and effect diagram to help identify all the variables that affected the turnaround time.

During the “analyze” step of the DMAIC process the variables that impacted the turnaround time process (Xs) were discussed, targeted for statistical analysis, and prioritized. A statistical t-test. for example, showed there was no statistical difference in the process based on the day of the week or shift. The team investigations at this stage showed both a communication failure and a technical failure at two key steps in the process that caused significant delays. The team realized that the staff lacked proficiency in the use of the BTS. The lack of communication between the admission RNs and other patient care team members was identified as a priority, as was the lack of timely notification of a ready bed to the admission RN. Several solutions were developed to resolve these problems, including staff training and the use of improved documentation about discharge patients, laminated bedside cards, and reformatted beepers for RNs to accelerate the process. In the “improve” step, the turnaround time was reduced from a mean of 226 minutes to 90 minutes, which resulted in a metric of 2.3 sigma by the time the project ended. In the “control” step moving range and SPC charts were used to monitor turnaround times, and the turnaround time continued to improve to 69 minutes.

The results of this project were subsequently applied to all nursing units in the hospital. Patient satisfaction scores improved in two categories related to readiness for discharge and speed of the discharge process. Since initiating their Six Sigma program the health system has completed over 60 Six Sigma projects and trained 24 black belts, 70 green belts and two master black belts.

Identify a process in a hospital, restaurant, school, or other service that you think might be improved by the Six Sigma DMAIC process, and discuss how you would apply it, including the specific DMAIC stages.

Source: A. Pellicone and M. Martocci, “Faster Turnaround Time,” Quality Progress 39 (3: March 2006), pp. 31-36.

BLACK BELTS AND GREEN BELTS

The project leader who implements the DMAIC steps is called a

Black Belt

. Black Belts hold full-time positions and are extensively trained in the use of statistics and quality-control tools, as well as project and team management. A Black Belt assignment normally lasts two years during which the Black Belt will lead 8 to 12 projects from different areas in the company, each lasting about one quarter. A Black Belt is certified after two successful projects. Black Belts are typically very focused change agents who are on the fast track to company advancement, Figure 2.10 describes some of the most important tools used by black belts at Motorola.

Black Belt:

the project leader.

Master Black Belts
monitor, review, and mentor Black Belts across all projects. They are primarily teachers who are selected based on their quantitative skills, and on their teaching and mentoring ability. As such, they are a resource for project teams and Black Belts. They also hold full-time positions and are usually certified after participating in about 20 successful projects, half while a Black Belt and half as a Master Black Belt.

Master Black Belt:

a teacher and mentor for Black Belts.

Project team members are
Green Belts
, which is not a full-time position; they do not spend all of their time on projects. Green Belts receive similar training as Black Belts but somewhat less of it.

Green Belts:

project team members.

At General Electric employees are not considered for promotion to any management position without Black Belt or Green Belt training. It is part of the Six Sigma overall strategy that as Black Belts and Green Belts move into management positions they will continue to promote and advance Six Sigma in the company. A generally held perception is that companies that have successfully implemented Six Sigma have one Black Belt for every 100 employees and one Master Black Belt for every 100 Black Belts. This will vary according to the size of the company and the number of projects regularly undertaken. At GE, black belt projects typically save

$250

,000 or more and green belt projects frequently yield savings in the

0,000

to $75,000 range.

In Six Sigma all employees receive training in the Six Sigma breakthrough strategy, statistical tools, and quality-improvement techniques. Employees are trained to participate on Six Sigma project teams. Because quality is considered to be the responsibility of every employee, every employee must be involved in, motivated by. and knowledgeable about Six Sigma.

DESIGN FOR SIX SIGMA

An important element of the Six Sigma system is
Design for Six Sigma (DFSS)
, a systematic methodology for designing products and processes that meet customer expectations and can be produced at Six Sigma quality levels. It follows the same basic approach as the breakthrough strategy with Master Black Belts, Black Belts, and Green Belts and makes extensive use of statistical tools and design techniques, training, and measurement. However, it employs this strategy earlier, up front in the design phase and developmental stages. This is a more effective and less expensive way to achieve the Six Sigma goal than fixing problems after the product or process is already developed and in place.

Design for Six Sigma (DFSS):

a systematic approach to designing products and processes that will achieve Six Sigma.

LEAN SIX SIGMA

A recent trend in quality management is

Lean Six Sigma

(also known as Lean Sigma), that integrates Six Sigma and “lean systems.” Lean systemsns the subject of Chapter 16 so we do not offer a detailed presentation of it at this point; rather we will discuss lean systems in general terms and how it relates to Six Sigma.

Lean Six Sigma:

integrating Six Sigma and lean systems.

Figure 2.10 Six Sigma Tools

Lean is a systematic method for reducing the complexity of a process and making it more efficient by identifying and eliminating sources of waste in a process (such as materials, labor, and time) that hinder flow. Lean basically seeks to optimize process flows through the organization in order to create more value for the customer with less work; i.e., get the product through the process faster. The lean process management philosophy was derived mainly from the Toyota Production System (including push and pull production, JIT and kanbans; see Chapter 16) that has been very effective in manufacturing. As in the case of TPS. lean is basically a more sophisticated extension of earlier efforts to achieve efficiency (i.e., speed) in a manufacturing process by OM pioneers like Henry Ford and Frederick R Taylor.

The lean approach to process improvement includes five steps. First it is determined what creates value for the customer, i.e., quality from the customer’s perspective discussed earlier in this chapter. Second, the sequence of activities (in the process) that create value, called the “value stream.” is identified, and those activities that do not add value are eliminated from the production process. Third, waste (such as inventory or long process times) along the value stream is removed through process improvements. Fourth, the process is made responsive to the customer’s needs: i.e., making the product or service available when the customer needs it. Finally, lean continually repeats the attempt to remove waste (non-value activity) and improve flow; it seeks perfection. As such, lean is more of a philosophical approach to continuous improvement by eliminating waste throughout the organization everywhere along the value stream by involving everyone in the organization.

Lean Six Sigma attempts to combine the best features of lean and Six Sigma. As we have discussed. Six Sigma is a disciplined and very organized approach for improving processes and preventing defects. It employs a specific program (DMAIC) to identify and eliminate waste and achieve perfection (no defects). By focusing on reducing and controlling variation in targeted processes in an organization (via projects), Six Sigma improves the organization’s performance. Through process improvement methods lean attempts to eliminate waste and accelerate process efficiency and flow times, thus increasing value to the customer. Lean improvements cause products to flow through processes faster while Six Sigma improves quality and prevents defects by reducing variation through individual projects. Six Sigma identifies the key factors in the performance of a process and sets them at their best level. Lean reduces the complexity of processes everywhere by eliminating waste that can slow down process flow. Lean focuses on what should not be done in a process and removes it; Six Sigma considers what should be done and how to get it right for all time.

The common link between the two is that they both seek to improve processes and provide value to the customer; however they go about it in different ways. The proponents of Lean Six Sigma believe the two approaches complement each other, and that combining them can result in greater benefits than implementing them separately. However, others consider lean and Six Sigma to be mostly incompatible; Six Sigma is considered to be more of a management tool (i.e., a program), whereas lean is a philosophical approach to process improvement that, like the Toyota Production System, is most effective in a mass manufacturing setting.

THE BOTTOM LINE—PROFITABILITY

The criterion for selecting Six Sigma projects by executives is typically based on the financial impact of the improvement expected from the project—how it will affect the bottom line. This focus on profitability for initiating quality improvement projects is one of the factors that distinguishes Six Sigma from TQM.

In Quality Is Free, Philip Crosby states that, “Quality is not only free, it is an honest-to-every-thing profit maker.” Gary L. Tooker, former CEO and vice chairman of Motorola, in response to the question, “Is there a link between quality and profitability?” responded that “We’ve saved several billion dollars over the last year because of our focus on quality improvement and the Six Sigma initiative …. there is no doubt about the fact that it has enhanced our bottom line.”

This is only the tip of a mountain of conclusive evidence that quality improvement and profitability are closely related. As quality improves, the costs associated with poor quality decline. Quality improvements result in increased productivity. As the quality of a company’s products or services improve, it becomes more competitive and its market share increases. Customers’ perception of a company’s products as being of high quality and its competitive posture enables the company to charge higher prices. Taken together, these things result in higher profitability.

Example 2.1 describes a scenario that illustrates that impact of profitability that can result from a Six Sigma project.

Example 2.1 The Impact of Six Sigma on

Profit

The Medtek Company produces parts for an electronic bed tracking system (BTS) it sells to medical suppliers and hospitals. It contracted for and sold 1,000 units of one of its products during the past quarter for $1,000 each resulting in total sales of

$1,000,000

. During the quarter the company incurred variable costs (e.g., direct labor, materials and energy) of $

600,000

, thus the unit variable cost was

$60

0. The company also incurred fixed costs of $

350

,000

(for items such as plant and equipment, and management salaries) during the quarter. This resulted in a (before-tax) profit of $50,000, as shown in the following income statement:

Sales

$1,000,000

Variable cost

600,000

Fixed cost

350,000
Profit
$50,000

However, now let’s consider another factor—the company currently operates with a 10% defects rate and the defective products cannot be reworked. Since the company sold 1,000 products it actually had to produce 1,111 units (i.e., 1,000/0.90 = 1,111), or 111 extra units to compensate for the scrapped units. The variable cost includes this cost of making scrap so the unit variable cost is really $540.05 (i.e.,

$600,000

/1,111 = $540.05). The company has paid a “quality tax” (sometimes called the “hidden factory”) of $59,946 (i.e., 111 scrap units × $540.05 per unit = $59,946).

Now let’s assume that the company implements a successful Six Sigma improvement project and it achieves a defect level of 3.4 DPMO, or virtually zero defects. The elimination of defects will (at a minimum) erase the variable costs consumed by making those 111 scrap units. The effect of the elimination of this “quality tax” is shown in the following revised income statement:

Sales
$1,000,000
Variable costs

540,054

Fixed costs
350,000
Profit

$109,946

The company’s profit has more than doubled! An approximate 10% reduction in variable costs because of Six Sigma has resulted in a 120% increase in profit. And, the company has actually increased its capacity to 1,111 units without spending more on plant and equipment.

Next assume that the company spent, $120,000 on the Six Sigma project to eliminate defects. If the project was completed in one quarter and the company expects to benefit from the project for 3 years, or 12 quarters, the company should add

$10,000

to fixed costs on its income statement:

Sales
$1,000,000
Variable costs
540,054
Fixed costs

360,000

Profit

$99,946

The increase in profit is

9,946 (i.e., $99,946 − 50,000 = $49,946), which is still almost double the profit before Six Sigma. Ignoring interest rates this represents about a 33% return on the company’s investment in the Six Sigma project:

Source: S. Bisgaard and J. Freiesleben, “Six Sigma and the Bottom Line,” Quality Progress 39 (9: September 2004), pp. 57-62.

THE COST OF QUALITY

According to legendary quality guru Armand Feigenbaum, “quality costs are the foundation for quality systems economics.” Quality costs have traditionally served as the basis for evaluating investments in quality programs. The costs of quality are those incurred to achieve good quality and to satisfy the customer, as well as costs incurred when quality fails to satisfy the customer. Thus, quality costs fall into two categories: the cost of achieving good quality, also known as the cost of quality assurance, and the cost associated with poor-quality products, also referred to as the cost of not conforming to specifications.

Two recent trends are driving a renewed interest within organizations for measuring quality costs. First, the most recent version of ISO 9000 emphasizes measurements and requires that quality improvement be quantifiably demonstrated. Maintaining quality cost data can provide ISO auditors with evidence of improvement in an organization applying for ISO certification. Second, the popularity and proliferation of Six Sigma, which emphasizes the financial impact of projects as a measure of improvement, has created a need in organizations for quality cost data in order to determine project success.

THE COST OF ACHIEVING GOOD QUALITY

The costs of a quality management program are prevention costs and appraisal costs.

Prevention

costs
are the costs of trying to prevent poor-quality products from reaching the customer. Prevention reflects the quality philosophy of “do it right the first time,” the goal of a quality management program. Examples of prevention costs include:

Prevention costs:

costs incurred during product design.

Quality planning costs: The costs of developing and implementing the quality management program.

Product-design costs: The costs of designing products with quality characteristics.

Process costs: The costs expended to make sure the productive process conforms to quality specifications.

Training costs: The costs of developing and putting on quality training programs for employees and management.

Information costs: The costs of acquiring and maintaining (typically on computers) data related to quality, and the development and analysis of reports on quality performance.

The costs of preventing poor quality include planning, design, process, training, and information costs.

Appraisal

costs
are the costs of measuring, testing, and analyzing materials, parts, products, and the productive process to ensure that product-quality specifications are being met. Examples of appraisal costs include:

Appraisal costs:

costs of measuring, testing, and analyzing.

Inspection and testing: The costs of testing and inspecting materials, parts, and the product at various stages and at the end of the process.

Test equipment costs: The costs of maintaining equipment used in testing the quality characteristics of products.

Operator costs: The costs of the time spent by operators to gather data for testing product quality, to make equipment adjustments to maintain quality, and to stop work to assess quality.

Costs of measuring quality include inspection, testing, equipment, and operator costs.

Appraisal costs tend to be higher in a service organization than in a manufacturing company and, therefore, are a greater proportion of total quality costs. Quality in services is related primarily to the interaction between an employee and a customer, which makes the cost of appraising quality more difficult. Quality appraisal in a manufacturing operation can take place almost exclusively in-house; appraisal of service quality usually requires customer interviews, surveys, questionnaires, and the like.

THE COST OF POOR QUALITY

The cost of poor quality (COPQ) is the difference between what it actually costs to produce a product or deliver a service and what it would cost if there were no defects. Most companies find that defects, rework and other unnecessary activities related to quality problems significantly inflate costs; estimates range as high as 20 to 30% of total revenues. This is generally the largest quality cost category in a company, frequently accounting for 70 to 90% of total quality costs. This is also where the greatest cost improvement is possible.

The cost of poor quality can be categorized as internal failure costs or external failure costs.

Internal failure

costs
are incurred when poor-quality products are discovered before they are delivered to the customer. Examples of internal failure costs include:

Internal failure costs:

include scrap, rework, process failure, downtime, and price reductions.

Scrap costs: The costs of poor-quality products that must be discarded, including labor, material, and indirect costs.

Rework costs: The costs of fixing defective products to conform to quality specifications.

Process failure costs: The costs of determining why the production process is producing poor-quality products.

Process downtime costs: The costs of shutting down the productive process to fix the problem.

Price-downgrading costs: The costs of discounting poor-quality products—that is, selling products as “seconds.”

External failure

costs
are incurred after the customer has received a poor-quality product and are primarily related to customer service. Examples of external failure costs include:

External failure costs:

include comptaints, returns, warranty claims, liability, and lost sales.

Customer complaint costs: The costs of investigating and satisfactorily responding to a customer complaint resulting from a poor-quality product.

Product return costs: The costs of handling and replacing poor-quality products returned by the customer. In the United States it is estimated that product returns reduce company profitability by an average of 4% annually.

Warranty claims costs: The costs of complying with product warranties.

Product liability costs: The litigation costs resulting from product liability and customer injury.

Lost sales costs: The costs incurred because customers are dissatisfied with poor-quality products and do not make additional purchases.

Internal failure costs tend to be low for a service, whereas external failure costs can be quite high. A service organization has little opportunity to examine and correct a defective internal process, usually an employee-customer interaction, before it actually happens. At that point it becomes an external failure. External failures typically result in an increase in service time or inconvenience for the customer. Examples of external failures include a customer waiting too long to place a catalogue phone order; a catalogue order that arrives with the wrong item, requiring the customer to repackage and send it back; an error in a charge card billing statement, requiring the customer to make phone calls or write letters to correct it; sending a customer’s orders or statements to the wrong address; or an overnight mail package that does not arrive overnight.

MEASURING AND REPORTING QUALITY COSTS

Collecting data on quality costs can be difficult. The costs of lost sales, of responding to customer complaints, of process downtime, of operator testing, of quality information, and of quality planning and product design are all costs that may be difficult to measure. These costs must be estimated by management. Training costs, inspection and testing costs, scrap costs, the cost of product downgrading, product return costs, warranty claims, and liability costs can usually be measured. Many of these costs are collected as part of normal accounting procedures.

Management wants quality costs reported in a manner that can be easily interpreted and is meaningful. One format for reporting quality costs is with

index numbers

, or indices. Index numbers are ratios that measure quality costs relative to some base value, such as the ratio of quality costs to total sales revenue or the ratio of quality costs to units of final product. These index numbers are used to compare quality management efforts between time periods or between departments or functions. Index numbers themselves do not provide very much information about the effectiveness of a quality management program. They usually will not show directly that a company is producing good- or poor-quality products. These measures are informative only when they are compared to some standard or other index. Some common index measures are:

Index numbers:

ratios that measure quality costs against a base value.

Labor index:
The ratio of quality cost to direct labor hours; it has the advantage of being easily computed (from accounting records) and easily understood, but it is not always effective for long-term comparative analysis when technological advances reduce labor usage.

Cost index:
The ratio of quality cost to manufacturing cost (direct and indirect cost); it is easy to compute from accounting records and is not affected by technological change.

Sales index:
The ratio of quality cost to sales; it is easily computed, but it can be distorted by changes in selling price and costs.

Production index:
The ratio of quality cost to units of final product; it is easy to compute from accounting records but is not effective if a number of different products exist.

Labor index:

the ratio of quality cost to labor hours.

Cost index:

the ratio of quality cost to manufacturing cost.

Sales index:

the ratio of quality cost to sales.

Production index:

the ratio of quality cost to units of final product.

Example 2.2 illustrates several of these index numbers.

Example 2.2 An Evaluation of Quality Costs and Quality Index Numbers

The H&S Motor Company produces small motors (e.g., 3 hp) for use in lawnmowers and garden equipment. The company instituted a quality management program in 2006 and has recorded the following quality cost data and accounting measures for four years.

Year

2006

2007

2008

2009

Quality Costs

Prevention

$27,000

41,500

74,600

112,300

Appraisal

155,000

122,500

113,400

107,000

Internal failure

386,400

469,200

347,800

219,100

External failure

242,000

196,000

103,500

106,000

Total

10,400

829,200

9,300

544,400

Accounting Measures

Sales

$4,360,000

4,450,000

5,050,000

5,190,000

Manufacturing

costs

1,760,000

1,810,000

1,880,000

1,890,000

The company wants to assess its quality management program and develop quality index numbers using sales and manufacturing cost bases for the four-year period.

Solution

The H&S Company experienced many of the typical outcomes when its quality management program was instituted. Approximately

78%

of H&S’s total quality costs are a result of internal and external failures, not unlike many companies. Failure costs frequently contribute 50 to 90% of overall quality costs. The typical reaction to high failure costs is to increase product monitoring and inspection to eliminate poor-quality products, resulting in high appraisal costs. This appeared to be the strategy employed by H&S when its quality management program was initiated in 2006. In 2007, H&S was able to identify more defective items, resulting in an apparent increase in internal failure costs and lower external failure costs (as fewer defective products reached the customer).

During 2006 and 2007, prevention costs were modest. However, prevention is critical in reducing both internal and external failures. By instituting quality training programs, redesigning the production process, and planning how to build in product quality, companies are able to reduce poor-quality products within the production process and prevent them from reaching the customer. This was the case at H&S, because prevention costs increased by more than 300% during the four-year period. Since fewer poor-quality products are being made, less monitoring and inspection is necessary, and appraisal costs thus decline. Internal and external failure costs are also reduced because of a reduction in defective products. In general, an increase in expenditures for prevention will result in a decrease in all other quality-cost categories. It is also not uncommon for a quality management program to isolate one or two specific quality problems that, when prevented, have a large impact on overall quality cost reduction. Quality problems are not usually evenly distributed throughout the product process; a few isolated problems tend to result in the majority of poor-quality products.

The H&S Company also desired to develop index numbers using quality costs as a proportion of sales and manufacturing costs, generally two of the more popular quality indexes. The general formula for these index numbers is

For example, the index number for 2006 sales is

The quality index numbers for sales and manufacturing costs for the four-year period are given in the following table.

Year

Quality Sales Index

Quality Manufacturing Cost Index

2006

18.58

46.04

2007

18.63

45.18

2008

12.66

34.00

2009

10.49

28.80

These index numbers alone provide little insight into the effectiveness of the quality management program; however, as a standard to make comparisons over time they can be useful. The H&S Company quality index numbers reflect dramatically improved quality during the four-year period. Quality costs as a proportion of both sales and manufacturing costs improved significantly. Quality index numbers do not provide information that will enable the company to diagnose and correct quality problems in the production process. They are useful in showing trends in product quality over time and reflecting the impact of product quality relative to accounting measures with which managers are usually familiar.

THE QUALITY-COST RELATIONSHIP

In Example 2.2 we showed that when the sum of prevention and appraisal costs increased, internal and external failure costs decreased. Recall that prevention and appraisal costs are the costs of achieving good quality, and internal and external failure costs are the costs of poor quality. In general, when the cost of achieving good quality increases, the cost of poor quality declines.

Philip Crosby’s fourth absolute from his 1984 book Quality Without Tears, explains that the dollar cost of quality is the difference between the price of nonconformance, the cost of doing things wrong (i.e., the cost of poor quality), and the price of conformance, the cost of doing things right (i.e., the cost of achieving good quality). He estimates that the cost of doing things wrong can account for 20 to 35% of revenues, while the cost of doing things right is typically 3 to 4%. As such, managers should determine where the cost of quality is occurring and find out what causes it.

The cost of quality is the difference between the price of nonconformance and conformance.

Companies committed to quality improvement know that the increase in sales and market share resulting from increased customer satisfaction offsets the costs of achieving good quality. Furthermore, as a company focuses on good quality, the cost of achieving good quality will be less because of the improvements in technologies and processes that will result from the quality improvement effort. These companies are frequently the ones that seek to achieve zero defects, the goal of Six Sigma.

The Japanese first recognized that the costs of poor quality had been traditionally underestimated. These costs did not take into account the customer losses that can be attributed to a reputation for poor quality. The Japanese viewed the cost associated with a reputation for poor quality to be quite high. A General Accounting Office report on companies that have been Baldrige Quality Award finalists has shown that corporate wide quality improvement programs result in higher worker motivation, improved employee relations, increased productivity, higher customer satisfaction, and increased market share and profitability.

THE EFFECT OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT ON

PRODUCTIVITY

In the previous section we saw how an effective quality management program can help to reduce quality-related costs and improve market share and profitability. Quality management can also improve productivity—the number of units produced from available resources.

PRODUCTIVITY

Productivity
is a measure of a company’s effectiveness in converting inputs into outputs. It is broadly defined as

Productivity:

the ratio of output to input.

An output is the final product from a service or production process, such as an automobile, a hamburger, a sale, or a catalogue order. Inputs are the parts, material, labor, capital, and so on that go into the productive process. Productivity measures, depending on the outputs and inputs used, are labor productivity (output per labor-hour) and machine productivity (output per machine-hour).

Quality impact on productivity:

Few

er defects increase output and quality improvement reduces inputs.

Improving quality by reducing defects will increase good output and reduce inputs. In fact, virtually all aspects of quality improvement have a favorable impact on different measures of productivity. Improving product design and production processes, improving the quality of materials and parts, and improving job designs and work activity will all increase productivity.

MEASURING PRODUCT YIELD AND PRODUCTIVITY

Product

yield

is a measure of output used as an indicator of productivity. It can be computed for the entire production process (or for one stage in the process) as follows:

Yield:

a measure of productivity.

where

I = planned number units of product started in the production process

% G = percentage of good units produced

% R = percentage of defective units that are successfully reworked

Improved quality increases product yield.

In this formula, yield is the sum of the percentage of products started in the process (or at a stage) that will turn out to be good quality plus the percentage of the defective (rejected) products that are reworked. Any increase in the percentage of good products through improved quality will increase product yield.

Example 2.3 Computing Product Yield

The H&S Motor Company starts production for a particular type of motor with a steel motor housing. The production process begins with 100 motors each day. The percentage of good motors produced each day averages 80% and the percentage of poor-quality motors that can be reworked is 50%. The company wants to know the daily product yield and the effect on productivity if the daily percentage of good-quality motors is increased to 90%.

Solution

If product quality is increased to 90% good motors, the yield will be

A 10 percentage-point increase in quality products results in a 5.5% increase in productivity output.

Now we will expand our discussion of productivity to include product manufacturing cost. The manufacturing cost per (good) product is computed by dividing the sum of total direct manufacturing cost and total cost for all reworked units by the yield, as follows:

where

Kd = direct manufacturing cost per unit

I = input

Kr = rework cost per unit

R = reworked units

Y = yield

Example 2.4 Computing Product Cost per Unit

The H&S Motor Company has a direct manufacturing cost per unit of $30, and motors that are of inferior quality can be reworked for $12 per unit. From Example 2.3, 100 motors are produced daily, 80% (on average) are of good quality and 20% are defective. Of the defective motors, half can be reworked to yield good-quality products. Through its quality management program, the company has discovered a problem in its production process that, when corrected (at a minimum cost), will increase the good-quality products to 90%. The company wants to assess the impact on the direct cost per unit of improvement in product quality.

Solution

The original manufacturing cost per motor is

The manufacturing cost per motor with the quality improvement is

The improvement in the production process as a result of the quality management program will result in a decrease of $2.46 per unit, or 7.1%, in direct manufacturing cost per unit as well as a 5.5% increase in product yield (computed in Example 2.3), with a minimal investment in labor, plant, or equipment.

In Examples 2.3 and 2.4 we determined productivity measures for a single production process. However, it is more likely that product quality would be monitored throughout the production process at various stages. Each stage would result in a portion of good-quality, “work-in-process” products. For a production process with n stages, the yield, Y (without reworking), is

where

I = input of items to the production process that will result in finished products

gi = good-quality, work-in-process products at stage i

Example 2.5 Computing Product Yield for a Multistage Process

At the H&S Motor Company, motors are produced in a four-stage process. Motors are inspected following each stage, with percentage yields (on average) of good-quality, work-in-process units as follows.

Stage

Average Percentage Good Quality

0.93

0.95

0.97

0.92

The company wants to know the daily product yield for product input of 100 units per day. Furthermore, it would like to know how many input units it would have to start with each day to result in a final daily yield of 100 good-quality units.

Solution

Thus, the production process has a daily good-quality product yield of 78.8 motors.

To determine the product input that would be required to achieve a product yield of 100 motors, I is treated as a decision variable when Y equals 100:

To achieve output of 100 good-quality motors, the production process must start with approximately 127 motors.

THE QUALITY-PRODUCTIVITY RATIO

Another measure of the effect of quality on productivity combines the concepts of quality index numbers and product yield. Called the

quality-productivity ratio (QPR)

,3 it is computed as follows:

Quality-productivity ratio (QPR):

a productivity index that includes productivity and quality costs.

This is actually a quality index number that includes productivity and quality costs. The QPR increases if either processing cost or rework costs or both decrease. It increases if more good-quality units are produced relative to total product input (i.e., the number of units that begin the production process).

Example 2.6 Computing the Quality Productivity Ratio (QPR)

The H&S Motor Company produces small motors at a processing cost of $30 per unit. Defective motors can be reworked at a cost of $12 each. The company produces 100 motors per day and averages 80% good-quality motors, resulting in 20% defects, 50% of which can be reworked prior to shipping to customers. The company wants to examine the effects of (1) increasing the production rate to 200 motors per day; (2) reducing the processing cost to $26 and the rework cost to $10; (3) increasing, through quality improvement, the product yield of good-quality products to 95%; and (4) the combination of 2 and 3.

Solution

The QPR for the base case is computed as follows.

Case 1. Increase input to production capacity of 200 units.

Increasing production capacity alone has no effect on the QPR; it remains the same as the base case.

Case. 2. Reduce processing cost to $26 and rework cost to $10.

These cost decreases caused the QPR to increase.

Case 3. Increase initial good-quality units to 95 percent.

Again, the QPR increases as product quality improves.

Case 4. Decrease costs and increase initial good-quality units.

The largest increase in the QPR results from decreasing costs and increasing initial good-quality product through improved quality.

3 E. E. Adam, J. E. Hershauer, and W. A. Ruch, Productivity and Quality: Measurement as a Basis of Improvement, 2nd ed. (Columbia, MO: Research Center, College of Business and Public Administration, University of Missouri, 1986).

QUALITY AWARDS

The Baldrige Award,

Deming Prize

, and other award competitions have become valuable and coveted prizes to U.S. companies eager to benefit from the aura and reputation for quality that awaits the winners, and the decreased costs and increased profits that award participants and winners have experienced. They have also provided widely used sets of guidelines to help companies implement an effective quality management system (QMS), and winners provide quality standards, or “benchmarks,” for other companies to emulate.

THE MALCOLM BALDRIGE AWARD

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is given annually to one or two companies in each of five categories: manufacturing, services, small businesses (with less than 500 full-time employees), health care, and education. It was created by law in 1987 (named after former Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige, who died in 1987) to (1) stimulate U.S. companies to improve quality, (2) establish criteria for businesses to use to evaluate their individual quality-improvement efforts, (3) set as examples those companies that were successful in improving quality, and (4) help other U.S. organizations learn how to manage quality by disseminating information about the award winners’ programs.

The Baldrige Award was created in 1987 to stimulate growth of quality management in the United States.

The award criteria focus on the soundness of the approach to quality improvement, the overall quality management program as it is implemented throughout the organization, and customer satisfaction. The seven major categories of criteria by which companies are examined are leadership, information and analysis, strategic planning, human resource focus, process management, business results, and customer and market focus.

• Inernet Exercises

The Baldrige Award has had a major influence on U.S. companies, thousands of which request applications from the government each year to obtain a copy of the award guidelines and criteria for internal use in establishing a quality management system. Many companies have made the Baldrige criteria for quality their own, and have also demanded that their suppliers submit applications for the Baldrige Quality Award. Since its inception in 1987, it has been estimated that the economic benefits of the Baldrige award to the U.S. economy is almost $30 billion. Companies that have won the Baldrige Quality Award and have become known as leaders in quality include Motorola, Xerox, Cadillac. Milliken, Federal Express, Ritz Carlton, and IBM. These and other Baldrige Award winners have become models or benchmarks for other companies to emulate in establishing their own quality management systems.

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is given each year to companies in five categories-manufacturing, services, small businesses, health care and education. The award criteria and guidelines have become a template for a successful quality management system.

Table 2.3 Selected National and International Qaulity Awards

Award

Organization

Description

Malcolm Baldrige Award
National Institute of Standards and Technology

Small business, manufacturing, service, education, and health care

Deming Medal

American Society for Quality

Leader in quality

J.D. Powers Awards

J.D. Powers Associates

Customer satisfaction in a variety of industries

George M. Low Trophy

NASA

NASA suppliers

President’s Quality Award

U. S. Office of Personnel Management

Federal government organizations

IIE Award for Excellence in Productivity improvement

Institute of Industrial Engineers

Large and small manufacturing companies and large and small service companies

Distinguished Service Medal

American Society for Quality

Gold medal for individual distinction

International Asia Pacific Award

Asia Pacific Quality Organization

Winners of national quality awards

Australian Business Excellence Awards

Standards Australia International Limited

Excellence medal, gold, silver, and bronze awards open to Australian companies

Canada Awards for Excellence

National Quality Institute

Quality award and healthy workplace award

European Quality Awards

European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM)

European organizations demonstrating excellence in quality

German National Quality Award

German Society for Quality and Association of German Engineers

EFQM criteria for German companies

Hong Kong Award for Industry

Quality Trade and Industry Dept.

Companies based and operating in Hong Kong

Rajiv Ghandi National Award

Bureau of Indian Standards

Indian manufacturing and service organizations

Japan Quality Award

Japanese Quality Award Committee

Six companies in manufacturing, service, and small/medium businesses

Deming Prize

Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers

Application prize, individual prize, and quality-control award for business units

Japan Quality Medal

Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers

Deming application prize companies

Swiss Quality Award

Swiss Association for Promotion of Quality

EFQM criteria for Switzerland

UK Quality Award for Business Excellence

British Quality Foundation

EFQM criteria for United Kingdom

OTHER AWARDS FOR QUALITY

The creation and subsequent success of the Baldrige Award has spawned a proliferation of national, international, government, industry, state, and individual quality awards. Table 2.3 provides information about selected national and international quality awards. (Internet addresses for these awards can be found on the Chapter 2 Web links page on the text Web site.) The American Society for Quality (ASQ) sponsors a number of national individual awards, including, among others, the Armand V. Feigenbaum Medal, the Deming Medal, the E. Jack Lancaster Medal, the Edwards Medal, the Shewart Medal, and the Ishikawa Medal.

The President’s Quality Award was established in 1989 to recognize federal government organizations that improve their overall performance and capabilities, demonstrate mature approaches to quality throughout the organization, and demonstrate a sustained trend in high-quality products and services that result in effective use of taxpayer dollars.

Prominent international awards include the European Quality Award, the Canadian Quality Award, the Australian Business Excellence Award, and the Deming Prize from Japan. The countries from which these four awards are administered plus the United States account for approximately 75% of the world’s gross national product. The European Quality Award, established in 1991 to recognize outstanding businesses in 16 European countries, is similar in criteria and scope to the Baldrige Award, as are most of the other international awards.

• Inernet Exercises

ALONG THE SUPPLY CHAIN Baldrige National Quality Award Winners: What It Takes

Sunny Fresh Foods in Monticello, Minnesota, is a two-time winner of the Baldrige Award, having won in 1999 and 2005. It provides more than 160 egg-based products to over 2,000 customers including restaurants, business and institutional food services, schools, and the military. It meets 75% of the product needs of four of the country’s top users of processed egg products. Since its receipt of its first Baldrige Award in 1999 its revenues have increased 93% and its market share has increased while its competitors’ market share has decreased 10. On-time deliveries were at 99.8% in 2005, customer complaints are well below the Six Sigma level, and customer satisfaction remained near 100% from 2001 to 2005.

Sharp HealthCare, a 2007 recipient of the Baldrige Award, is San Diego County’s largest health-care delivery system and annually serves more than 27% of the county’s 3 million plus residents. In 2001 it began its quality improvement initiative called “The Sharp Experience” with goals of being the best place for employees to work, the best place for physicians to practice, and the best place for patients to receive care. Since then its net revenues have increased by 56% (to almost $2 billion), it has gained more than four percentage points in market share, the heart attack mortality incidence at its three hospitals has been below national benchmarks, San Diego consumers have named Sharp as the region’s best health-care provider, in-patient satisfaction with the nursing staff has increased 300%, employee satisfaction has been rated as “best in class” by national standards, and Sharp’s employee turnover rate is consistently better than the state benchmark.

Park Place Lexus, a 2005 Baldrige Award winner in Plano and Grapevine, Texas, which sells and services new and pre-owned Lexus vehicles, is the highest rated Lexus dealership in the nation with a New Car Client Satisfaction Index of 99.8%. Customer satisfaction among its pre-owned vehicle clients increased form 96% in 2000 to 98% in 2004, while the company’s gross profit percentage increased by

51.3

%. Customer satisfaction with the service department approaches 98%. Park Place Lexus uses a “house of quality” to depict its organizational culture with a foundation mission “to provide an extraordinary automotive purchase and ownership experience.”

Iredell-Statesville Schools, a 2008 Baldrige Award recipient, is a K-12 public school system in western North Carolina that serves 21,000 students. Despite having one of the lowest budgets ($160 million) and per student expenditure rates (107 out of 115 school districts) in the state, it consistently outperforms comparative districts at state and national levels across numerous measures. Its average SAT score ranked seventh in the state and exceeded the national averages; it achieved a 91% proficiency score on the state reading assessment, and reduced the gap between African-American children and all students from 23 to 12.3%; it increased high school graduation rates from 61 to 81%; achieved higher attendance rates, lower dropout rates, and lower teacher turnover rates than comparable North Carolina school districts; it increased the number of “highly qualified” teachers from 84 to 97%; and in 2008 was ranked ninth among 115 school districts in North Carolina in student achievement.

Visit the Baldrige Award Web site at www.quality.nist.gov and read more about these and other award recipients, and identify and discuss the common quality-motivated characteristics they share.

Source: National Quality Program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology Web site, http://www.quality.nist.gov.
ISO 9000

• Inernet Exercises

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO), headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, has as its members the national standards organizations for more than 157 countries. The ISO member for the United States is the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). The purpose of ISO is to facilitate global consensus agreements on international quality standards. It has resulted in a system for certifying suppliers to make sure they meet internationally accepted standards for quality management. It is a nongovernment organization and is not a part of the United Nations.

During the 1970s it was generally acknowledged that the word quality had different meanings within and among industries and countries and around the world. In 1979 the ISO member representing the United Kingdom, the British Standard Institute (BSI), recognizing the need for standardization for quality management and assurance, submitted a formal proposal to ISO to develop international standards for quality assurance techniques and practices. Using standards that already existed in the United Kingdom and Canada as a basis, ISO established generic quality standards, primarily for manufacturing firms, that could be used worldwide.

ISO is not an acronym for the International Organisation for Standardization; it is a word, “ISO,” derived from the Greek “ISO,” meaning “equal.”

ISO 9000 is a set of procedures and policies for the international quality certification of suppliers.

STANDARDS

Standards are documented agreements that include technical specifications or other precise criteria to be used consistently as rules, guidelines, or definitions to ensure that materials, products processes, and services are fit for their purpose. For example, the format for credit cards and phone cards was derived from ISO standards that specify such physical features as the cards’ thickness so that they can be used worldwide. Standards, in general, increase the reliability and effectiveness of goods and services used around the world and as a result make life easier for everyone.

The ISO 9000 series of quality management standards, guidelines, and technical reports was first published in 1978, and it is reviewed at least every five years. It was most recently revised and updated in 2008. ISO 9000:2008, Quality Management Systems—Fundamentals and Vocabulary, is the starting point for understanding the standards. It defines the fundamental terms and definitions used in the ISO 9000 family of standards, guidelines, and technical reports. ISO 9001:2008, Quality Management Systems—Requirements, is the requirement standard a company uses to assess its ability to meet customer and applicable regulatory requirements in order to achieve customer satisfaction. ISO 9004:2008, Quality Management Systems—Guidelines for Performance Improvements, provides detailed guidance to a company for the continual improvement of its quality management system in order to achieve and sustain customer satisfaction. The ISO 9000 family includes 10 more published standards and guidelines; however, these three are the most widely used and applicable to the majority of companies.

CERTIFICATION

Many companies around the world require that companies they do business with (e.g., suppliers) have ISO 9001 certification. In that way, despite possible language, technology, and cultural differences, a company can be sure that the company it’s doing business with meets uniform standards—that is, they are “on the same page.” ISO 9001:2008 is the only standard in the ISO 9000 family that carries third-party certification (referred to as registration in the United States). A third-party company called a registrar is the only authorized entity that can award ISO 9001 certification. Registrars are accredited by an authoritative national body and are contracted by companies to evaluate their quality management system to see if it meets the ISO 9001 standards; if the company does, it is issued an ISO 9000 certification, which is recognized around the world. The worldwide total of ISO 9001 certifications at the end of 2004 was over 670,000 in 154 countries. This was a 35% increase over the total at the end of 2003.

ISO 9001:2008 primarily serves as a basis for benchmarking a company’s quality-management system. Quality management, in ISO terms, measures how effectively management determines the company’s overall quality policy, its objectives, and its responsibilities, as well as its quality policy implementation. A company has to fulfill all of the requirements in ISO 9001:2008 to be certified (except for activities and functions it does not perform at all). Customer satisfaction is an explicit requirement. Thus, to be certified a company must identify and review customer requirements, ensure that customer requirements are met, and be able to measure and monitor customer satisfaction. The company must also be able to show that measuring and monitoring customer satisfaction leads to corrective and preventive actions when nonconformance (to the standards) is found—that is, continual improvement. This type of analysis of customer satisfaction requires a large amount of data collection and processing.

IMPLICATIONS OF ISO 9000 FOR U.S. COMPANIES

Originally, ISO 9000 was adopted by the 12 countries of the European Community (EC)—Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The governments of the EC countries adopted ISO 9000 as a uniform quality standard for cross-border transactions within the EC and for international transactions. The EC has since evolved into the European Union (EU) with 25 member countries.

Thousands of businesses have improved their operations by fully implementing a quality system based on the international standards known as ISO 9001:2008. When a company has met all the requirements of the standards, a registrar will certify/register them. This status is represented by a certificate, such as this sample.

ALONG THE SUPPLY CHAIN ISO 9001 Certification at Monarcas Morelia

Monarcas Morelia (named for the Monarch butterfly) is a professional soccer team in the Mexican Football Federation First Division league, which consists of 19 professional teams. It is the first international-level club soccer team to achieve ISO 9001 certification. The team is owned by TV Azteca, a Spanish language television networks producer, which is owned by Grupo Salinas (GS), a $3.1 billion conglomerate created by Ricardo Salinas. Executives at TV Azteca and Grupo Salinas learned through the ISO certification process at TV Azteca and other GS subsidiaries that a quality management system (QMS) creates value and compels managers to seek continuous improvement and customer satisfaction. In 1998 Monarcas Morelia was at the bottom of the First Division and losing money. The philosophy of Ricardo Salinas was that every GS company must create value, and the football team was no exception. In 1999, eight months after it developed its QMS, Monarcas Morelia began earning a profit, in 2000 it won the Mexican Football Championship for the first time in team history, and in 2002 it finished in second place.

A necessary first step in developing a QMS was for Monarcas Morelia to define its customers, which was determined to be a large, diverse group including fans, investors, employees, visiting teams and their fans, the media, referees, sponsors, charities, and members of its youth development team. Basic Forces, and their families. The quality team led by team president, Alvaro Davila, focused on benchmarking to transform the team’s management and seek continual improvement—just as any business would. He visited teams in Argentina, Spain and Germany, and adopted their successful strategies for winning, promoting goodwill and earning profits. He arranged exhibition games and player exchange programs, including a contract with the Chicago Fire of the U.S. MLS. In order to keep the 30,000-seat Morelia. Mexico stadium (including seats, bathrooms, vending outlets and lighting fixtures) in top condition, and continually improve it, the team relied on the steps of the Japanese “gemba kaizen” process (where gemba means “where the action is” and kaizen means “continuous improvement”). The team also established a customer-friendly security system with guards trained to prevent violence and promote a family-friendly atmosphere.

Pick an “entertainment” service like a college or professional athletic team, a theater, an amusement park, etc., and discuss the ways it might benefit from a QMS.

Source: A. Tolumes, “Pitch Perfect,” Qualityworld 32 (1: January 2006), pp. 23-26.

Monarcas Morelia (shown in the yellow jersey with red stripes) went from last place in the Mexican Football Federation First Division league to champions in just two years after developing its QMS based on its ISO 9001 certification process.

Many overseas companies will not do business with a supplier unless it has ISO 9000 certification.

These EU countries and many others are specifically acknowledging that they prefer suppliers with ISO 9000 certification. To remain competitive in international markets. U.S. companies must comply with the standards in the ISO 9000 series. Some products in the EU, for example, are “regulated” to the extent that the products must be certified to be in ISO 9000 compliance by an EU-recognized accreditation registrar. Most of these products have health and safety considerations. However, companies discovered that to remain competitive and satisfy customer preferences, their products had to be in compliance with ISO 9000 requirements even if these products were not specifically regulated.

The United States exports more than

$20

0 billion annually to the EU market, much of it to France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Most of these exports are affected in some way by ISO 9000 standards.

Companies are also pressured within the United States to comply with ISO 9000 by more and more customers. For example, the U.S. Department of Defense, and specifically the Department of the Navy, as well as private companies like DuPont, 3M, and AT&T, adopted ISO 9000. They recognize the value of these standards for helping to ensure top-quality products and services and required that their suppliers comply with ISO 9000.

In the EC registration system, the third-party assessors of quality are referred to as notified bodies; that is, the 12 EC governments notify one another as to which organization in their country is the officially designated government-approved quality assessor. The notified bodies ultimately certify a company with a European Conformity (CE) mark. The CE mark must be on any product exported from the United States that is ISO 9000-regulated. It is illegal to sell a regulated product in a store in the EC without the CE mark. For a supplier in the United States to export regulated products to an EC country, it must be accredited by European registrars—notified bodies within the EC. However, more and more EC companies are requiring ISO 9000 certification for suppliers of products that fall in the unregulated categories, and eventually all products exported to the EC will probably require certification. It is also important that U.S. companies obtain accreditation with a notified body that has widespread positive recognition in the EC so that they will have broad access to markets in the EC.

The U.S. member of the ISO, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), designated the American Society for Quality (ASQ), as the sponsoring organization for ISO 9000 in the United States. ASQ and ANSI created the Registrar Accreditation Board (RAB) to act as an accrediter of third-party registrars in the United States.

ISO REGISTRARS

A registrar is an organization that conducts audits by individual auditors. Auditors are skilled in quality systems and the manufacturing and service environments in which an audit will be performed. The registrar develops an audit team of one or more auditors to evaluate a company’s quality program and then report back to the registrar. An organization that wants to become a registrar must be accredited by RAB. Once RAB accredits a registrar, the registrar can then authorize its registered suppliers to use the RAB certificate in advertising, indicating compliance with ISO 9000.

ISO certification, or registration as it is called in the United States, is accomplished by a registrar through a series of document reviews and facility visits and audits. The registrar’s auditors review a company’s procedures, processes, and operations to see if the company conforms to the ISO quality management system standards. The registrar looks at a variety of things, including the company’s administrative, design, and production processes; quality system documentation; personnel training records; management reviews; and internal audit processes. The registration process might typically include an initial document review that describes the company’s quality management system, followed by the development of an audit plan and then the audit itself. This is usually followed by semiannual or annual surveillance audits to make sure the quality system is being maintained. The registration process can take from several weeks up to a year, depending on how ready the company is for registration. A RAB accredited registrar does not “help” the company attain certification either by giving advice or consulting.

SUMMARY

In our discussion of quality management in this chapter, certain consistencies or commonalities have surfaced. The most important perspective of quality is the customer’s; products and services must be designed to meet customer expectations and needs for quality. A total commitment to quality is necessary throughout an organization for it to be successful in improving and managing product quality. This commitment must start at the top and filter down through all levels of the organization and across all areas and departments. Employees need to be active participants in the quality-improvement process and must feel a responsibility for quality. Employees must feel free to make suggestions to improve product quality, and a systematic procedure is necessary to involve workers and solicit their input. Improving product quality is cost-effective; the cost of poor quality greatly exceeds the cost of attaining good quality. Quality can be improved with the effective use of statistical quality-control methods. In fact, the use of statistical quality control has been a pervasive part of our discussions on quality management, and it has been identified as an important part of any quality-management program. In the following chapter we concentrate on statistical quality-control methods and principles.

Practice Quizzes

SUMMARY OF KEY FORMULAS

Quality Index Numbers

Product Yield

Manufacturing Cost per Product

Multistage Product Yield

Quality-Productivity Ratio

SUMMARY OF KEY TERMS

appraisal costs

costs of measuring, testing, and analyzing materials, parts, products, and the productive process to make sure they conform to design specifications.

benchmark

a level of quality achievement established by one company that other companies seek to achieve (i.e., a goal).

Black Belt

in a Six Sigma program, the leader of a quality improvement project; a full-time position.

breakthrough strategy

in Six Sigma, a five-step process for improvement projects: define, measure, analyze, improve, and control.

cause-and-effect diagram or fishbone diagram

a graphical description of the elements of a specific quality problem.

cause-and-effect matrix

a grid used to prioritize causes of quality problems.

champion

a member of top management who is responsible for project success in a Six Sigma program.

cost index

the ratio of quality cost to manufacturing cost.

design for Six Sigma (DFSS)

a systematic methodolgy to design products and processes that meet customer expectations and can be produced at Six Sigma quality levels.

external failure costs

costs of poor quality incurred after the product gets to the customer; that is, customer service, lost sales, and so on.

fitness for use

a measure of how well a product or service does what the consumer thinks it is supposed to do and wants it to do.

Green Belt

in a Six Sigma program, a project team member, a part-time position.

index numbers

ratios that measure quality costs relative to some base accounting values such as sales or product units.

internal failure costs

costs of poor-quality products discovered during the production process—that is, scrap, rework, and the like.

kaizen

involving everyone in the workplace, in a process of gradual, organized, and continuous improvement.

labor index

the ratio of quality cost to direct labor hours.

Lean Six Sigma

integrating Six Sigms and lean systems.

Master Black Belt

in a Six Sigma program, a teacher and mentor for Black Belts; a full-time position.

Pareto analysis

a method for identifying the causes of poor quality, which usually shows that most quality problems result from only a few causes.

participative problem solving

involving employees directly in the quality-management process to identify and solve problems.

partnering

a relationship between a company and its supplier based on mutual quality standards.

prevention costs

costs incurred during product design and manufacturing that prevent nonconformance to specifications.

process flowchart
a diagram of the steps in a job, operation, or process.

production index

the ratio of quality cost to final product units.

productivity

a measure of effectiveness in converting resources into products, generally computed as output divided by input.

quality circles

a small, voluntary group (team) of workers and supervisors formed to address quality problems in their area.

quality impact on productivity

fewer defects increase output and quality improvement reduces inputs.

quality management system (QMS)

a system to achieve customer satisfaction that complements other company systems.

quality of conformance

the degree to which the product or service meets the specifications required by design during the production process.

quality of design

the degree to which quality characteristics are designed into a product or service.

quality-productivity ratio (QPR)
a productivity index that includes productivity and quality costs.

sales index

the ratio of quality cost to sales.
Six Sigma

a measure of how much a given product or process deviates from perfection, or zero defects; the basis of a quality-improvement program.

Six Sigma process

includes four basic steps—align, mobilize, accelerate and govern.

total quality management (TQM)

the management of quality throughout the organization at all management levels and across all areas.

yield

a measure of productivity; the sum of good-quality and reworked units.

SOLVED

PROBLEMS

1. PRODUCT YIELD

A manufacturing company has a weekly product input of 1700 units. The average percentage of good-quality products is

83%

. Of the poor-quality products, 60% can be reworked and sold as good-quality products. Determine the weekly product yield and the product yield if the good-product quality is increased to 92%.

• Animated Demo Problem

SOLUTION

Step 1. Compute yield according to the following formula:

Step 2. Increase %G to 92%:

2. QUALITY—PRODUCTIVITY RATIO

A retail telephone catalogue company takes catalogue orders from customers and then sends the completed orders to the warehouses to be filled. An operator processes an average of 45 orders per day. The cost of processing an order is $1.15, and it costs $0.65 to correct an order that has been filled out incorrectly by the operator. An operator averages 7% bad orders per day, all of which are reworked prior to filling the customer order. Determine the quality-productivity ratio for an operator.

SOLUTION

Compute the quality-productivity ratio according to the following formulas:

QUESTIONS

2-1. How does the consumer’s perspective of quality differ from the producer’s?

2-2. Briefly describe the dimensions of quality, for which a consumer looks in a product, and apply them to a specific product.

2-3. How does quality of design differ from quality of conformance?

2-4. Define the two major categories of quality cost and how they relate to each other.

2-5. What is the difference between internal and external failure costs?

2-6. A defense contractor manufactures rifles for the military. The military has exacting quality standards that the contractor must meet. The military is very pleased with the quality of the products provided by the contractor and rarely has to return products or has reason for complaint. However, the contractor is experiencing extremely high quality-related costs. Speculate on the reasons for the contractor’s high quality-related costs.

2-7. Consider your school (university or college) as a production system in which the final product is a graduate. For this system:

a. Define quality from the producer’s and customer’s perspectives.

b. Develop a fitness-for-use description for final product quality.

c. Give examples of the cost of poor quality (internal and external failure costs) and the cost of quality assurance (prevention and appraisal) costs.

d. Describe how quality circles might be implemented in a university setting. Do you think they would be effective?

2-8. Discuss how a quality management program can affect productivity.

2-9. The Aurora Electronics Company has been receiving a lot of customer complaints and returns of a DVD player that it manufactures. When a DVD is pushed into the loading mechanism, it can stick inside and it is difficult to get the DVD out. Consumers will try to pull the DVD drawer out with their fingers or pry it out with an object such as a knife, pencil, or screwdriver, frequently damaging the DVD or hurting themselves. What are the different costs of poor quality and costs of quality assurance that might be associated with this quality problem?

2-10. What are the different quality characteristics you (as a consumer) would expect to find in the following three products: a DVD player, a pizza, running shoes?

2-11. AMERICARD, a national credit card company, has a toll-free, 24-hour customer service number. Describe the input for this system function and the final product. What quality-related costs might be associated with this function? What impact might a quality management program have on this area?

2-12. A number of quality management philosophies hold that prevention costs are the most critical quality-related costs. Explain the logic behind this premise.

2-13. Why is it important for companies to measure and report quality costs?

2-14. Describe the primary contribution to quality management of each of the following: W. E. Deming, Joseph Juran, Phillip Crosby, Armand Feigenbaum, and Kaoru Ishikawa.

2-15. Describe the impact that the creation of the Malcolm Baldrige Award has had on quality improvement in the United States.

2-16. Write a one- to two-page summary of an article from Quality Progress, about quality management in a company or organization.

2-17. More companies probably fail at implementing quality-management programs than succeed. Discuss the reasons why a quality-management program might fail.

2-18. Select a service company or organization and discuss the dimensions of quality on which a customer might evaluate it.

2-19. Select two competing service companies that you are familiar with or can visit, such as fast-food restaurants, banks, or retail stores, and compare how they interact with customers in terms of quality.

2-20. Develop a hypothetical quality-improvement program for the class in which you are using this textbook. Evaluate the class according to the dimensions of quality for a service. Include goals for quality improvement and ways to measure success.

2-21. Identify a company or organization from which you have received poor-quality products or services, describe the nature of the defects, and suggest ways in which you might improve quality.

2-22. Identify a company or organization from which you have received high-quality products and describe the characteristics that make them high-quality.

2-23. Explain why strategic planning might benefit from a TQM program.

2-24. Why has ISO 9000 become so important to U.S. firms that do business overseas?

2-25. Go to the Baldrige Award Web site, http://www.quality.nist.gov and research several companies that have won the Malcolm Baldrige Award. Describe any common characteristics that the quality-management programs in those companies have.

2-26. The discussion in this chapter has focused on the benefits of implementing a quality management program; however, many companies do not have such a program. Discuss the reasons why you think a company would not adopt a quality management program.

2-27. Access a Web site of a company that sells products to the general public on the Internet. Discuss the quality attributes of the site, and evaluate the quality of the Web site.

2-28. For an airline you have flown on list all of the quality “defects” you can recall. Discuss whether you think the airline exhibited overall good or poor quality. If it exhibited good quality, explain what made it so; if it exhibited poor quality, what actions do you think could be taken by the airline to improve quality?

2-29. Identify three Web sites that you think are poor quality and three that are good quality. What common characteristics are exhibited by the group of poor-quality sites? the group of good-quality sites? Compare the two groups.

2-30. The production and home delivery of a pizza is a relatively straightforward and simple process. Develop a fishbone diagram to identify potential defects and opportunities for poor quality in this process.

2-31. Most students live in a dormitory or apartment that they rent. Discuss whether this type of living accommodation is a product or service. Assess the quality of your living accommodation according to your previous response.

2-32. Develop a fishbone diagram for the possible causes of flight delays.

2-33. Observe a business with which you are familiar and interact with frequently, such as a restaurant or food service, a laundry service, your bank, or the college bookstore. Develop a Pareto chart that encompasses the major service defects of the business, identify the most significant service problems and suggest how quality could be improved.

2-34. County school buses are inspected every month for “defects.” In a recent monthly inspection, 27 worn or torn seats were found, 22 buses had dirty floors, there were 14 cases of exterior scratches and chipped paint, there were 8 cracked or broken windows, the engines on 4 buses had trouble starting or were not running smoothly, and 2 buses had faulty brakes. Develop a Pareto chart for the bus inspections and indicate the most significant quality-problem categories. What does this tell you about the limitations of applying Pareto chart analysis. How might these limitations be overcome in Pareto chart analysis?

2-35. Joseph Juran created a “quality spiral” showing that each element of the business process, each function, not just the end product, is important. Describe how each of the following business process areas might impact quality: marketing, engineering, purchasing/sourcing, human resources, and distribution.

2-36. Referring to Table 2.3, research the winner of an international quality award at one of the award Web sites and write a brief report.

2-37. Go to the Malcolm Baldrige Award Web site, www.quality.nist.gov, and write a brief report on one of the most recent years’ Baldrige Award winners similar to the “Along the Supply Chain” boxes in this chapter.

2-38. Write a brief summary on the application of quality management in a company from Qualityworld, a professional trade magazine published in the United Kingdom.

2-39. Develop a fishbone diagram for the possible causes of your car not starting.

2-40. Describe the differences between Black Belts, Green Belts, and Master Black Belts in a Six Sigma program.

2-41. Describe the steps in the Six Sigma breakthrough strategy for quality improvement.

2-42. Develop a quality-improvement project in a situation you are familiar with such as a current or former job, a part-time job, a restaurant, your college bookstore, your dorm or apartment, a local business, and so on, and describe how you would apply the steps of the six sigma breakthrough strategy.

2-43. Reference the Web site for the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) at www.theacsi.org and write a brief summary describing how the numerical ACSI value is determined. Also, select an industry or service sector and pick two companies, one with a high ACSI and one with a relatively low ACSI: using your own knowledge and research about the companies, explain why you think they have different ACSI values.

2-44. Develop a Six Sigma-type quality improvement project employing the DMAIC steps for your own personal health such as losing weight, improving your diet, exercise, etc.

2-45. Develop a Six Sigma-type project employing the DMAIC steps for improving any phase of your personal life that you feel may be “defective.”

2-46. Visit your university infirmary and study the process in-patients follow to see a doctor and describe a quality improvement project to improve this process.

2-47. At most universities course registration for future semesters typically involves some type of computerized online process possibly combined with some personal consultation with an academic advisor. Describe the registration process in your academic college or at your university and suggest ways the process could be improved.

2-48. The Japanese are generally credited with starting the global quality revolution that in the 1970s became an integral part of corporate culture, and eventually led to the development of quality improvement programs systems like TQM and Six Sigma. Research and write a report about what Japan did to initiate the quality movement and why it differed from what was being done in the United States.

2-49. Describe the general steps a company must go through to obtain ISO 9001:2008 certification.

2-50. Select a retail store you are familiar with such as a grocery store, J. Crew, Macy’s, Best Buy, Target, etc., and identify what might be considered as “defects” in their processes and how improvement might be measured.

2-51. ISO 9000 and the Malcolm Baldrige Award competition are both programs that seek to achieve recognition for outstanding quality, one in the form of a certificate and the other in the form of an award. Discuss how the two are similar and different, and how they might complement each other.

. Explain how you would determine customer satisfaction with a bank, your university, a football game, an airline, a car, a cell phone, and a television. Describe the tools and processes you would use to measure customer satisfaction.

2-53. In the ongoing national debate about health care that is likely to continue for years, one view holds that quality improvement (and corresponding cost reduction) across the industry is fundamentally not possible because the direct consumer (i.e., the patient) is not who pays the bill, for most people the insurance company is. Since insurance companies do not directly receive the service provided, they cannot assess how well “value” is being delivered, and neither the customer nor the insurance company are motivated to reduce costs. Discuss this phenomenon of the health-care industry and make a case for why you think it is accurate or inaccurate. Also address in your discussion how health-care insurance differs from other forms of personal insurance.

PROBLEMS

• GO Tutoriat

2-1. Backwoods American, Inc., produces expensive water-repellent, down-lined parkas. The company implemented a total quality-management program in 2005. Following are quality-related accounting data that have been accumulated for the five-year period after the program’s start

Year

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

Quality Costs (000s)

Prevention
$3.2

10.7

28.3

42.6

50.0

Appraisal

26.3

29.2

30.6

24.1

19.6

Internal failure

39.1

51.3

48.4

35.9

32.1

External failure

118.6

110.5

105

91.3

65.2

Accounting Measures (000s)

Sales

$2,700.6

2,690.1

2,705.3

2,310.2

2,880.7

Manufacturing
cost

420.9

423.4

424.7

436.1

435.5

a. Compute the company’s total failure costs as a percentage of total quality costs for each of the five years. Does there appear to be a trend to this result? If so, speculate on what might have caused the trend.

b. Compute prevention costs and appraisal costs, each as a percentage of total costs, during each of the five years. Speculate on what the company’s quality strategy appears to be.

c. Compute quality-sales indices and quality-cost indices for each of the five years. Is it possible to assess the effectiveness of the company’s quality-management program from these index values?

d. List several examples of each quality-related cost—that is, prevention, appraisal, and internal and external failure—that might result from the production of parkas.

2-2. The Backwoods American company in Problem 2-1 produces approximately 20,000 parkas annually. The quality management program the company implemented was able to improve the average percentage of good parkas produced by 2% each year, beginning with 83% good-quality parkas in 2003. Only about 20% of poor-quality parkas can be reworked.

a. Compute the product yield for each of the five years.

b. Using a rework cost of $12 per parka, determine the manufacturing cost per good parka for each of the five years. What do these results imply about the company’s quality management program?

2-3. The Colonial House Furniture Company manufactures two-drawer oak file cabinets that are sold unassembled through catalogues. The company initiates production of 150 cabinet packages each week. The percentage of good-quality cabinets averages 83% per week, and the percentage of poor-quality cabinets that can be reworked is 60%.

a. Determine the weekly product yield of file cabinets.

b. If the company desires a product yield of 145 units per week, what increase in the percentage of good-quality products must result?

2-4. In Problem 2-3, if the direct manufacturing cost for cabinets is $27 and the rework cost is $8, compute the manufacturing cost per good product. Determine the manufacturing cost per product if the percentage of good-quality file cabinets is increased from 83% to 90%.

2-5. The Omega Shoe Company manufactures a number of different styles of athletic shoes. Its biggest seller is the X-Pacer running shoe. In 2008 Omega implemented a quality-management program. The company’s shoe production for the past three years and manufacturing costs are as follows.

Year

2008

2009

2010

Units produced/input

32,000

34,600

35,500

Manufacturing cost

278

,000

291,000

305,000

Percent good quality

78%
83%
90%

Only one-quarter of the defective shoes can be reworked, at a cost of $2 apiece. Compute the manufacturing cost per good product for each of the three years and indicate the annual percentage increase or decrease resulting from the quality-management program.

2-6. The Colonial House Furniture Company manufactures four-drawer oak filing cabinets in six stages. In the first stage, the boards forming the walls of the cabinet are cut: in the second stage, the front drawer panels are wood-worked: in the third stage, the boards are sanded and finished: in the fourth stage, the boards are cleaned, stained, and painted with a clear finish; in the fifth stage, the hardware for pulls, runners, and fittings is installed; and in the final stage, the cabinets are assembled. Inspection occurs at each stage of the process, and the average percentages of good-quality units are as follows.

Stage

Average Percentage Good Quality
1

87%

2
91%
3

94%

4
93%
5
93%
6
96%

The cabinets are produced in weekly production runs with a product input for 300 units.

a. Determine the weekly product yield of good-quality cabinets.

b. What would weekly product input have to be in order to achieve a final weekly product yield of 300 cabinets?

2-7. In Problem 2-6, the Colonial House Furniture Company has investigated the manufacturing process to identify potential improvements that would improve quality. The company has identified four alternatives, each costing $15,000, as follows.

Alternative

Quality Improvement

Stage 1: 93%

Stage 2: 96%. Stage 4: 97%

Stage 5: 97%, Stage 6: 98%

Stage 2: 97%%

a. Which alternative would result in the greatest increase in product yield?

b. Which alternative would be the most cost effective?

2-8. The Backwoods American company operates a telephone order system for a catalogue of its outdoor clothing products. The catalogue orders are processed in three stages. In the first stage, the telephone operator enters the order into the computer; in the second stage, the items are secured and batched in the warehouse; and in the final stage, the ordered products are packaged. Errors can be made in orders at any of these stages, and the average percentage of errors that occurs at each stage are as follows.

Stage

% Errors

12%

If an average of 320 telephone orders are processed each day, how many errorless orders will result?

2-9. The total processing cost for producing the X-Pacer running shoe in Problem 2-5 is $18. The Omega Shoe Company starts production of 650 pairs of the shoes weekly, and the average weekly yield is 90%, with 10% defective shoes. One quarter of the defective shoes can be reworked at a cost of $3.75.

a. Compute the quality-productivity ratio (QPR).

b. Compute the QPR if the production rate is increased to 800 pairs of shoes per week.

c. Compute the QPR if the processing cost is reduced to $16.50 and the rework cost to $3.20.

d. Compute the QPR if the product yield is increased to 93% good quality.

2-10. Airphone, Inc., manufactures cellular telephones at a processing cost of $47 per unit. The company produces an average of 250 phones per week and has a yield of 87% good-quality phones, resulting in 13% defective phones, all of which can be reworked. The cost of reworking a defective telephone is $16.

a. Compute the quality-productivity ratio (QPR).

b. Compute the QPR if the company increased the production rate to 320 phones per week while reducing the processing cost to $42, reducing the rework cost to $12, and increasing the product yield of good-quality telephones to 94%.

2-11. Burger Doodle is a fast-food restaurant that processes an average of 680 food orders each day. The average cost of each order is $6.15. Four percent of the orders are incorrect, and only 10% of the defective orders can be corrected with additional food items at an average cost of $1.75. The remaining defective orders have to be thrown out.

a. Compute the average product cost.

b. In order to reduce the number of wrong orders, Burger Doodle is going to invest in a computerized ordering and cash register system. The cost of the system will increase the average order cost by $0.05 and will reduce defective orders to 1%. What is the annual net cost effect of this quality-improvement initiative?

c. What other indirect effects on quality might be realized by the new computerized order system?

2-12. Compute the quality–productivity ratio (QPR) for the Burger Doodle restaurant in parts (a) and (b) in Problem 2-11.

2-13. For the Medtek Company in Example 2.1, determine the break-even point (in sales) and draw the break-even diagram for both cases described in the example—with defects and without. (Refer to Chapter 6, “Processes and Technology,” for a description of break-even analysis). Discuss the significance of the difference between the two break-even points.

2-14. The Blue Parrot is an expensive restaurant in midtown open only for dinner. Entrees are set at a fixed price of $42. In a typical month the restaurant will serve 3,600 entrees. Monthly variable costs are $61,200, and fixed costs are $31,000 per month. Customers or waiters send back 8% of the entrees because of a defect, and they must be prepared again; they cannot be reworked. The restaurant owners hired a qualified black belt to undertake a Six Sigma project at the restaurant to eliminate all defects in the preparation of the entrees (i.e., 3.4 DPMO). Compare the profit in both situations, with and without defects, and indicate both the percentage decrease in variable costs and the percentage increase in profits following the Six Sigma project. Assuming that the restaurant paid the black belt $25,000 to achieve zero defects, and the restaurant owners plan to amortize this payment over a three-year period (as a fixed cost), what is the restaurant return on its investment (without applying an interest rate)? Discuss some other aspects of quality improvement at the restaurant that might result from the Six Sigma project.

2-15. A black belt has identified the following key input (X) and output (Y) variables for the process of laundering your clothes in your washing machine at home:

Input (X) Variables

Output (Y) Variables

Sort laundry

Clothes clean

Cycle

Clothes not damaged

Wash temperature

Colors okay

Rinse temperature

Lint free

Stain treatment

Stains removed

Load size

Smell fresh/no odors

Fabric softener

Detergent

Bleach

Type of washer

Develop a cause-and-effect diagram for this process of washing clothes. Next develop a cause-and-effect matrix and use your own insight and judgment about the process to rank and weight the output (Y) variables, assign a numerical score to each X-Y combination, develop overall scores for each X variable, and then rank the X variables in terms of importance.

2-16. A retail Web site sells a variety of products including clothes, electronics, furniture, sporting goods, books, video games, CDs and DVDs, among other items. An average customer order is $47. Weekly total variable costs are $365,000 and weekly fixed costs are $85,000. The company averages 18,400 orders per week and 12% of all orders are returned for a variety of reasons besides the customer not liking the product, including product misinformation on the Web site, errors in fulfilling the order, incomplete orders, defective product, breakage, etc. Thirty percent of all returned orders are turned around and refilled correctly per the customer’s desire, but at a cost (for handling, packaging, and mailing) of $8 per order, while the remaining 70% of returned orders are lost. In addition, it is estimated that half of the customers associated with lost orders will not return to the Web site at a cost of $15 per order. Determine the weekly cost of poor quality for the Web site. The company can implement a quality improvement program for $800,000 a year that will reduce the percentage of returned orders to 2%; should the company invest in the program? How should the company address its quality problem, i.e., what processes does it likely need to improve? Why would zero defects not eliminate returned orders?

CASE PROBLEM 2.1

Designing a Quality-Management Program for the internet at D4Q

Design for Quality (D4Q) is a consulting firm that specializes in the design and implementation of quality management programs for service companies and organizations. It has had success designing quality programs for retail stores and catalogue order services. Recently D4Q was approached by a catalogue order company, BookTek Media, Inc., with the offer of a job. BookTek sells books, CDs, DVDs, and videos through its mail-order catalogue operation. BookTek has decided to expand its service to the Internet. BookTek is experienced in catalogue telephone sales and has a successful quality-management program in place. Thus, the company is confident that it can process orders and make deliveries on time with virtually no errors.

A key characteristic of BookTek’s quality management program is the company’s helpful, courteous, and informative phone representatives. These operators can answer virtually any customer question about BookTek’s products, with the help of an information system. Their demeanor toward customers is constantly monitored and graded. Their telephone system is so quick that customers rarely have to wait for a representative to assist them. However, the proposed Internet ordering system virtually eliminates direct human contact with the customer. Since there will be no human contact, BookTek is concerned about how it will be able to make customers feel that they are receiving high-quality service. Furthermore, the company is unsure how its employees can monitor and evaluate the service to know if the customer thinks it is good or poor. The primary concern is how to make customers feel good about the company in such an impersonal, segregated environment. At this point BookTek is unconcerned with costs; management simply wants to develop the highest-quality, friendliest Web site possible.

D4Q indicated that it would like to take on the job, but while it is familiar with BookTek’s type of catalogue order system, it is relatively unfamiliar with how things are ordered on the Internet for this kind of retail book business. It suggested that its first order of business might be to investigate what other companies were doing on the Internet.

Help D4Q develop a quality management plan for BookTek. Include in your plan the quality dimensions and characteristics of an Internet ordering system specifically for BookTek’s products, suggestions for achieving customer satisfaction, ways to measure defective service, and how to evaluate the success of the order system in terms of quality.

CASE PROBLEM 2.2

Quality Management at State University

As a result of several years of severe cuts to its operating budget by the state legislature, the administration at State University has raised tuition annually for the past five years. Five years ago getting an education at State was a bargain for both in-state and out-of-state students; now it is one of the more expensive state universities. An immediate repercussion has been a decline in applications for admission. Since a portion of state funding is tied to enrollments, State has kept its enrollments up at a constant level by going deeper into its pool of applications, taking some less-qualified students.

The increase in the cost of a State degree has also caused legislators, parents, and students to be more conscious of the value of a State education—that is, the value parents and students are receiving for their money. This increased scrutiny has been fueled by numerous media reports about the decreased emphasis on teaching in universities, low teaching loads by faculty, and the large number of courses taught by graduate students. This, in turn, has led the state legislature committee on higher education to call for an “outcomes assessment program” to determine how well State University is achieving its mission of producing high-quality graduates.

On top of those problems, a substantial increase in the college-age population is expected this decade, resulting from a “baby boom” during the 1990s. Key members of the state legislature have told the university administration that they will be expected to absorb their share of the additional students during the next decade. However, because of the budget situation, they should not expect any funding increases for additional facilities, classrooms, dormitory rooms, or faculty. In effect, they will be expected to do more with their existing resources. State already faces a classroom deficit, and faculty have teaching loads above the average of its peer institutions. Legislators are fond of citing a study that shows that if the university simply gets all the students to graduate within a four-year period or reduces the number of hours required for graduation, they can accommodate the extra students.

This entire scenario has made the university president, Fred McMahan, consider retirement. He has summarized the problems to his administration staff as “having to do more, better, with less.” One of the first things he did to address these problems was to set up a number of task forces made up of faculty and administrators to brainstorm a variety of topics. Among the topics and problems these task forces addressed were quality in education, educational success, graduation rates, success rates in courses (i.e., the percentage of students passing), teaching, the time to graduation, faculty issues, student issues, facilities, class scheduling, admissions, and classroom space.

Several of the task forces included faculty from engineering and business. These individuals noted that many of the problems the university faced would benefit from the principles and practices of a quality management approach. This recommendation appealed to Fred McMahan and the academic vice president, Anne Baker.

Discuss in general terms how a quality philosophy and practices might be instituted at State University.

CASE PROBLEM 2.3

Quality Problems at the Tech Bookstores

Tech is a major state university located in a small, rural coltege town. Tech Services is an incorporated university entity that operates two bookstores, one on campus and one off campus at a nearby mall. The on-campus store sells school supplies, textbooks, and school-licensed apparel and gifts and it has a large computer department. The off-campus store sells textbooks, school supplies, and licensed apparel and gifts and it has a large trade book department. The on-campus store has very limited parking, but it is within easy walking distance of the downtown area, all dormitories, and the football stadium and basketball arena. The off-campus store has plenty of parking, but it is not within walking distance of campus, although it is on the town bus line. Both stores compete with several other independent and national chain college bookstores in the town plus several school supply stores, apparel stores, computer stores, and trade bookstores. The town and university have been growing steadily over the past decade, and the football team has been highly ranked and gone to a bowl for eight straight seasons.

The Tech bookstores have a long-standing policy of selling textbooks with a very small markup (just above cost), which causes competing stores to follow suit. However, because textbooks are so expensive anyway most students believe the Tech bookstores gouge them on textbook prices. In order to offset the tack of profit on textbooks, the Tech bookstores sell all other products at a relatively high price. All “profits” from the stores are used to fund student-related projects such as new athletic fields and student center enhancements.

Tech Services has a Board of Directors made up of faculty, administrators, and students. The executive director, Mr. David Watson, reports to the Board of Directors and oversees the operation of the bookstores (plus all on-campus vending and athletic event vending). His office is in the on-campus store. Both bookstores have a store manager and an assistant store manager. There is one textbook manager for both stores, a trade book manager, a single school supplies and apparel manager, and a computer department manager, as well as a number of staff people, including a computer director and staff, a marketing director, a finance staff, a personnel director, a warehouse manager and secretaries. Almost all of the floor employees including cash register operators, sales clerks, stock people, delivery truck drivers, and warehouse workers, are part-time Tech students. Hiring Tech students has been a long-standing university policy in order to provide students with employment opportunities. The bookstores have a high rate of turnover among the student employees, as would be expected.

Several incidents have occurred at the off-campus store that have caused the Tech Services Board of Directors concern. In one incident a student employee was arrested for drug possession. In another incident a faculty customer and student employee got into a shouting match when the employee could not locate a well-known book on the bookstore computer system and the faculty member got frustrated over the time it was taking. In still another incident an alumnus who had visited the store after a football game sent a letter to the university president indicating that a student employee had been rude to him when he asked a question about the return policy for an apparel item he had purchased on the bookstore’s Web site. When the student did not know the return policy, he told the customer in a condescending manner to come back later. The last incident was an offhand remark made by a local town resident to a Board member at a party about the difficulty she had completing a purchase at the mall store because the registers were unmanned, although she could see several employees talking together in the store.

Although sales and profits at the bookstore have been satisfactory and steady over the past few years, the Board of Directors is extremely sensitive to criticism about anything that might have the potential to embarrass the university. The Board of Directors suggested to Mr. Watson that he might consider some type of assessment of the service at the bookstores to see if there was a problem. Mr. Watson initially attempted to make random, surprise visits to the bookstores to see if he could detect any problems; however, there seemed to be a jungle telegraph system that alerted his employees whenever he entered a store, so he abandoned that idea. Next he decided to try two other things. First he conducted a customer survey during a two-week period in the middle of the semester at both stores. As customers left the store, he had employees ask them to respond to a brief questionnaire. Second, he hired several graduate students to pose as customers and make purchases and ask specific questions of sales clerks, and report on their experiences.

Selected results from the customer survey are on the table below.

The only consistent responses from the graduate students posing as customers were that the student employees were sometimes not that familiar with store policies, how to operate the store computer systems, what products were available, and where products were located in the stores. When they didn’t know something they sometimes got defensive. A few also said that students sometimes appeared lackadaisical and bored.

Using observations of the operation of your own college bookstores to assist you, answer the following questions.

a. Why do you think Mr. Watson organized the customer survey the way he did? What other things do you think he might have done to analyze the stores’ quality problems?

CAMPUS STORE

OFF-CAMPUS STORE

Student

Nonstudent

Student

Nonstudent

Yes

Yes

Were employees courteous and friendly?

572

286

147

341

114

172

156

Were employees knowledgeable and helpful?

522

143

231

212

350
105
135

193

Was the overall service good?

569

96
278

165

322

133

180

148

Did you have to wait long for service?

591

200

243

404

150

178

Did you have to wait long to check out?

584

203

240

383

147

181

Was the item you wanted available?

602

371

407

296

Was the cost of your purchase(s) reasonable?

385

280

398

275

180

301

Have you visited the store’s Web site?

335

330
52

391

262

193
17

311

b. Develop Pareto charts to help analyze the survey results.

c. How would you define quality at the bookstores?

d. Discuss what you believe are the quality problems the bookstores have?

e. What are the bookstores’ costs of poor quality?

f. What actions or programs would you propose to improve quality at the bookstores?

g. What obstacles do you perceive might exist to hinder changes at the bookstores and quality improvement?

h. What benefits do you think would result from quality improvement at the bookstores?

CASE PROBLEM 2.4

Product Yield at Continental Luggage Company

The Continental Luggage Company manufactures several different styles of soft- and hardcover luggage, briefcases, hanging bags, and purses. Their best-selling item is a line of hardcover luggage called the Trotter. It is produced in a basic five-stage assembly process that can accommodate several different outer coverings and colors. The assembly process includes constructing a heavy-duty plastic and metal frame; attaching the outer covering; joining the top and bottom and attaching the hinge mechanism; attaching the latches, lock, and handle; and doing the finishing work, including the luggage lining.

The market for luggage is extremely competitive, and product quality is a very important component in product sales and market share. Customers normally expect luggage to be able to withstand rough handling while retaining its shape and an attractive appearance and protecting the clothing and personal items inside the bag. They also prefer the bag to be lightweight and not cumbersome. Furthermore, customers expect the latches and locks to work properly over an extended period of time. Another key factor in sales is that the luggage must be stylish and visually appealing.

Assembly

Stage

Average Percentage Good Quality

Average Percentage Reworked

0.94

0.23

0.96

0.91

3
0.95

0.67

4
0.97

0.89

0.98

0.72

Because of the importance of quality, company management has established a process control procedure that includes inspection at each stage of the five major stages of the assembly process. The following table shows the percentage of good-quality units yielded at each stage of the assembly process and the percentage of bad units that can be reworked, on average.

The first stage of the process is construction of the frame, and it is very difficult to rework the frame if an item is defective, which is reflected in the low percentage of reworked items.

Five hundred new pieces of luggage of a particular style and color are initiated through the assembly process each week. The company would like to know the weekly product yield and the number of input units that would be required to achieve a weekly yield of 500 units. Furthermore, the company would like to know the impact on product yield (given 500 initial starting units) if a quality-improvement program were introduced that would increase the average percentage of good-quality units at each stage by 1%.

Chapter 6 Processes and Technology

Web resources for this chapter include

▸ OM Tools Software

▸ Internet Exercises

▸ Online Practice Quizzes

▸ Lecture Slides in Power Point

▸ Virtual Tours

▸ Excel Worksheets

▸ Excel Exhibits

▸ Company and Resource Weblinks

www.wiley.com/college/russell

In this chapter, you will learn about…

• Process Planning

•

Process A

nalysis

• Process Innovation

• Technology Decisions

Processes and Technology FOR CHOCOLATE MANUFACTURING

CHOCOLATE IS DERIVED FROM THE CACAO TREE, native to Central and South America and transplanted long ago to the equatorial regions of Africa. The fruit of the cacao tree is a football-shaped pod which contains 20 to 40 seeds, called cacao beans, inside. The pods are harvested by hand (usually twice a year) and sliced open with machetes. The cacao beans and pulp are scooped out, heaped into piles or specially made boxes, and covered with banana leaves to ferment for three to nine days. Fermentation is complete when the white beans have turned a rich brown color. The fermented beans are placed on drying racks or bamboo mats to dry in the hot sun for approximately a week before being packed in large burlap sacks for shipment. Cacao beans are typically sold like sugar and coffee on a commodity exchange or futures market to candy manufacturers, importers, exporters, and trade companies.

Once transported to their new location, the beans follow a series of automated processes. They are cleaned and sorted by type and origin, and either roasted separately or blended in the roasting process to create a special taste. Cacao beans from different locations have a distinct flavor. Some chocolates are made from 10 or more different types of beans. Roasting takes place in large rotating ovens for about one to two hours, after which the beans are cooled and separated from their shells by a winnowing machine. What remains is the center of the bean, called nib, which consists of both cocoa solids and cocoa butter (about 50/50). A heavy milling machine crushes the nibs and converts them to a thick paste called chocolate liquor. Some of the chocolate liquor is pressed to separate the cocoa solids from the cocoa butter. The cocoa solids are pulverized into cocoa powder and are sold as a baking- or beverage-making product. The cocoa butter is added in varying amounts to dark or milk chocolate products, or sold to cosmetic or pharmaceutical companies.

Some chocolate manufacturers buy chocolate liquor from suppliers as their raw material, others start with the cacao beans and make their own liquor. The liquor is combined with milk, sugar, and cocoa butter to form a coarse brown powder called chocolate crumb. The crumb travels through a series of steel rollers that grind the mixture and refine it into a chocolate paste. The chocolate paste is poured into a large vat where rollers knead and blend it in a process called conching. Conching can take from one to three days, or for some premium brands, one to two weeks. Next, the chocolate is tempered (i.e., cooled and warmed repeatedly) to gain the right consistency and gloss. During this time, other ingredients can be added, such as nuts or flavorings. Finally, the chocolate is poured into moulds, vibrated (to get the air out), sent down a long tunnel to be cooled, and wrapped or packaged. Hershey’s can fill 1,000 molds per minute, but the entire process of making chocolate from bean to bar takes an average of four days.

Chocolate manufacturing is a complicated process that requires skill and precision. Paying attention to processes (both production and service processes) and selecting technology that can help streamline processes is the topic of this chapter.

Sources: The Field Museum, http://www.fieldmuseum.org/chocolate/;Hershey’s Web site, www.hersheys.com

process

a group of related tasks with specific inputs and outputs.

Processes exist to create value for the customer, the shareholder, or society. Process design defines what tasks need to be done and how they are to be coordinated among functions, people, and organizations. Planning, analyzing, and improving processes is the essence of operations management. Processes are planned, analyzed, and redesigned as required by changes in strategy and emerging technology.

• Process: a group of related tasks with specific inputs and outputs.

Process strategy
is an organization’s overall approach for physically producing goods and providing services. Process decisions should reflect how the firm has chosen to compete in the marketplace, reinforce product decisions, and facilitate the achievement of corporate goals. A firm’s process strategy defines its:

• Process strategy:

an organization’s overall approach for physically producing goods and services.

•
Vertical integration:
The extent to which the firm will produce the inputs and control the outputs of each stage of the production process.

•
Capital intensity:
The mix of capital (i.e., equipment, automation) and labor resources used in the production process.

•
Process flexibility
: The ease with which resources can be adjusted in response to changes in demand, technology, products or services, and resource availability.

•
Customer involvement
: The role of the customer in the production process.

In this chapter we examine the planning, analysis, and innovation of processes, as well as technology decisions related to those processes.

PROCESS PLANNING

Process planning
determines how a product will be produced or a service provided. It decides which components will be made in-house and which will be purchased from a supplier, selects processes, and develops and documents the specifications for manufacture and delivery. In this section, we discuss outsourcing decisions, process selection, and process plans.

• Process planning: converts designs into workable instructions for manufacture or delivery.

OUTSOURCING

A firm that sells the product, assembles the product, makes all the parts, and extracts the raw material is completely vertically integrated. But most companies cannot or will not make all of the parts that go into a product. A major strategic decision, then, is how much of the work should be done outside the firm. The decision involves questions of dependence, competency-building, and proprietary knowledge, as well as cost.

• Vertical Integration:

the degree to which a firm produces the parts that go into its products

On what basis should particular items be made in-house? When should items be outsourced? How should suppliers be selected? What type of relationship should be maintained with suppliers— arm’s length, controlling, partnership, alliance? What is expected from the suppliers? How many suppliers should be used? How can the quality and dependability of suppliers be ensured? How can suppliers be encouraged to collaborate?

For process planning, we need to decide which items will be purchased from an outside supplier and which items will be produced in our own factories. More advanced sourcing decisions on whom to buy from are discussed in Chapter 10.

Make-or-buy decisions are influenced by many factors.

The outsourcing decision rests on an evaluation of the following factors:

1.
Cost.
Would it be cheaper to make the item or buy it? to perform the service in-house or outsource it? The cost of buying the item from a supplier includes the purchase price, transportation costs, and various tariffs, taxes, and fees. The cost of coordinating production over long distances and increased inventory levels should also be considered. The cost of making the item includes labor, material, and overhead.

In some situations a company may decide to buy an item rather than make it (or vice versa) when, from a cost standpoint, it would be cheaper to do otherwise. The remaining factors in this list represent noneconomic factors that can influence or dominate the economic considerations.

2.
Capacity

. Companies that are operating at less than full capacity may elect to make components rather than buy them, especially if maintaining a level workforce is important. Sometimes the available capacity is not sufficient to make all the components, so choices have to be made. Typically, it is better to produce more customized or volatile products in-house, and to outsource steady products with high volume/high standardization.

3.
Quality
. The capability to provide quality parts consistently is an important consideration in the outsourcing decision. In general, it is easier to control the quality of items produced in your own factory. However, standardization of parts, supplier certification, and supplier involvement in design can improve the quality of supplied parts.

4.
Speed
. The savings from purchasing an item from a far-off vendor can be eaten up by the lengthy transit time of offshore shipments. At other times, a supplier can provide goods sooner than the manufacturer. The smaller supplier is often more flexible, too, and can adapt quickly to design and technology changes. Of course, speed is useful only if it is reliable.

5.
Reliability

.

Supplier

s need to be reliable in both the quality and the timing of what they supply. Unexpected delays in shipments or partially filled orders because of quality rejects can wreak havoc with the manufacturing system. Many companies today are requiring that their suppliers meet certain quality and delivery standards to be certified as an approved supplier. As discussed in Chapter 2, the most common quality certification is ISO 9000. Other companies assess huge penalties for unreliable supply. Some automakers, for example, fine their suppliers $30,000 for each hour an order is late.

6.
Expertise
. Companies that are especially good at making or designing certain items may want to keep control over their production. Coca-Cola would not want to release its formula to a supplier, even if there were guarantees of secrecy. Although automakers might outsource many of their component parts, they need proprietary control over major components such as engines, transmissions, and electronic guidance systems. Japanese, Taiwanese, and Korean firms are currently learning U.S. expertise in aircraft design and manufacture by serving as suppliers of component parts. Chinese markets are often flooded with cheap knockoffs of goods manufactured by suppliers in that country. The protection of intellectual property is a major concern in expanded supply chains. Thus, the decision of whether to share your expertise with a supplier for economic gains is a difficult one.

The outsourcing decision is not a simple one. Rather, choices can be made along a continuum from a single purchasing decision to a joint venture. Figure 6.1 illustrates the sourcing continuum.

• Internet Exercises Weblinks

PROCESS SELECTION

The next step in process planning is to select a production process for those items we will produce in-house. Production processes can be classified into projects, batch production, mass production, and continuous production.

Projects
take a long time to complete, involve a large investment of funds and resources, and produce one item at a time to consumer order. Examples include construction projects, shipbuilding, new-product development, and aircraft manufacturing.

• Projects: one-at-a-time production of a product to customer order.

Batch production
processes many different jobs through the production system at the same time in groups or batches. Products are typically made to customer order, volume (in terms of customer order size) is low, and demand fluctuates. Examples of batch production include printers, bakeries, machine shops, education and furniture making.

• Batch production: processing many different jobs at the same time in groups for batches).

Figure 6.1 The Sourcing Continuum

Figure 6.2 The Product-Process Matrix

Source: Adapted from Robert Hayes and Steven Wheelwright. Restoring the Competitive Edge Competing Through Manufacturing (New York. John Wiley & Sons, 1984) p. 209.

Mass production
produces large volumes of a standard product for a mass market.

Product demand

is stable, and product volume is high. Goods that are mass produced include automobiles, televisions, personal computers, fast food, and most consumer goods.

• Mass production: producing large volumes of a standard product for a mass market.

Continuous production
is used for very high-volume commodity products that are very standardized. The system is highly automated and is typically in operation continuously 24 hours a day. Refined oil, treated water, paints, chemicals, and foodstuffs are produced by continuous production.

• Continuous production: producing very high-volume commodity products.

The process chosen to create the product or service must be consistent with product and service characteristics. The most important product characteristics (in terms of process choice) are degree of standardization and demand volume. Figure 6.2 shows a product-process matrix that matches product characteristics with process choice.

The best process strategy is found on the diagonal of the matrix. Companies or products that are off the diagonal have either made poor process choices or have found a means to execute a competitive advantage. For example, technological advancements in flexible automation allow Motorola to mass produce customized pagers. Volvo and Rolls Royce occupy a special market niche by producing cars in a crafted, customized fashion. Examples of poor process choice include Texas Instruments’ attempt to produce consumer products for mass markets by the same process that had been successful in the production of scientific products for specialized markets, and Coming’s production of low-volume consumer items, such as range covers, with the same continuous process used for other items formed from glass.

Table 6.1 summarizes the characteristics of each type of process. As we move from projects to continuous production, demand volume increases; products become more standardized; systems become more capital-intensive, more automated, and less flexible; and customers become less involved.

PROCESS SELECTION WITH BREAKEVEN ANALYSIS

Several quantitative techniques are available for selecting a process. One that bases its decision on the cost tradeoffs associated with demand volume is

breakeven analysis

. The components of breakeven analysis are volume, cost, revenue, and profit.

• Breakeven analysis: examines the cost trade-offs associated with demand volume.

Volume is the level of production, usually expressed as the number of units produced and sold. We assume that the number of units produced can be sold.

Cost is divided into two categories: fixed and variable. Fixed costs remain constant regardless of the number of units produced, such as plant and equipment and other elements of overhead. Variable costs vary with the volume of units produced, such as labor and material. The total cost of a process is the sum of its fixed cost and its total variable cost (defined as volume times per unit variable cost).

Table 6.1 Types of Processes

Project

Batch Production

Mass Production

Continuous Production

Type of product

Unique

Made-to-order (customized)

Made-to-stock (standardized)

Commodity

Type of customer

One-at-a-time

Few individual customers

Mass market

Mass market
Product demand

Infrequent

Fluctuates

Stable

Very stable

Demand volume

Very low

Low to medium

High

Very high

No, of different products

Infinite variety

Many varied

Few

Very few

Production system

Long-term project

Discrete, job shops

Repetitive, assembly lines

Continuous, process industries

Equipment

Varied

General-purpose

Special-purpose

Highly automated

Primary type of work

Specialized contracts

Fabrication

Assembly

Mixing, treating, refining

Worker skills

Experts, craftspersons

Wide range of skills

Limited range of skills

Equipment monitors

Advantages

Custom work, latest technology

Flexibility, quality

Efficiency, speed, low cost

Highly efficient, large capacity, ease of control

Disadvantages

Nonrepetitive, small customer base, expensive

Costly, slow, difficult to manage

Capital investment, lack of responsiveness

Difficult to change, far-reaching errors, limited variety

Examples

Construction, shipbuilding, spacecraft

Machine shops, print shops, bakeries, education

Automobiles, televisions, computers, fast food

Paint, chemicals, foodstuffs

Revenue on a per-unit basis is simply the price at which an item is sold. Total revenue is price times volume sold. Profit is the difference between total revenue and total cost. These components can be expressed mathematically as follows:

Continuous processes are used for very-high-volume, commodity products whose output is measured rather than counted. The production system is capital-intensive and highly automated (with workers who monitor the equipment rather than perform the work) and is typically operated 24 hours a day.

where

Cf = fixed cost

v = volume (i.e., number of units produced and sold)

cv = variable cost per unit

p = price per unit

In selecting a process, it is useful to know at what volume of sales and production we can expect to earn a profit. We want to make sure that the cost of producing a product does not exceed the revenue we will receive from the sale of the product. By equating total revenue with total cost and solving for v, we can find the volume at which profit is zero. This is called the breakeven point. At any volume above the breakeven point, we will make a profit. A mathematical formula for the breakeven point can be determined as follows:

Example 6.1 Break Even Analysis

Travis and Jeff own Up Right Paddlers, a new startup company with the goal of designing, making, and marketing stand-up paddle boards for streams and rivers. A new fitness craze, stand-up paddle boards are similar to surfboards in appearance, but are used by individuals to navigate down rivers in an upright position with a single long pole (or paddle), instead of sitting in tubes or rafts and floating down. The boards are constructed from heavy duty raft material that is inflatable, rather than the fiberglass material used in surfboards. Unlike surfboards that market for

$500

$100

0 each, paddle boards are typically sold for between $100 and

$40

0. Since Travis and Jeff are just starting out and the demand for paddle boards on the East Coast has not been firmly established, they anticipate selling their product for $100 each. Travis estimates the fixed cost for equipment and space will be

$20,000

, and the material and labor costs will run $50 per unit. What volume of demand will be necessary for Travis and Jeff to break even on their new venture?

Solution

The solution is shown graphically in the following figure. The x-axis represents production or demand volume, and the y-axis represents dollars of revenue, cost, or profit. The total revenue line extends from the origin, with a slope equal to the unit price of a board. The total cost line intersects the y-axis at a level corresponding to the fixed cost of the process and has a slope equal to the per-unit variable cost. The intersection of these two lines is the breakeven point. If demand is less than the breakeven point, the company will operate at a loss. But if demand exceeds the breakeven point, the company will be profitable. The company needs to sell more than 40 paddle boards to make a profit.

Breakeven analysis is especially useful when evaluating different degrees of automation. More automated processes have higher fixed costs but lower variable costs. The “best” process depends on the anticipated volume of demand for the product and the tradeoffs between fixed and variable costs. Example 6.2 shows how breakeven analysis can guide the selection of a process among several alternatives. The example uses this procedure:

1. Formulate a total cost equation for each process considered.

2. Calculate the
point of indifference
between two alternative processes (i.e., the volume at which the total cost of manufacturing is the same for the two processes) by setting their total cost equations equal to each other and solving for v, demand volume.

3. Above the point of indifference, choose the alternative with the lowest variable cost.

4. Below the point of indifference, choose the alternative with the lowest fixed cost.

Example 6.2 Process Selection

Jeff, the more optimistic of the two owners of UpRight Paddlers, believes that demand for paddle boards will exceed the breakeven point of 40 units calculated in Example 6.1. He proposes spending $10,000 in fixed costs to buy more automated equipment that would reduce the materials and labor cost to $30 per board. The boards would sell for $100. regardless of which manufacturing process is chosen. Compare the two processes and determine for what level of demand each process would be preferred. Label Travis’ proposal as Process A, and Jeff’s proposal as

Process B

Solution

If demand is less than or equal to 400 boards, the alternative with the lowest fixed cost, process A. should be chosen. If demand is greater than or equal to 400 boards, the alternative with the lowest variable cost, process B, is preferred. Our decision can be confirmed by examining the next graph. (Because the boards will be sold for $100 apiece regardless of which process is used to manufacture them, no revenue line is needed.)

PROCESS PLANS

Process plans
are a set of documents that detail manufacturing and service delivery specifications. They begin with detailed drawings of product design (usually from a

CAD

system) and include
assembly charts
or bills of material (showing the parts and materials needed and how they are to be assembled together), operations sheets or routing sheets (listing the operations to be performed with details on equipment, tools, skills, etc.), and quality-control checksheets (specifying quality standards and quality data to be recorded).

• Process plans: a set of documents that detail manufacturing and service delivery specifications.

• Assembly charts: a schematic diagram of a product that shows the relationship of component parts to parent assemblies.

Process plans are used in both manufacturing and service settings. A hospital, for example, has a set of process plans (often called protocols) for different types of medical procedures and service plans for each particular patient. Similarly, in manufacturing, some process plans are standard, and others are created for each customer order. Figure 6.3 shows an assembly chart for a Big Mac. Figure 6.4 shows an operations sheet for a plastic molded vacuum cleaner attachment.

PROCESS A

NALYSIS

Process analysis is the systematic examination of all aspects of a process to improve its operation—to make it faster, more efficient, less costly, or more responsive to the customer. The basic tools of process analysis are process flowcharts, diagrams, and maps. Exhibit 6.1 shows the various flowcharts available in Microsoft Visio to map out business processes.

These flowcharts come in many different sizes, shapes, and forms; several are depicted in this chapter. While the format and symbols used may vary, the “process” of building a flowchart follows these steps:

1. Determine objectives

2. Define process boundaries

3. Define units of flow (i.e., patients, products, data)

4. Choose type of chart

5. Observe process and collect data

6. Map out process

7. Validate chart (with user, expert, or observation)

Figure 6.3 An Assembly Chart for a Big Mac

• Process flowchart: a document that uses standardized symbols to chart the productive and nonproductive flow of activities involved in a process.

PROCESS FLOWCHARTS

The classic process flowchart looks at the manufacture of a product or delivery of a service from a broad perspective. The chart uses five standard symbols, shown in Figure 6.5, to describe a process: for operations, □ for inspections, ↠ for transportation, D for delay, and ∇ for storage. The details of each process are not necessary for this chart; however, the time required to perform each process and the distance between processes are often included. By incorporating nonproductive activities (inspection, transportation, delay, storage), as well as productive activities (operations), process flowcharts may be used to analyze the efficiency of a series of processes and to suggest improvements. They also provide a standardized method for documenting the steps in a process and can be used as a training tool. Automated versions of these charts are available that will superimpose the charts on floor plans of facilities. In this fashion, bottlenecks can be identified and layouts can be adjusted. Process flowcharts are used in both manufacturing and service operations. They are a basic tool for process innovation, as well as for job design.

Figure 6.4 An Operations Sheet for a Plastic Part

Exhibit 6.1 Flowcharts Available in Microsoft Visio

• Excel File

Figure 6.5 A Process Flowchart of Apple Processing

• Excel Template

Process improvement teams are likely to make a first pass at diagramming a process, with adhesive notes plastered on large sheets of paper connected with hand-drawn arrows. As documentation of the process becomes more complete, departments or companies may prefer particular symbols to represent inputs, outputs, decisions, activities, and resources.

Flowcharts can take many forms, from freehand drawings to animated simulations. Exhibit 6.2 shows a simple flowchart created in Excel. More sophisticated flowcharting tools are available from Microsoft Visio, SmartDraw (www.smartdraw.com), iGrafx (www.igrafx.com), and others. You may be able to download free trial copies of the software for limited periods of time.

Figure 6.6 shows a process map. or swimlane chart, so called because it maps out the activities performed by various people in the process. Often process maps will include a time scale as well. Figure 6.7 shows a simple value chain flowchart from supplier to customer.

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These workers at a Dow Chemical plant are displaying a process map they developed to analyze an existing process. The flowchart is not neat and tidy, but it does offer some obvious candidates for improvement. U.S. workers and managers in both industry and government are examining their processes in an attempt to redesign work for high-quality, less waste, and speedier operation.

ALONG THE SUPPLY CHAIN Making Fast Food Faster

Go behind the counter of a fast food restaurant and you’ll find a finely tuned operating system—portion-controlled french fry containers, automated drink carousels, optimized kitchen layouts, and lights and buzzers to signal action. But “speed” today means streamlining the order-taking process as well as the delivery process. The drive-thru now accounts for two-thirds of fast food sales. So, understandably, in a survey of fast food mangers last year, 82% were engaged in programs to improve speed at the drive-thru. The initiatives range from walking up to drivers to take their orders while they wait in line, to rooftop cameras and artificial intelligence software that predict upcoming orders based on the number and kind of vehicles entering the drive-thru line.

A Colorado Springs McDonald’s restaurant set the world record for drive-thru speed at 349 transactions an hour. True, that was part of a special promotion, but even when it’s not going for the record, the restaurant averages about one minute a transaction, compared to the industry average of 3.5 minutes. A reason for the superb efficiency is the use of a remote call center to take orders, a trend gaining popularity in fast food entities across the country.

At McDonald’s call center, workers are experts in the menu, and they are trained to be articulate, polite, and fast. They also urge customers to add items to their order. Each worker takes up to 95 orders an hour during peak times. Customers pulling up to the drive-thru menu are connected to the computer of a call-center employee using Internet calling technology. When the customer pulls away from the menu to pay for the food and pick it up, it takes around 10 seconds for another car to pull forward. During that time, call-center workers can be answering a call from a different McDonald’s, where someone has already pulled up. In addition to increased speed and sales volume, specialized order-takers improve accuracy. Accuracy problems at the drive-thru in a typical restaurant are often the result of too much multitasking by employees—taking orders, helping to fill them, accepting cash, and keeping the restaurants clean and stocked.

In the fast food industry, time is literally money. Statistics show that every six-second improvement in speed of service results in a 1% jump in sales. Managers must precisely predict traffic volumes in hourly intervals or less in order to make staffing and food preparation decisions. Underestimate demand, and lines form, customers lose patience, and the restaurant loses business. Overestimate demand, and food is wasted and profit margins tank.

When you enter a drive-thru, everything is timed: how long you take to order and to pay, how long it takes to prepare the food and hand it out the pickup window, how much time you waste looking for a place to put your drink before pulling away. That’s why companies bundle items for faster ordering. Ordering a #2 takes less time than ordering a la carte. And woe is the customer who takes the time to check his order for accuracy before proceeding. To discourage those activities, companies use special order checkers, see- through bags, and bags with orders written on the outside.

Another improvement in the order-taking process is the inclusion of multilane drive-thrus, where two or more order lanes merge into a single payment and pickup lane. A second lane can increase capacity by 50% by letting cars bypass slower customers who can’t decide what to order. Two lanes present decisions, such as how much space is needed between the cash window and pickup window, say, seven car lengths.

It’s at the cash register where the next major leap in speed is expected. A cash transaction takes about 30 seconds, so restaurants are pushing credit and debit options, and test-piloting everything from prepaid cash cards to electronic “fast pass” tags like those used at toll booths. At McDonald’s, by foregoing signatures on credit transactions, processing time goals are down to three seconds per transaction. Cashless payment at the drive-thru, online ordering, and self-service kiosks are becoming more common throughout the fast food industry.

While speed is important for fast food, making a customer feel rushed is deadly to repeat business. McDonalds’s claims that friendly service increases customer satisfaction by 30%, irregardless of service time. Consider Subway, known for fresh, made-to-order subs. They recently installed self-service kiosks to speed the ordering process. Customers no longer watch the employee construct their sandwich. Although the new process is faster, this disconnect between customer and service provider upsets some customers. What do you think?

Sources: Adapted from Matt Richtel, “The Long-Distance Journey of a Fast Food Order,” The New York Times. April 11, 2006; Joanna Pachner. “Faster Hotter Sooner.” Financial Post, March 6, 2007.

Exhibit 6.2 Flowcharts in Excel

• Excel Template

Figure 6.6 A Process Map or Swimlane Chart of Restaurant Service

Source: www.SmartDraw.com

Figure 6.7 A Simple Value Chain Flowchart

PROCESS INNOVATION

Processes are planned in response to new facilities, new products, new technologies, new markets, or new customer expectations. Processes should be analyzed for improvement on a continuous basis. When continual improvement efforts have been exhausted and performance expectations still cannot be reached with an existing process, it is time to completely redesign or innovate the process.

Process innovation

1 projects are typically chartered in response to a breakthrough goal for rapid, dramatic improvement in process performance. Performance improvement of 50 to 100% within 12 months is common. In order to achieve such spectacular results, an innovation team is encouraged to start with a clean sheet of paper and rethink all aspects of a process, from its purpose to its outputs, structure, tasks, and technology. Figure 6.8 shows the relationship between continuous improvement, breakthrough improvement, and process innovation.

• Process innovation: the total redesign of a process for breakthrough improvements.

Process innovation is most successful in organizations that can view their system as a set of processes providing value to the customer, instead of functional areas vying for limited resources. Figure 6.9 shows this change from a functional to a process orientation. In an environment of rapid change, the ability to learn faster, reconfigure processes faster, and execute processes faster is a competitive advantage.

STEP

S IN PROCESS INNOVATION

Figure 6.10 outlines the innovation process. Let’s review the process step-by-step. The initial step establishes the goals for process performance. Data from the existing process are used as a baseline to which benchmarking data on best industry practices, customer requirements data, and strategic directives are compared.2 Analyzing the gap between current and desired performance helps to determine whether the process needs to be redesigned. If redesign is necessary, a project team is chartered and provided with the preliminary analysis and resulting goals and specifications for process performance. Although the goals for a process may be specific, the specifications are not (or else the creativity of the group is hampered). It is important that the project team be convinced that total redesign of the process is absolutely necessary to achieve the performance objectives.

Figure 6.8 Continuous Improvements and Breakthroughs

Figure 6.9 From Function to Process

Establish goals and specifications.

Process maps work backward from a performance goal.

A useful tool in beginning the redesign of a process is a high-level process map. Pared to its simplest form, a high-level map contains only the essential building blocks of a process. As shown in Figure 6.11, it is prepared by focusing on the performance goal—stated in customer terms—and working backward through the desired output, subprocesses, and initial input requirements. Design principles, such as performing subprocesses in parallel whenever possible, help to structure the map efficiently. Table 6.2 lists several additional design principles recommended for process innovation. Innovative ideas can challenge the conventional ordering of subprocesses, or the need for a subprocess. Table 6.3 presents various techniques to prompt innovative thinking.

Figure 6.10 Process Innovation

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Figure 6.11 A High-Level Process Map

After the general concept of redesign is agreed on, a detailed map is prepared for each subprocess or block in the high-level map. Blocks are added only if an activity can contribute to the output goal. The existence of each block or activity is challenged: Does it add value for the customer? Does it have to be done? Could it be done more quickly, more easily, or sooner? Could someone else do it better?

A detailed map guides decisions on allocation of resources and work methods. To guarantee that the detailed map will produce the desired results, key performance measures are determined and set in place. The model is also validated through simulation, interviewing, and partial testing. When the team is satisfied that the performance objective can be reached with the new design, a pilot study is conducted.

Use pilot studies for rapid prototyping.

Process innovation is not like other projects, which can be carefully planned and flawlessly executed. Innovation is by definition something new and untested. Milestones, costs, and benefits are guesses at best. A pilot study allows the team to try something, see if it works, modify it, and try again.

Table 6.2 Principles for Redesigning Processes

1. Remove waste, simplify, and consolidate similar activities.

2. Link processes to create value.

3. Let the swiftest and most capable enterprise execute the process.

4. Flex the process for any time, any place, any way.

5. Capture information digitally at the source and propagate it through the process.

6. Provide visibility through fresher and richer information about process status.

7. Fit the process with sensors and feedback loops that can prompt action.

8. Add analytic capabilities to the process.

9. Connect, collect, and create knowledge around the process through all who touch it.

10. Personalize the process with the preference and habits of participants.

Source: Omar El Savvy, Redesigning Enterprise Processes for e-Business (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001), pp. 57-75.

Table 6.3 Techniques for Generating Innovative Ideas

• Vary the entry point to a problem. (In trying to untangle fishing lines, it’ best to start from the fish, not the poles!)

• Draw analogies. (A previous solution to an old problem might work.)

• Change your perspective. (Think like a customer; bring in persons who have no knowledge of the process.)

• Try inverse brainstorming. (What would increase cost? displease the customer?)

• Chain forward as far as possible. (If I solve this problem, what is the next problem?)

• Use attribute brainstorming. (How would this process operate if … our workers were mobile and flexible? there were no monetary constraints? we had perfect knowledge?)

Source: Adapted from AT&T Quality Steering Committee, Reengineering Handbook (Indianapolis: AT&T Technical Publications Center, 1991).

After a successful pilot study, full-scale implementation can begin. Since process innovation involves radical change, the transition period between introducing the changed process and the incorporation of the new process into day-to-day operations can be difficult. The redesigned process may involve changing the way executives manage, the way employees think about their work, or how workers interact. The transition needs to be managed with a special concern for the “people” aspects of change. The innovation process is complete when the transition has been weathered and the new process consistently reaches its objective.

The concept of process innovation emerged in response to rapid changes in technology that rendered existing processes obsolete. In the next section, we discuss the impact of technology decisions and provide resources for a more in-depth study of technology.

ANASTASIA THATCHER.

Senior Business Process Manager for a Public Sector Health-Care Company

I’m a process manager for the public sector division of one of the largest and best performing health-care corporations in the United States. My region is the Northeast where the processes I oversee are responsible for the health care of over 400,000 lives.

I began my work auditing claims processing, and then became interested in how a claim works its way through the system. I noticed all sorts of inefficiencies. For example, high dollar claims were manually handled with 10 different touch points. The Claims Processor would identify high dollar claims and then forward it to the Special Matters Expert, who would work with the Claims Liaison, who would need approval from the Executive Director of the plan, who would consult the Claims Analyst, who would ask Contracting to get back to them so that they could inform the Executive Director, who would make a decision and send it to the Liaison, who would notify the Special Matters Expert, who would lastly pass along the decision to the Claims Processor, who would pay the claim. After redesign, the approval goes from Claims Processor to Special Matters Expert to Executive Director, period. The process flows more efficiently using fewer resources, and the providers are happier because they receive their payments more quickly, which ultimately ensures that members get access to the best care possible.

Like a lot of manufacturing firms, we have more data than we can process efficiently, and it seems that people are always looking for the same information. I remember one situation in particular with case management of high-risk pregnancies. There was a two-month backlog, which meant that by the time the case manager got around to contacting the patient, the pregnancy was too far along for treatment to make much of a difference. I analyzed the process and found that if we developed a shared database between the applicants, the case managers, and the nurses, we could eliminate the manual data entry of cases. That one change reduced the backlog to zero, saved the company millions, and most importantly reduced the number of detained babies (those that need to stay in the hospital after the mother had been released) by 50%. In this job, you can make a real difference. You can save lives.

I was amazed when I took the operations management class at NYU that there’s a field of study for what I do. I live by flowcharts and Pareto analysis. We’re always configuring and reconfiguring systems. If it doesn’t work, we try something else. It’s important to take a step back and look at the broader picture. Then you have to take risks and make decisions, and always look for ways of improving the process.

1 Process innovation is also known as business process reengineering (BPR), process redesign, restructuring, and many other company-specific terms.

2 Although process innovation means redesigning the process from scratch, it does not mean that the existing process should be ignored. The existing process should be studied long enough to understand “what” the process is and “why” it is performed. Exactly “how” it is performed is less relevant because the how will change dramatically during the course of the project.

TECHNOLOGY DECISIONS

Technology decisions involve large sums of money and can have a tremendous impact on the cost, speed, quality, and flexibility of operations. More importantly, they define the future capabilities of a firm and set the stage for competitive interactions. Thus, it is dangerous to delegate technology decisions to technical experts or financial analysts. A manager’s ability to ask questions and understand the basic thrust of proposed technology is invaluable in making wise technology choices.

In this section we discuss the financial justification of new technology, followed by a brief technology primer.

FINANCIAL JUSTIFICATION OF TECHNOLOGY

After it is decided that a part will be produced or service provided in-house, specific technology decisions can be made. Alternatives include using, replacing, or upgrading existing equipment, adding additional capacity, or purchasing new equipment. Any alternative that involves an outlay of funds is considered a capital investment. Capital investments involve the commitment of funds in the present with an expectation of returns over some future time period. The expenditures are usually large and can have a significant effect on the future profitability of a firm. These decisions are analyzed carefully and typically require top management approval.

The most effective quantitative techniques for capital investment consider the time value of money as well as the risks associated with benefits that will not accrue until the future. These techniques, known collectively as capital budgeting techniques, include payback period, net present value, and internal rate of return. Detailed descriptions can be found in any basic finance text. Although capital budgeting techniques are beyond the scope of this text, we do need to comment on several factors that are often overlooked in the financial analysis of technology.

Capital budgeting techniques are used to evaluate new technology.

Purchase Cost The initial investment in equipment consists of more than its basic purchase price. The cost of special tools and fixtures, installation, training, maintenance, and engineering or programming adjustments can represent a significant additional investment. Operating costs are often underestimated as well.

Purchasing cost includes the add-ons necessary to make the technology work.

Operating Costs To assess more accurately the requirements of the new technology, it is useful to consider, step-by-step, how the equipment will be operated, started, stopped, loaded, unloaded, changed over, upgraded, networked, maintained, repaired, cleaned up, speeded up, and slowed down.

Visualize how the technology will be used.

Annual Savings Most new technology is justified based on direct labor savings. However, other savings can actually be more important. For example, a more efficient process may be able to use less material and require less machine time or fewer repairs, so that downtime is reduced. A process that produces a better-quality product can result in fewer inspections and less scrap and rework. New processes (especially those that are automated) may significantly reduce safety costs, in terms of compliance with required regulations, as well as fines or compensation for safety violations.

New technology can save money through better quality and more efficient operation.

Revenue Enhancement Increases in revenue due to technology upgrades or new-equipment purchases are often ignored in financial analysis because they are difficult to predict. Improvements in product quality, price reductions due to decreased costs, and more rapid or dependable delivery can increase market share and, thus, revenue. Flexibility of equipment can also be important in adapting to the changing needs of the customer.

New technology can enhance revenue.

Replacement Analysis As existing equipment ages, it may become slower, less reliable, and obsolete. The decision to replace old equipment with state-of-the-art equipment depends in large measure on the competitive environment. If a major competitor upgrades to a newer technology that improves quality, cost, or flexibility and you do not, your ability to compete will be severely damaged. In some industries, technology changes so rapidly that a replacement decision also involves determining whether this generation of equipment should be purchased or if it would be better to wait for the next generation. Replacement analysis maps out different schedules for equipment purchases over a two to five year period and selects a replacement cycle that will minimize cost.

Deciding when to upgrade to a new technology often depends on the competitive environment.

Risk and Uncertainty Investment in new technology can be risky. Estimates of equipment capabilities, length of life, and operating cost may be uncertain. Because of the risk involved, financial analysts tend to assign higher hurdle rates (i.e., required rates of return) to technology investments, making it difficult to gain approval for them.

It is risky to invest in new technology, and it’s risky not to.

Make sure new and existing technology are compatible.

Piecemeal Analysis Investment in equipment and new technology is also expensive. Rarely can a company afford to automate an entire facility all at once. This has led to the proposal and evaluation of equipment purchases in a piecemeal fashion, resulting in pieces of technology that don’t fit into the existing system and fail to deliver the expected returns.

A TECHNOLOGY PRIMER

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Technology is important in both manufacturing and service operations. Cars now have hundreds of embedded systems performing thousands of computerized functions. Pacemakers, vending machines, Xerox copiers, and store shelves notify the manufacturer when repairs or restocking are needed. Coming soon are clothes that measure the wearer’s vital statistics and notify a physician or change medication regimes when necessary, and refrigerators that pre-order ingredients to match weekly menus or order milk when the supply is low. We discuss many of the information technology advances that support these systems in more detail in Chapter 10. In this section, we present a brief overview of technology advances in manufacturing systems.

Technology in manufacturing includes computer aided design, robots, automated guided vehicles, computer numerically controlled machines, automated storage and retrieval systems, and flexible manufacturing systems. Automated manufacturing systems integrated through computer technology are aptly called computer-integrated manufacturing (

CIM

). With the advent of the Internet and the increased globalization of both markets and production, CIM has evolved into a Web-centric collaborative venture known as e-manufacturing (eM).

E-manufacturing involves sharing real-time data with trading partners and customers and making collaborative decisions about production based on that data. In order to collaborate, information must be converted into electronic form, protocols for communication must be established, and infrastructure must be in place for connectivity with customers, suppliers, and partners. Rather than making huge volumes of standard products in anticipation of demand, e-manufacturing uses realtime information on customer orders and productive capacity across the supply chain to speed customized products directly to the customer. Figure 6.12 shows the components of e-manufacturing categorized by product, process, manufacturing, and information technologies. Table 6.4 serves as a technology primer, briefly defining the terms listed in the figure.

Figure 6.12 Components of e-Manufacturing

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Table 6.4 A Technology Primer

Product Technology

CAD

Computer-aided design

Creates and communicates designs electronically

Group technology

Classifies designs into families for easy retrieval and modification

CAE

Computer-aided engineering

Tests the functionality of CAD designs electronically

CPC

Collaborative product commerce

Facilitates electronic communication and exchange of information among designers and suppliers

PDM

Product data management

Keeps track of design specs and revisions for the life of the product

PLM

Product lifecycle management

Integrates the decisions of those involved in product development, manufacturing, sales, customer service, recycling, and disposal

Product configuration

Defines products “configured” by customers who have selected among various options, usually from a Web site

Process Technology

STEP

Standard for exchange of product model data (ISO 10303)

Set standards for communication among different CAD vendors; translates CAD data into requirements for automated inspection and manufacture

CAD/CAM

Computer-aided design and manufacture

The electronic link between automated design (CAD) and automated manufacture (CAM)

CAPP

Computer aided process planning

Generates process plans based on a database of similar requirements

E-procurement

Electronic purchasing of items from e-marketplaces, auctions, or company Web sites

Manufacturing Technology

CNC

Computer numerically controlled

Machines controlled by software code to perform a variety of operations with the help of automated tool changers; also collects processing information and quality data

FMS

Flexible manufacturing system

A collection of CNC machines connected by an automated material handling system to produce a wide variety of parts

Robots

Manipulators that can be programmed to perform repetitive tasks; more consistent than workers but less flexible

Conveyors

Fixed-path material handling; moves items along a belt or overhead chain; “reads” packages and diverts them to different directions; can be very fast

AGV

Automatic guided vechicle

A driverless truck that moves material along a specified path; directed by wire or tape embedded in the floor or by radio frequencies; very flexible

ASRS

Automated storage and retrieval system

An automated warehouse—some 26 stories high—in which items are placed in a carousel-type storage system and retrieved by fast-moving stacker cranes; controlled by computer

Process Control

Continuous monitoring of automated equipment; makes real-time decisions on ongoing operation, maintenance, and quality

CIM

Computer-integrated manufacturing

Automated manufacturing systems integrated through computer technology; also called e-manufacturing

Information Technology

B2B

Business-to-business

Electronic transactions between businesses usually over the Internet

B2C

Business-to-consumer

Electronic transactions between businesses and their customers usually over the Internet

Internet

A global information system of computer networks that facilitates communication and data transfer

Intranet

Communication networks internal to an organization; can be password (i.e., firewall) protected sites on the Internet

Extranet

Intranets connected to the Internet for shared access with select suppliers, customers, and trading partners

Bar codes

A series of vertical lines printed on most packages that identifies the item and other information when read by a scanner

RFID

Radio frequency identification tags

An integrated circuit embedded in a tag that can send and receive information; a twenty-first century bar code with read/write capabilities

EDI

Electronic data interchange

A computer-to-computer exchange of business documents over a proprietary network; very expensive and inflexible

XML

Extensible markup language

A programming language that enables computer-to-computer communication over the internet by tagging data before its is sent

ERP

Enterprise resource planning

Software for managing the basic requirements of an enterprise. Including sales & marketing, finance & accounting, production & materials management, and human resources

SCM

Supply chain management

Software for managing the flow of goods and information among a network of suppliers, manufacturers, and distributors

CRM

Customer relationship management

Software for managing interactions with customers and compiling and analyzing customer data

DSS

Decision support systems

An information system that helps managers make decisions; includes a quantitative modeling component and an interactive component for what-if? analysis

Expert systems

A computer system that uses an expert knowledge base to diagnose or solve a problem

Artificial intelligence

A field of study that attempts to replicate elements of human thought in computer processes; includes expert systems, genetic algorithms, neural networks, and fuzzy logic (see Chapter 17)

SUMMARY

Practice Quizzes

Important issues in process design are types of processes, process planning, analysis and innovation, and technology decisions. The type of production process selected depends primarily on demand volume and degree of product standardization. Projects are produced one at a time to customer order. Batch production is used to process a variety of low-volume jobs. Mass production produces large volumes of a standard product for a mass market. Continuous production is used for very-high-volume commodity products.

Process planning consists of converting product designs into workable instructions for manufacture. They often appear in the form of assembly charts, process flowcharts, operations sheets, and manufacturing or delivery specifications. On a broader scale, process planning involves process selection, technology decisions, and decisions on outsourcing. Process analysis drives the continuous improvement of operations; process innovation drives breakthrough improvements.

SUMMARY OF KEY TERMS

assembly chart

a schematic diagram of a product that shows the relationship of component parts to parent assemblies, the groupings of parts that make up a subassembly, and the overall sequence of assembly.

batch production

the low-volume production of customized products.

breakeven analysis

a technique that determines the volume of demand needed to be profitable; it takes into account the trade-off between fixed and variable costs.

continuous production

the production of a very-high-volume commodity product with highly automated equipment.

mass production

the high-volume production of a standard product for a mass market.

operations sheet

a document that shows the series of operations necessary to make each item listed on the assembly chart.

process
a group of related tasks with specific inputs and outputs.
process flowchart

a document that uses standardized symbols to chart the productive and nonproductive flow of activities involved in a process; it may be used to document current processes or as a vehicle for process improvement.

process innovation

the total redesign of a process.

process planning

the conversion of designs into workable instructions for manufacture, along with associated decisions on component purchase or fabrication, and process and equipment selection.

process plans

a set of documents that detail manufacturing or service delivery specifications.

process strategy

an organization’s overall approach for physically producing goods and services.

project

the one-of-a-kind production of a product to customer order that requires a long time to complete and a large investment of funds and resources.

vertical integration

the degree to which a firm produces the parts that go into its products
SUMMARY OF KEY FORMULAS

Breakeven point

Point of indifference

SOLVED PROBLEMS

Texloy Manufacturing Company must select a process for its new product, TX2, from among three different alternatives. The following cost data have been gathered:

PROCESS A

PROCESS B

PROCESS C
Fixed cost
$10,000

$40,000

$70,000

Variable cost

$5/unit

$2/unit

$1/unit

For what volume of demand would each process be desirable?

SOLUTION

If ν represents the number of TX2s demanded (and, we assume, produced), then

Total cost for process A = $10,000 + $5ν

Total cost for process B = $40,000 + $2ν

Total cost for process C = $70,000 + $1ν

Next, we calculate the points of indifference between each pair of processes by equating their total costs and solving for demand volume, ν. Always begin with the process that has the lowest fixed cost and compare it to the process with the next lowest fixed cost, and so on. For this example, we’ll compare process A to process B and process B to process C.

Comparison 1: Process A versus Process B

If demand is less than or equal to 10,000, we should choose the alternative with the lowest fixed cost, process A. Conversely, if demand is greater than 10,000, we should choose the aternative with the lowest variable cost, process B. At 10,000 units we can actually choose either A or B.

Comparison 2: Process B versus Process C

If demand is greater than 30,000 units, we should choose process C. If demand is less than 30,000 but greater than 10,000 (see comparison 1), we should choose process B. At 30,000, we can choose either B or C.

The Excel solution to this problem is shown in Exhibit 6.3.

To summarize, from the graph in Exhibit 6.3 and our decision rules, we can recommend the following process selection:

• Below 10,000 units, choose process A.

• Between 10,000 and 30,000 units, choose process B.

• Above 30,000 units, choose process C.

Exhibit 6.3 Using Excel for the Point of Indifference

• Animated Demo Problem
• Excel File
QUESTIONS

6-1. Discuss the types of decisions that are involved in creating a process strategy. Apply the four elements of process strategy to the process of completing a project or paper for one of your classes. Does the process differ from class to class?

6-2. List and explain six factors that affect the decision to outsource. Explain the sourcing continuum.

6-3. Describe the four basic types of production processes. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? When should each be used?

6-4. What are the major cost factors considered in process selection? How is breakeven analysis used for process selection?

6-5. What kind of information do the following documents communicate?

a. Assembly chart

b. Operations sheet

c. Process flowchart

6-6. What does process planning entail? How would process planning differ for batch and continuous processes?

6-7. Explain the basic steps involved in process innovation.

6-8. Our thinking process, limited by the paradigms under which we operate, can become very rigid. Try these out-of-box thinking exercises:

a. Where does the letter Z belong in this pattern, above or below the line? Why?

b. What letter comes next in the following pattern? Why?

OTTFF

c. Connect the nine dots below with four straight lines. Do not lift your pencil.

d. Circle the three errors in the following sentence: There is three misstakes in this sentence.

6-9. Describe the factors often overlooked in the financial justification of new technology.

6-10. Briefly discuss the components of e-manufacturing. In what ways can companies collaborate in producing goods and services? Report on at least one Web source on collaborative manufacturing or e-manufacturing.

6-11. Read about issues in outsourcing from a search on the Web. Then, look at the Web site of a company that you buy from to see where their products are made.

6-12. Create a flowchart for the process of building flowcharts described on page 235.

6-13. Explore the sustainability requirements of production outsourced to different parts of the world.

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PROBLEMS

6-1. Construct a process flowchart of a process with which you are familiar. Identify bottlenecks, potential failure points, and opportunities for improvement.

6-2. Create an operations chart for making pancakes.

6-3. Mikey W. Smitty, an emerging rapper, is getting ready to cut his first CD, called “Western Rap.” The cost of recording the CD is $5000 but copies are $5 apiece. If the CDs can be sold for $15 each, how many CDs must be sold to break even? What is the breakeven point in dollars?

6-4. Mikey W. Smitty is confident that demand for his “Western Rap” CD will substantially exceed the break-even point computed in Problem 6-3. So, Mikey is contemplating having his CD cut at a classier (and pricier) studio. The cost to record the CD would rise to $9000. However, since this new studio works with very high volume, production costs would fall to $2 per CD.

a. What is the breakeven point for this new process?

b. Compare this process to the process proposed in the previous problem. For what volume of demand should Mikey choose the classier studio?

6-5. Patricia Zell, a dollmaker from Olney, Maryland, is interested in the mass marketing and production of a ceramic doll of her own design called Tiny Trisha. The initial investment required for plant and equipment is estimated at $25,000. Labor and material costs are approximately $10 per doll. If the dolls can be sold for $50 each, what volume of demand is necessary for the Tiny Trisha doll to break even?

6-6. Although it will fulfill her lifelong dream, Patricia is not confident that demand for her Tiny Trisha doll will exceed the breakeven point computed in Problem 6-5. If she chooses a less appealing site and does more of the work by hand, her initial investment cost can be reduced to $5000. but her per-unit cost of manufacture will rise to $15 per doll.

a. What is the breakeven point for this new process?

b. Compare this process to the process proposed in the previous problem. For what volume of demand should Patricia choose this process?

6-7. David Austin recently purchased a chain of dry cleaners in northern Wisconsin. Although the business is making a modest profit now, David suspects that if he invests in a new-press, he could recognize a substantial increase in profits. The new press costs $15,400 to purchase and install and can press 40 shirts an hour (or 320 per day). David estimates that with the new press, it will cost $0.25 to launder and press each shirt. Customers are charged $1.10 per shirt.

a. How many shirts will David have to press to break even?

b. So far, David’s workload has varied from 50 to 200 shirts a day. How long would it take to break even on the new press at the low-demand estimate? at the high-demand estimate?

c. If David cuts his price to $0.99 a shirt, he expects to be able to stabilize his customer base at 250 shirts per day. How long would it take to break even at the reduced price of $0.99? Should David cut his price and buy the new press?

6-8. The school cafeteria can make pizza for approximately $0.30 a slice. The cost of kitchen use and cafeteria staff runs about $200 per day. The Pizza Den nearby will deliver whole pizzas for $9.00 each. The cafeteria staff cuts the pizza into eight pieces and serves them in the usual cafeteria line. With no cooking duties, the staff can be reduced by half, for a fixed cost of $75 per day. Should the school cafeteria make or buy its pizzas?

6-9. Soft Key is trying to determine how best to produce its newest product, DVORK keyboards. The keyboards could be produced in-house using either Process A or Process B. or purchased from a supplier. Cost data are given below. For what levels of demand should each process be chosen?

Fixed Cost

Variable Cost

Process A

$ 8,000

$10
Process B
$20,000

$ 4

Supplier

$ 0

$20

6-10. NanoTech is ready to begin production of its exciting new technology. The company is evaluating three methods of production: (A) a small production facility with older equipment. (B) a larger production facility that is more automated, and (C) subcontracting to an electronics manufacturer in Singapore. The costs of each alternative are shown below. Determine for what level of demand each production process should be chosen.

Process
Fixed Cost
Variable Cost
A

$200,000

$40
B
$600,000
$20
C

$ 0

$60

6-11. Alma has decided to purchase a cell phone with Internet access and must choose a rate plan. The “occasional-user” plan is $0.50/minute, regardless of how many minutes of air time are used. The “frequent-user” plan charges a flat rate of $55/month for 70 minutes of air time plus $0.33/minute for any time over 70 minutes. The “executive” plan charges a flat fee of $75 per month for 100 minutes of air time plus $0.25/minute over 100 minutes. In the interest of simplicity. Alma has decided to go with the occasional-user plan to start with and then upgrade as she sees fit at a later date.

a. How much air time per month would Alma need to use before she upgrades from the occasional-user plan to the frequent-user plan?

b. At what usage rate should she switch from the frequent-user plan to the executive plan?

6-12. Merrimac Manufacturing Company has always purchased a certain component part from a supplier on the East Coast for $50 per part. The supplier is reliable and has maintained the same price structure for years. Recently, improvements in operations and reduced product demand have cleared up some capacity in Merrimac’s own plant for producing component parts. The particular part in question could be produced at $40 per part, with an annual fixed investment of $25,000. Currently, Merrimac needs 300 of these parts per year.

a. Should Merrimac make or buy the component part?

b. As another alternative, a new supplier located nearby is offering volume discounts for new customers of $50 per part for the first 100 parts ordered and $45 per part for each additional unit ordered. Should Merrimac make the component in-house, buy it from the new supplier, or stick with the old supplier?

c. Would your decision change if Merrimac’s annual demand increased to 2000 parts? increased to 5000 parts?

d. Develop a set of rules that Merrimac can use to decide when to make this component, when to buy it from the old supplier, or when to buy it from the new supplier.

6-13. Prydain Pharmaceuticals is reviewing its employee healthcare program. Currently, the company pays a fixed fee of

$300

per month for each employee, regardless of the number or dollar amount of medical claims filed. Another health-care provider has offered to charge the company $100 per month per employee and $30 per claim filed. A third insurer charges $200 per month per employee and $10 per claim filed. Which health-care program should Prydain join? How would the average number of claims filed per employee per month affect your decision?

6-14. Gemstone Quarry is trying to decide whether to invest in a new material-handling system. The current system (which is old and completely paid for) has an annual maintenance cost of $10,000 and costs approximately $25 to transport each load of material. The two new systems that are being considered vary both in sophistication and cost. System I has a fixed cost of $40,000 and a cost per load estimated at $10. System 2 has a fixed cost of $100,000 but a per-load cost of $5. At what volume of demand (i.e., number of loads) should Gemstone purchase System 1? System 2?

6-15. Tribal Systems, Inc., is opening a new plant and has yet to decide on the type of process to employ. A labor-intensive process would cost $10,000 for tools and equipment and $14 for labor and materials per item produced. A more automated process costs $50,000 in plant and equipment but has a labor/material cost of $8 per item produced. A fully automated process costs $300,000 for plant and equipment and $2 per item produced. If process selection were based solely on lowest cost, for what range of production would each process be chosen?

6-16. Lydia and Jon order their holiday gifts through the mail. They have spent many evenings at home comparison-shopping through gift catalogues and have found all the things they need from three mail-order houses, B.B. Lean,

Spoogle’s

, and

Sea’s End

. The purchase price for their selections from each catalogue is given here. The shipping and handling charge per item is also given. If Lydia and Jon want to order all their gifts from the same source, which catalogue should they choose? How does the number of items ordered affect your recommendation?

B.B.Lean

Spoogle’s
Sea’s End

Purchase price

$400

$500

$460

Shipping/handling per item

$ 6

$ 3

$ 4

6-17. Sandra Saunders and her design team are analyzing the production costs for three alternative monitor designs. Given the cost information below, and assuming form and function are similar for each design, which monitor design would you recommend?

Monitor

Fixed Cost
Variable Cost
A

$ 700,000

$250
B
$1,000,000

$125

$1,500,000

$100

6-18. Three Bags Full is a small grocery store chain in the Lehigh Valley. The company is trying to decide whether to include a bakery section in its stores. You have been asked to run the numbers using pies as an example. Baking the pies in-house would cost $80 per day and $1 per pie. Pies can be purchased for $4 each from a local bakery, or $3 each from a large regional bakery. The regional bakery requires a minimum purchase of 25 pies per day. Which alternative would you recommend? (Hint: graph the problem.)

6-19. Keisha has been inundated with product-of-the-month offers from various marketing companies. She is considering joining a club that allows DVDs to be downloaded from a members-only Web site, but can’t decide which membership offers the best deal. Given the cost information below, which club would you recommend for Keisha?

Club

Membership fee

Cost per DVD

Almost Free Flicks

$ 40

Best Movies

$ 65

Choice Cinema

$100
$3

6-20. Pete Patel is the sports liaison for the student government association. During the fall semester, the group promotes school spirit with “orange effect” t-shirts. The shirts feature a special screen-printed logo that can be expensive to make. Pete’s supplier, Classic Tees, has quoted three prices for the shirts with differing logo packages, as shown below.

a. If the t-shirts are sold for $6 each, how many shirts would have to be sold to break even with

Package

b. Pete is considering selling the shirts for $8 each. What is the breakeven point for packages 1 and 2 with an $8 price?

c. Which logo package would you recommend if Pete expects to sell 75 shirts? 200 shirts?

d. Assuming the shirts would be sold at the same price regardless of the logo package, create a decision rule for Pete to use based on anticipated sales volume.

Package

Cost of Logo

Cost per Shirt

1
$300
$4
2
$100
$6
3
$ 0
$8

6-21. Sized Rite is trying to determine how best to produce its new line of shoes for expanded feet. Demand for its w-i-d-e products is uncertain. Given the alternative processes and costs below, determine at what level of demand you would choose each process.

Fixed Cost
Variable Cost
Process A
$20,000

$ 5

Process B
$10,000
$10

Supplier C

$ 0
$20

CASE PROBLEM 6.1

A Manager’s Woes

Kyle Peschken has been a manager for the discount store, Zelmart, for the past two years. It’s time for his annual performance review, and Kyle would like to make a big impression on the corporate staff. Walking through the store, he makes a mental note of which departments need to be straightened, which ones need to be reorganized, and which employees he’d like to schedule during the week of his review. And then he sees it—blocking the aisles, creating commotion, and looking very unprofessional—the long line in the electronics department. It’s time to confront Chris, the sales clerk.

“Chris what’s the holdup here?”

“I’m waiting for a manager to approve this $120 check. And then I have to show this lady a digital camera from the display cabinet. She’s been waiting half an hour, and then….”

“Alright Chris … I can help out for a little while …”

Two hours later, Kyle exited the electronics department disheartened. That’s no way for a store manager to spend his afternoon. There’s got to be a logical way to solve this, thought Kyle. He walked back to his office and wrote down the facts as he knew them.

1. Customer service managers [CSMs] must approve all checks over $100, and over 50% of purchases in electronics exceed $100.

2. It’s more efficient to stage CSMs at the front of the store by the 12 checkout lines.

3. It takes an average of 10 minutes for the CSM to reach electronics after being paged.

4. Because of cost controls, the number of CSMs is limited to two per shift, and there is no room in the budget for additional hires of any type.

5. Electronics must be purchased in the electronics department (to prevent theft).

6. Store policy allows customers to check out other items at the electronics counter if they are making purchases in that department. {This makes sense especially if the customer wants to write a check for the entire purchase.}

7. Store clerks must monitor the locked cabinets and stay with a customer who wants to view an item from the cabinet.

8. Because of the size of the enclosed department, only two checkout counters will fit in electronics.

9. Moving the electronics department to the front of the store would not be wise because shoppers tend to pick up impulse items on their way to the center of the store where electronics are located.

10. The average time a customer spends in electronics during peak periods is an unacceptable 40 minutes.

Help Kyle come up with a solution to his inefficient department. Draw a flowchart of the current process from the customer’s point of view and try to identify areas for improvement. If small improvements will not fix the problem, try a more innovative approach. Chart out your suggestions and bring them to class. (It may help to visit a similar store and watch their checkout process.)

CASE PROBLEM 6.2

Wrong Meds, Again!

“It was horrible,” said the distraught client. “No matter how many times I provided the information, no one listened to me. And they obviously didn’t listen to each other either, because they used the wrong meds … again.”

“Okay, calm down. Now tell me what happened from the beginning,” urged Melanie Torrent, the Quality Assurance Manager for Hope Memorial Hospital.

“I got a call at work saying my father was being taken to the hospital from the nursing home. The nursing home always sends a list of medications with the ambulance, but when I got to the emergency room, they were asking my dad what medications he was taking. Of course my dad told them he wasn’t taking any medications and they believed him! He’s sent to the emergency room from a nursing home and they decide it’s reasonable for him not to be on any medications … so of course I corrected him and told them to find the medication list. I don’t know whether the ambulance driver forgot to bring in the list, or gave it to the wrong person, or what, but they couldn’t find it. My dad must be on 12 different medications so I wasn’t sure I could remember them correctly. I called the nursing home and we went over the list with them, and then I gave the handwritten list to the nursing station.

In the meantime, my dad was admitted to the hospital and moved to a hospital room. Again, a nurse came in with a computer and asked me to tell them what meds he was talking. I tried to tell them that the emergency room had the list, but she said it would be the next morning before the list got updated online. Nevertheless, the nurse called down to the emergency room and was faxed up the list of medications. Only the fax was unreadable, so they came back to me. It was a few hours before his next meds were due, so I drove over to the nursing home, had them make several legible copies of the meds list and drove back to the hospital. I gave the nurse the list, kept one for myself and posted the other on the bulletin board in my dad’s room. The nurse thanked me and said she’d take care of it at the end of her shift.

After a long night at the hospital, I woke up the next morning to see my dad hallucinating. I knew immediately what had happened—there’s a certain drug that he has this reaction to. I ran down to the nurse’s station and had her look up the medications he had been given. Sure enough, it was there, along with several other medications he should no longer be taking. Turns out, the list was from two years ago when he had last been admitted to the hospital! How could they have made that kind of mistake—using data from two years ago?”

“That is something we’ll look into. More importantly, has your father been taken off the drug?”

“Yes.”

“And has the medication list been corrected?”

“Yes.”

“And how is he doing today?”

“Fine today, but it could have been more serious and I think you should look into changing your procedures so this doesn’t happen again …”

“I appreciate you bringing this to my attention. I will speak to the persons involved and I assure you this will not happen again. Hope Memorial prides itself on being a caring and responsible health care provider. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another client to see …”

1. Trace the path of the medication list and denote possible failure points. Construct a process flowchart of the existing process and create a new chart of an improved process.

2. Was the medication error a failure of individuals or a failure of the process? Explain.

3. Think about the different settings, the ambulance, the emergency room, the hospital room, and the nurse’s station. How is data handled in each scenario? Can the process of recording information be changed so that every one is using the same data? How can the accuracy of the data be assured?

4. Given Melanie’s reaction, do you think this error will happen again? Why or why not?

CASE PROBLEM 6.3

The DPA Protocol

Blake

is an intern in the Department of Performing Arts (DPA) at State University. One of his duties is to schedule end-of-term recitals for the department’s graduating seniors and to create and distribute programs for those recitals. The recitals for each student include several performance pieces and often feature classical pieces with foreign titles and composers. The students submit a request for recital online and are sent an email confirmation of their recital schedule (from Blake). With that confirmation is a reminder that the material for the program needs to be submitted by a certain time. Generally, these are emailed to Blake, who puts them in standard program format and prints, folds, and distributes them to the recital venue on the evening of the performance. The department has recently been-embarrassed by mistakes in the programs, and after verifying that the source of the error is usually with the student, not Blake, the department has created a new protocol to improve the process.

Below are copies of emails about the new protocol. Create a flowchart of the old and new protocols and identify where problems or delays might occur. What would you do to improve the process?

Sent:

March 1,2011

To:

DPA Faculty, Staff and Interns

From:

Dr. Salvatore, Chair, DPA

To ensure that the Department is putting out the best quality recital programs a new protocol has been established.

New Protocol for Recital Programs

• Students submit programs to their Program Directors.

• Program Directors edit and submit programs to Ingrid.

• Ingrid submits programs to Interns.

• Interns format programs and submit to Naomi for final edits.

• Naomi submits programs to Dr. Salvatore for final approval.

• Interns print, fold, and distribute programs.

Please refer any questions to Ingrid or Naomi.

Sent:

March 5, 2011

To:

Ingrid and Naomi

From:
Blake

I am a little confused about the sequence of the programs. Do the students send their programs to their program directors before they send it to Ingrid, or do we send it to their program directors after we format it?

Thanks,

Blake
Sent:

March 6, 2011

To:
Blake
From:

Ingrid, Head Secretary, DPA

I know this is a bit confusing so let me clarify as best as I can. When the students send me their programs, I inform them that their programs should be edited and approved by their program directors before they send it to me. I then forward it to you for proper formatting, then you send it to Naomi for editing, and then she sends it back to you for printing.

Sent:

March 7, 2011

To:
Blake
From:

Naomi, Administrative Assistant, DPA

They send it to Ingrid, she sends it to you for formatting, and then you send it to the program director. Ingrid or I will keep you posted if there are any changes to the protocol.

Enquist, B., Edvardsson, B., & Sebhatu, S. P. (2007). Values-based service quality for sustainable business. Managing Service Quality, 17(4), 385–403

The purpose of this research is to present a model for values-based sustainable service business grounded in the concept of values-based service quality. Based on a literature review and interpretations of five narratives from a values-driven company, IKEA, the paper proposes a model of values-based service quality for sustainable service business. The study distinguishes four dimensions of values-based service quality and five dimensions of sustainability. These are all incorporated in the proposed model. This is a fundamental study of the role of values-based service quality in creating sustainable service business based on value-in-use for customers and the desirable values of corporate culture with which products and services are associated.

1. Introduction

The growing interest in ecological issues in Western society has stimulated the adoption of a broader perspective in a range of economic and social fields. [24] Gummesson (1994) was one of the first researchers within service research to suggest that an ecological perspective was important in the development of what he called “green service management” – whereby “ecology” would be added to the general list of quality dimensions and come to be accepted as part of the review process of the “Baldrige Award” and similar prizes. In his book Total Relationship Marketing , [25] Gummesson (1999) introduced the concept of a “green relationship”, which was to include individual consumers, wholesalers, retailers and, ultimately, society as a whole.

Significant impetus was provided to ecological awareness in society by the so-called “Brundtland report”, Our Common Future ([4] Brundtland, 1987). This report was published as an United Nations (UN) World Commission on Environment and Development report, contended that a balance between environmental issues and social development would be required if long-term economic development was not to be jeopardised ([4] Brundtland, 1987; [16] Elkington, 1997, [17] 2001). Another UN initiative, the so-called “Global Compact”, was launched in 2000 with a view to bringing commercial corporations into partnership with UN agencies, organised labour, and the institutions of civil society in support of ten principles in the areas of human rights, labour rights, environmental protection, and anti-corruption. Many of the largest trans-national companies are members of the “Global Compact”, including the case company of the present study, IKEA. Moreover, many commercial companies are now adopting the principles of “corporate social responsibility” (CSR), which incorporates environmental and social perspectives in pursuit of sustainable development ([19] Enquist et al. , 2006).

An increased awareness of the nature and importance of “value” has accompanied the enhanced awareness of ecological issues and CSR described above. In this regard, [41] Vargo and Lusch (2004) argued that a service-centred view of the relationship between suppliers and customers implies that “value” must be defined by, and co-created with, customers – rather than being embedded in notions of output, defined products, or service attributes. According to this view, “value” is perceived by the customer in terms of “value-in-use”. [13] Edvardsson et al. (2006) enlarged on this notion by arguing that corporate values also provide value-in-use to customers. These authors agreed with [27] Johnston and Clark (2001) in contending that excellent companies are distinguished from average companies by the values they represent and maintain, and not merely by value-for-money outcomes and economic assessments. This combination of corporate values and value-in-use for the customer forms a certain “value logic”. An important component of such “value logic” is a commitment to the provision of quality ([12] Edvardsson and Enquist, 2002).

The present study explores the relationship between the concepts of values-based service; service quality and sustainability. The study is premised on a stakeholder perspective of leadership, responsibility, and ethics ([37] Pruzan, 1998), incorporating [16] Elkington’s (1997) concept of a “triple bottom line” (economic, social, and environmental) for sustainable development. Drawing on narratives from the world leading furniture firm, IKEA, the aim of this paper is to present a framework for values-based service quality for sustainable service business. The service culture in IKEA is of a special character, a culture for sustainable business embedded in the history of IKEA. That is a strong reason why we have chosen IKEA as our empirical study. The CEO of IKEA Anders Dahlvig says: “We firmly believe it is possible for IKEA to be a good company showing respect for people and the environment, and at the same time selling products at low prices.” ([26] IKEA (2005, p. 6), Sustainable and Environmental Report)

The remainder of this paper is organised as follows. Section 2 presents an analysis of the concepts of values-based service quality and sustainability. Section 3 presents five narratives (and explanatory interpretations) derived from the global enterprise IKEA. Section 4 presents a discussion of the findings from the narratives, together with the presentation of a conceptual model of “values-based service quality for sustainability”. As well, it examines the generalizations of our model with help of another values based company “

Starbucks

“. The final section presents the conclusions of the paper with regard to research contribution, managerial implications – with five suggestions for managers, and suggestions for future research.

2. Conceptual analysis

2.1 Values-based service quality

A customer-oriented view of service quality is that a service should correspond to customers’ expectations and satisfy their needs and requirements. However, this does not imply that a service provider should simply comply with the overt wishes of customers. It is also necessary to detect and understand non-verbalised customer needs, and this requires insight into the individual circumstances and unstated needs of customers if service quality is to be linked to effective solutions to customers’ problems ([9] Edvardsson, 1998). However, [11] Edvardsson et al. (2005a) have contended that issues associated with the most common service characteristics – intangibility, heterogeneity, inseparability, and perishability (IHIP) – have usually been considered from the perspective of the service provider, rather than that of the customer . According to these authors, the service-quality issues associated with the IHIP characteristics have usually been related to the management of service delivery from the provider’s perspective, rather than the co-production and consumption of services from the customer’s perspective. Service quality is thus perceived and determined by the customer on the basis of co-production, delivery, and consumption experiences ([10] Edvardsson, 2005).

Issues such as these raise the question of whether service quality is a single construct or an aggregation of several dimensions. [41] Vargo and Lusch (2004) conceptualized service quality from the perspective of economic and social processes, which implies that service quality must be a construct of several components. [38] Schneider and White (2004) adopted a similar multi-factorial view in perceiving service quality in a variety of ways. These included:

– conceptualising and measuring service quality from a marketing perspective;

– recognising the presence of the customer as central to service operations; and

– emphasising the importance of introducing service quality into human-resource management.

As a result of these reflections on the nature of service quality, [38] Schneider and White (2004) called for a broader perspective on services management – including the possibility of integrating service management with TQM in a comprehensive view of operations management that would enable organisations to produce high performance in terms of the “bottom line”. Similarly, [30] Lovelock (2000) adopted a multi-factorial view of service quality in talking about:

– the marketing imperative of service quality;

– the operations imperative of service quality; and

– the human-resources imperative of service quality.

In accordance with these multifactorial approaches, the present study introduces the concept of values-based service quality. This conception of service quality is in accordance with the view of [37] Pruzan (1998), who contended that there has been a contemporary shift in management perspective from a paradigm of “control” to a paradigm of “values”. He argued for a paradigm of values-based management for six reasons:

traditional power is declining in democratic societies with flat organisations;

leaders are losing contact with reality in large, complex organisations;

the language of money is too narrow;

stakeholders have a right to be heard and corporations have social responsibilities;

bright, creative, motivated, responsible and loyal employees seek meaningful work, personal development, and harmony between their own values and the organisation’s values; and

it pays off.

[41] Vargo and Lusch (2004, p. 3) have also contended that there has been a shift from a “logic of goods” to a “logic of service”:

A dominant logic begins to emerge that largely views marketing as a continuous social and economic process in which operant resources are paramount. This logic views financial results not as an end result but as a test of a market hypothesis about a value proposition.

This view is in accordance with the proposition being advanced in the present study – that social and economic processes are not only derived from the economic and utilitarian aspects of value, but also from the social, ecological, and ethical aspects of value ([13] Edvardsson et al. , 2006).

The present study therefore proposes four dimensions to values-based service quality:

“technical”;

“functional”;

“experiential”; and

“human resources and corporate climate”.

The nature and applicability of these dimensions will become apparent in the discussion of the narratives and the presentation of the model (see “3. Values-based narratives” and “4. Discussion and model“).

2.2 Sustainability

The term “sustainability” has become a commonly used and widely accepted expression in both an ecological sense and a business sense. [28] Kemp (2005) has identified five dimensions to sustainability:

an ethical dimension;

a social dimension;

a “nature-philosophic” dimension;

an economic dimension; and

a legal dimension.

2.2.1 Ethical dimension

The ethical dimension is based on the moral relationship between the societies of today and those that will follow. The ethical dimension refers to whether future generations will praise or condemn the actions of today. This idea was also a central argument of the [4] Brundtland (1987) report.

2.2.2 Social dimension

The focus of the social dimension is on social justice and the need to attend to social justice in the present, rather than putting it off until tomorrow.

2.2.3 “Nature-philosophic” dimension

The “nature-philosophic” dimension is based on the presumption that nature is vulnerable and that there are limits to the degree of interference that nature can bear before future generations will be affected by problematic living conditions.

2.2.4 Economic dimension

The economic dimension is predicated on an awareness that “sustainable development” requires sound economic theory and practice.

2.2.5 Legal dimension

The legal dimension encapsulates human rights in all aspects of human life ([28] Kemp, 2005). Two legal strategies drive sustainable progress: civil regulation; and government regulation ([42] Vogel, 2005).

These five dimensions represent a deeper reflection on sustainable development than the older concept of the “triple bottom line” of economic, social, and environmental considerations. The sustainability dimensions of [28] Kemp (2005) represent a more philosophical reflection on the practice of sustainable development. The concept of values-based service quality presented here includes sustainable thinking, as well as a stakeholder view of leadership, responsibility, and ethics. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainable Development (SD) can be used as driving forces for value creation as part of service-quality improvement ([18] Enquist and Edvardsson, 2006) in sustainable service businesses. The business and normative cases for CSR should be embedded in the same values, and these should be communicated by employees who are “living the brand”.

3. Values-based narratives

3.1 Research design

We have been studying the development of the Swedish furniture producer, IKEA, for several years. This has involved:

– the extensive perusal of documents;

– multiple interviews with IKEA managers;

– the collection of narratives about IKEA from the media, the Internet, and books;

– personal observations at IKEA stores in Europe, Asia, and North America; and

– supervision of several masters’ theses on related subjects.

This extensive research involvement has provided the present authors with a solid basis for selecting representative narratives for this article.

Most of the narratives chosen for analysis here are taken from the internal magazine of IKEA, entitled Read Mewith permission from IKEA. In interpreting the narratives, the authors utilised findings and background material from various sources, including [12] Edvardsson and Enquist (2002); [14] Edvardsson et al. (2005b); [15] Edvardsson et al. (2005c); [13] Edvardsson et al. (2006); and [40] Torekull (1999).

3.2 Narratives and interpretationsNarrative 1: A price for most people

A story from Germany:

In the midst of an aggressive expansion plan, IKEA is facing great pressure from its competitors. So, IKEA Germany fought back by slashing its prices. On average, prices have fallen by six per cent, but in some cases by much more in 2005. In IKEA Germany, to finance lower prices, “First and foremost we’ve succeeded in reducing purchasing prices from our suppliers by increasing product volumes”, says Armin, sales manager for Germany. Increased volumes mean co-workers at every stage will have more to do – more products to make, design, transport, store and sell in a smarter and cheaper way. He has already noticed a difference in customer perceptions at IKEA. In Germany, it is important to be able to offer “back-off” products – simpler, cheaper versions of the bestsellers. Therefore, “These appeal to customers who are attracted by our bestsellers, but who are happy to buy a simpler version that performs the same function” remarks Armin ( Read Me , No. 1, 2005, p. 6).

A story from China:

The pressure from competitors in China has also challenged the IKEA concept of low prices. Ulf Smedberg, marketing manager of IKEA China, remarked, “The more popular IKEA becomes, the more competition we have. Of course healthy competition is good – it makes home furnishings more popular. But it’s bad that more and more companies are copying our products.” He insisted on not spending time, money, and energy to hunt copycats, but to focus on other aspects of IKEA “providing smart solutions for homes by implementing three criteria: good design, functionality, and low price.” Consequently, IKEA China changes its products to suit the needs of the Chinese consumers based on the changes in their standard of living. “This means IKEA needs to keep its home-life study up-to-date because change happens so fast” says Smedberg. Rena Chen a customer in Shanghai confirms this. “I will be married this year,” Rena started to tell her story. “My boyfriend and I have visited a lot of furniture supermarkets. Compared to other furniture stores, we think that the furniture at IKEA can help us to save more money”. This helped them to save enough money for their wedding and furnishing their new home. They are planning to spend more on their wedding ceremony and their taste for the high-life. “I bought many items from a pan to a bed at IKEA.” Rena continues to tell her experience, “We also bought a bed named DALÄLV. The bed is made of raw, unpainted wood”. She was impressed by its simplicity and design. “It looks so natural and simple. Meanwhile, an unpainted bed is a very green and environmentally-friendly product.” She added pleasantly, “I think that IKEA is our ‘Saving Professional Assistant.'” (([33] Miller, 2004), the testimony of Shanghai IKEA customer ([47] Zhang, 2006)).

3.2.1 Interpretation

The first narrative (made up of two stories) emphasises the fact that IKEA’s product range consists of quality items at low prices. IKEA develops all concepts, products, and product ranges at its headquarters in Sweden using multi-skilled teams that are responsible for managing all problems in achieving attractive customer solutions ([15] Edvardsson et al. , 2005c).

The IKEA values revealed in the narrative are:

– Low prices. The price tag comes first – to ensure that as many people as possible are able to afford the goods.

– Economies of scale. Purchasing and transporting is conducted in a cost-effective and cheap fashion.

– Simplicity and responsibility. Designers and packaging specialists ensure that material quality and logistics are based on customers’ needs. Cost saving also saves environmental sources.

– Solutions to real-life problems. The aim is to produce well-designed and functional home-furnishing products.

– Innovative thinking. The focus is not on the furniture as such but on the value in use at home.

The interpretation of the above narratives, from the perspective of values-based service quality, focuses on perceived quality and performance.

The dimensions of values-based service quality illustrated here are: “functional”; and “technical”. Functional quality ensures that the design is attractive to customers, but the overall customer experience in the form of individualised customer solutions is essential to success.

Narrative 2: “IKEA Family”: more than a club

In two years, “IKEA Family”, with a special shop-in-shop in each store and a new interior design magazine will be a familiar concept throughout the IKEA world. One-fifth of customers have a closer relationship with IKEA than the others. They are responsible for between 60 and 70 per cent of total turnover and make up to three times as many visits to the store as the other customers. It’s for these special people that the “IKEA Family” customer club exists. For instance, Jen Segrest, a 36-year-old freelance web designer, and her husband, make the 10-hour round-trip from Middletown, Ohio, to IKEA in Schaumburg, Ill., near Chicago. “Every piece of furniture in my living room is IKEA – except for an end table, which I hate. And next time I go to IKEA, I’ll replace it.” says Segrest. To lure the retailer to Ohio, Segrest has even started a blog called “OH! IKEA”. The banner on the webpage reads “IKEA in Ohio – Because man cannot live on Target alone”. “With ‘IKEA Family’ we aim to give our best and most loyal customers more of IKEA. The club is one way of taking care of this important customer group” says Göran Nilsson who heads work on “IKEA Family”. At the moment, “IKEA Family” has existed in a few countries and in different guises since the mid 1980s. In the fall of 2005, the new version of “IKEA Family” was introduced in six countries: Sweden, Denmark, Austria, France, Germany and Italy. By the fall of 2007 “IKEA Family” will be in full swing in all stores. “IKEA Family” doesn’t aim to recruit new customers. The move has three main aims: to strengthen members’ ties with IKEA; to encourage them to visit IKEA stores and the website more often; and to increase turnover across the entire IKEA range. The aim is to recruit 80,000 members worldwide. The range company IKEA of Sweden uses its database to contact customers, who have bought a particular product, in order to develop and improve the product through customer feedback. Unlike many other customer clubs, “IKEA Family” doesn’t have a bonus system. “Customers join because they have an interest in interiors and feel that IKEA contributes to improving their life at home. “IKEA Family” offers are more about knowledge and activities than collecting bonus points”, explains Göran. “Profits from store sales will be put towards ‘IKEA Family’ activities at local stores. The more products that are sold, the more activities can be organised. This, in turn, leads to increased sales across the whole IKEA range.” ( Read Me , No. 4, 2005, pp. 8-9; [6] Capell et al. , 2005; www.verybigdesign.com/ikea/).

3.2.2 Interpretation

This narrative reveals that IKEA is driven by economic values, social values (co creation and loyalty), and communications (sharing). The values of IKEA revealed in this narrative are:

– Long-term relationships. “IKEA Family” is concerned with knowledge and activities that contribute to improving customers’ lives at home.

– Equality. The “IKEA Family” promotion does not have a bonus system; all customers are treated equally and have the same opportunities for access.

– Co-creating value. The product is developed and improved through customer feedback.

– Shared development. Sharing values, ideas, and working together.

Contemporary service quality is focused on favourable customer experiences ([11] Edvardsson, 2005c). The “IKEA Family” customer club, in association with other IKEA promotional activities – such as the IKEA catalogue, webpage, interior-design magazines, and “experience rooms” at IKEA stores ([15] Edvardsson et al. , 2005c) – express this conception of service quality in various ways. The narrative illustrates that IKEA provides its customers with inspiration, suggestions, and solutions to real-life problems at home. IKEA also enables its customers to test the solutions before purchase and consumption ([11] Edvardsson et al. , 2005a). This reflects the view that service quality resides in the perception of the customer and is experience-based. The dimension of values-based service quality illustrated here can thus be classified as “experiential”.Narrative 3: IWAY: a service-quality process

“We have found thousands of deficiencies – from broken fire extinguishers to serious chemical hazards, and poor accommodation for employees”, says Sven-Olof Kulldorf, IKEA Group purchasing manager. IKEA is continuously engaged in a dialogue with its suppliers in order to set action plans for their improvement work. An important part of this is the educational part, whereby IKEA takes its responsibility by training the suppliers in how to improve their situation, and more importantly, the reason why they should be conducting these changes. Suppliers are beginning to realise that improvements such as fair wages and the correct handling of chemicals pay off.

IKEA has partnered Impactt, a UK-based organisation specialising in improving labour standards, in a project that focuses on reducing overtime working in a sustainable way. The aim of the project is to find ways to reduce the need for excessive overtime whilst maintaining appropriate wage levels. This is achieved by assisting factories in raising their productivity, and improving human resources management and communications. A supplier in northern China, who has worked for IKEA for 10 years, is part of the Impactt project. The factory has over 500 employees and approximately 70 per cent of its production volume goes to IKEA. An IWAY audit was conducted just prior to the project, which showed many problems, including 55 non-compliances. Some of the high priority issues to deal with included: getting the factory to accurately record working hours; enabling all workers to receive at least the local minimum wage; improving conditions and hygiene in dormitories, toilets and washing facilities; and installing a fire alarm system etc. Many of the non-compliances were at management level, and the project gave the supplier the opportunity to enhance its systems and problem-solving skills. Since the project started, two additional IWAY audits have been carried out; one being attended by representatives from the International Federation of Building and Wood Workers (IFBWW). The IWAY audits have shown that the number of non-compliances has significantly decreased during the year. Still, the supplier needs to deal with some issues that must be addressed long-term, such as a further reduction of working hours and an insurance plan for all employees. However, participating in the Impactt project has enabled the supplier to move significantly in the right direction ( Read Me , No. 2, 2003, p.8; IKEA Social and Environmental Responsibility Report, 2004).

3.2.3 Interpretation

The narrative reveals that IKEA is driven by a combination of economic values (cost efficiency), social values (solutions to local problems), and environmental values (high standards). The values of IKEA revealed in this narrative are:

– Cost-effectiveness. The suppliers have to be cost-effective and have to meet quality standards.

– Shared development. The approach represents shared development of future relationships between IKEA and its suppliers.

– Leadership. The suppliers are made aware of their role in maintaining working and living conditions, wages, and safety.

– Accountability. The suppliers are responsible for social and environmental conditions, in accordance with IWAY.

In terms of the dimensions of values-based service quality, the narrative is about “improvement” in the supplier chain and “functional” value.Narrative 4: Preventing child labour

For many years, IKEA has been working to prevent child labour in India by fighting its root causes. The complexity of the child labour issue requires input and influence from many different parties in order to achieve a sustainable solution. A consistent approach and long-term efforts are essential to tackle the root causes, thus creating the broad-based support that is necessary for enduring improvements. Now, solar lamps herald a brighter future for people in villages without electricity. The aim is to offer this to the Indian state of Pradesh and around 200 villages in all. The project is a collaborative venture between the IKEA and Inter IKEA Groups and the local company, Winrock International India. “This is one need the villagers themselves could not meet.” says IKEA Children’s Ombudsman, Marianne Barner. “Our cooperation with Winrock gives people access to good quality lamps at a good price and with a service guarantee. It’s one way of providing help for self-help.” In villages with no electricity, solar lamps are a healthier and more environmentally friendly alternative than paraffin or blazing fires. Indirectly, the lamps can also help combat child labour. “If children can do their homework in the evenings and maintain their interests in education, they’ll be less inclined to start work at an early age,” says Marianne. More over, in August 2000 IKEA and UNICEF initiated a joint child rights project in these villages. Alternative Learning Centres (ALCs) is one of these projects which focuses on creating awareness and mobilising these rural communities around strategies designed to prevent child labour. School enrolment drives are conducted and ALCs are established as a transitional measure to formal primary schooling. Quality educational opportunities for children are essential to prevent child labour, and thus the IKEA initiative complements the government’s efforts to enrol all six to twelve year olds in the project area in primary school. As a result, in 2004, over 80 per cent of the 24,000 children previously out-of-school in these 200 villages are attending primary school. The remaining 20 per cent are covered by 99 ALCs, which are promoted as a bridging strategy to coax children into mainstream education. Moreover, the lamps also enable village women in India’s impoverished “carpet belt” to earn much-needed extra income by sewing at home in the evenings. “Their earnings are a valuable addition to a family’s economy. This also reduces the pressure on the children to work”, says Marianne ( Read Me , No. 4, 2005, p. 5; IKEA: Projects we support , available at: www.ikea-group.ikea.com/corporate/responsible/projects.html).

3.2.4 Interpretation

The above narrative reveals the social values held by IKEA. The firm’s initiative to combat child labour also aims to provide financial independence to poorer women in India. The values revealed in this narrative are:

– Shared development. The initiative effectively invests in the future of the company’s supply chain.

– Responsibility. The initiative assists in creating a sustainable future.

– Transformation. The initiative assists in educating children to create sustainable future generations.

In terms of service quality, the narrative reveals the value of responsibility – not for philanthropic reasons, but for sustainability of business. From a stakeholder’s perspective, business cannot be separated from ethics ([20] Freeman, 1994). The dimension of values-based service quality revealed in this narrative is “improvement”.Narrative 5: The antibureaucracy week

“Maintaining a strong IKEA culture is one of the most crucial factors behind the continued success of the IKEA concept,” says Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA. He retired in 1986 as Group President, but continues to work tirelessly for the company as a critical store customer, a watchdog for the IKEA concept and quality, a visionary, and a constant source of inspiration. The humble origins of IKEA created a unique IKEA culture founded on respect for money, an innovative mindset and the courage to assume responsibility. IKEA regularly stages “Antibureaucracy Weeks”, during which executives work on the shop floor or tend the registers. “In February,” says IKEA Group President Anders Dahlvig, “I was unloading trucks and selling beds and mattresses”, at IKEA Kungens Kurva in Stockholm. For several busy days he wore an “I’m new to IKEA” badge and saw IKEA from a different perspective than usual: replenishing, working in self-serve and selling beds. “He did a great job and was eager to learn,” says Anna Karlsson, who took care of him. “He was particularly interested in our packaging and how it could be improved. But I hardly gave a thought to the fact that he’s Group President.” says Anna. Anders started his day in the goods bay. “It was tough getting up for work at 4 am,” he admits. “But it was fun and it gave me lots of new ideas.” “One is that packaging could be much more functional. Customers often rip cartons open to check that everything is there, or is the right colour. This costs money and takes time to repair,” he says. Maybe the most valuable of all the experiences Anders took with him was from self-serve. Anna thinks work experience weeks for IKEA managers are an excellent idea: “They give managers a much better insight into the realities of store work.” Now Anders is back to the realities of his own work: meetings, decisions and a full diary. But the legacy of his work experience lives on. “It was very thought-provoking. I learnt a lot about our range, about what works and what doesn’t in the store. I hope I can the experience in a year or two,” he says. This is also a bequest of Kamprad who walks through around 20 stores each year with IKEA co workers – company executives, managers, associates – who observe, discuss, laugh, listen and take notes on his advice throughout the 12-hour tours ( Read Me , No. l, 2005, p.15; www.ikea-group.ikea.com/).

3.2.5 Interpretation

This narrative reveals that IKEA is driven by a combination of communication values (meeting co-workers), economic values (smart solutions), and social values (sharing). This narrative also illustrates leadership – through a willingness to experience different working environments. The values revealed in this narrative are:

– Innovative thinking. The initiative encourages smart solutions for better designs.

– A “down-to-earth” approach. The initiative encourages managers to experience various workplaces with co-workers.

– Real-life meeting. The initiative encourages non-bureaucratic leadership based on the reality of the workplace, rather than a theoretical approach.

From a service-quality perspective, this narrative is about human-resources management (HRM) and the establishment of a favourable “corporate climate”. HRM and corporate climate should be apparent through clear leadership, and the “antibureaucracy week” achieves this.

3.3 Summary of the five narratives

Table I [Figure omitted. See Article Image.] summarises the values identified in the five narratives. The values are classified as “economic”, “social”, “environmental”, and “communication” – in accordance with [13] Edvardsson et al. (2006). The link between values and service-quality processes is posited as one in which values act as drivers for service-quality improvement processes. The dimensions of values-based service quality are presented in the right-hand column.

It is apparent from the table that the “economic values” are mainly linked to low costs and low prices – thus enabling more people to afford the products. “Social values” are grounded in good design and functional furniture being made available to more people. “Environmental values” are based on smart transportation solutions, environmentally friendly materials, and creating a sustainable future. “Communication values” are revealed in the themes and words used in promotions by the company – for example, “standing on the side of the many”, “individualised solutions”, “simplicity” – and in the various customer-support tools that facilitate individual decisions and co-created customer solutions.

The five dimensions of sustainability suggested by [28] Kemp (2005) can also be used to interpret the narratives. Table II [Figure omitted. See Article Image.] summarises the elements of the five dimensions that are revealed in the narratives.

4. Discussion and model

Values-based thinking not only includes economic, ecological, and social perspectives (the so-called “triple bottom line”), but also a stakeholder perspective (of leadership, responsibility, and ethics). Such values-based thinking can drive sustainable development according to [28] Kemp’s (2005) five dimensions of sustainability (ethical, social, “nature-philosophic”, economic, and legal), as identified in the narratives presented here. The logic of values as a driving force for value creation facilitates innovative service quality to a greater extent than that achieved if the focus is limited to the functional and technical aspects of service quality.

[1] Berry et al. (2006) have argued that many companies make incremental improvements to their service offerings, but that few succeed in creating service innovations that generate new markets or reshape existing ones. IKEA has been especially innovative in its supply chain and has ensured that all solutions reflect its corporate culture – whereby the service culture drives the service strategy ([12] Edvardsson and Enquist, 2002). This is in line with the views of [1] Berry et al. (2006), who argued that service innovation should begin with corporate culture.

Figure 1 [Figure omitted. See Article Image.] depicts a model of “values-based service quality for sustainable service business”. This model is derived from: the above analysis of the five narratives of IKEA; and the work of [13] Edvardsson et al. (2006).

The analysis of the five narratives suggests that values-based service quality has four dimensions – “technical”, “functional”, “experiential”, and “HRM and corporate climate”. Values-based service quality for sustainable service business must be rooted in the values that form the provider’s corporate culture. These values must be communicated to the employees and to the wider public through marketing communication. All five dimensions of sustainability ([28] Kemp, 2005) are depicted in the model. These five dimensions must be present to secure a sustainable business and to promote values-based service quality.

The generalization of this study, based on the findings, can be applied to other firms, but not to all companies. The CEO of IBM, Samuel J. Palmisano, talks about “The Globally Integrated Enterprise” ([35] Palmisano, 2006). He describes a global supplier and value chain relationship from a major enterprise perspective. He argues that business is changing in fundamental ways – structurally, operationally and culturally – in response to globalization and new technology. The major companies are no longer multinational (MNCs) but global (the globally-integrated enterprise) ([35] Palmisano, 2006, p. 127). He also points out that the globally-integrated enterprise can deliver enormous economic benefits to both developed and developing countries ([35] Palmisano, 2006, p. 133). The “global collaboration” where different stakeholders interact in different developing and learning processes. This shift from MNC to globally-integrated enterprises provides an opportunity to advance both business growth and societal progress. We argue that the companies which have seen these opportunities to make a “new social compact” ([5] Brugmann and Prahalad, 2007), between companies and NGOs, and which are driven by strong values and have these business models built in can apply our thinking. Let’s take a concrete example of another globally integrated enterprise:
Starbucks
.

Starbucks
is a values-based company with strong commitment to all its stakeholders; customers, shareholders, partners (employees), suppliers, strategic partners, local communities and global society. The four dimensions of values-based service quality are present and will secure three of the cornerstones of the strong
Starbucks
concept: i.e. the coffee bean, the
Starbucks
experience and the relationship with its employees as partners. Technical and functional quality are related in order to secure the quality processes of selecting and handling the coffee bean:
Starbucks
purchases and roasts high-quality bean coffees and sells them along with fresh, richly-brewed, Italian-style espresso beverages, a variety of pastries and confections, and coffee-related accessories and equipment – primarily through its company-operated retail stores ([39] Schultz and Jones Yang, 1997), but also by securing the quality processes in its supplier and value chain. Experiential quality can be symbolised by the concept of the
Starbucks
experience, which amounts to more than the store. It is an inviting and attractive third place, and oasis, giving the customer respite from pressure, home and work. “When your average sale is only $3.50, you have to make sure customers come back, and ours do – on average eight-ten times a month” ([39] Schultz and Jones Yang, 1997, p. 247). The values-based quality dimension “HRM and corporate climate” is related to workplace and society: One of the main goals of
Starbucks
management is to create and provide a great work environment by promoting a respectful workplace culture, fostering diversity and inclusion, taking care of partners’ (employees’) well-being, providing opportunities for training and career growth, and ensuring a safe workplace ([39] Schultz and Jones Yang, 1997).
Starbucks
has had programs to incentivize its employees into becoming shareholders of Starbucksand Schultz has thus introduced the label of partner instead of employee.
Starbucks
also works hard to support and encourage its partners’ voluntary efforts.
Starbucks
can also be seen to be securing a sustainable service business. This is dealt with in the code of conduct of
Starbucks
labeled C. A. F. E. Practices (Coffee and Farmer Equity Practices), which was established in 2001 to deliver a premium coffee farmed, distributed and cultivated in an ethical, social and environmental way, secured by the five dimensions, from the ethical dimension to the legal dimension. What are the core pillars of
Starbucks
‘ values? These pillars are not of a general nature and must be contextualized.
Starbucks
‘ value pillars differ from those of IKEA. The four strong pillars of
Starbucks
are: profitability (profitability is essential for future success); passion (enthusiastically develop a satisfied customer-base all the time); responsibility (contribute positively to a great workplace, communities and environment); and excellence (apply the highest standards of excellence to purchasing, roasting and the fresh supply of coffee).

There are several companies which act as globally-integrated enterprises and simultaneously have a strong values-based service brand ([13] Edvardsson et al. , 2006). These enterprises could apply the findings from our model. Examples of values-driven companies outside of IKEA and
Starbucks
include H&M, the Body Shop, Target, and Timberland. These companies actively communicate with their customers about values and work actively to instil their values into their suppliers and value chains, including social compact partnerships with NGOs and society ([5] Brugmann and Prahalad, 2007).

5. Contribution, managerial implications and future research

5.1 Research contribution

The main contribution of the present study is a new model of values-based service quality for sustainable service business (see Figure 1 [Figure omitted. See Article Image.]). The scope of the study includes not only the “logic of value creation”, but also the “logic of values” ([12] Edvardsson and Enquist, 2002; [13] Edvardsson et al. , 2006). Four dimensions of values-based service quality were identified – “technical”, “functional”, “experiential”, and “HRM and corporate climate”. The model also includes the five dimensions of sustainability identified by [28] Kemp (2005) – an “ethical” dimension; a “social” dimension; a “nature-philosophic” dimension; an “economic” dimension; and a “legal” dimension.

All in all, the dimensions of values-based service quality and the dimensions of sustainability form the basis of the model of values-based service quality for sustainable service business, which is the main contribution of this paper.

5.2 Managerial implications

The narratives presented in this paper have demonstrated that service quality is not only built on technical and functional dimensions, but also on the values enshrined in the company culture and the brand. If company values match customer values, then resonance will develop, and this will provide the impetus for a new understanding of service quality. If company values do not match, then dissonance will occur and customers may switch, destroying value.

First, managers must focus on their customers with a view to understanding their values, as well as how to relate to these customers’ values. Values linked to company culture, products, services and brands should be perceived as attractive in the eyes of the customers.

Second, in designing and managing service quality, managers should take into account the dimensions of sustainability – beginning with ethics and concluding with legal statements. This ensures that customers receive value-in-use and that the interests of all stakeholders are taken into account.

Third, the effective cultivation of service quality for sustainable business involves the adoption and communication of attractive values, while simultaneously avoiding any association with negative values.

Fourth, we argue that instilling values into a company, by managing a values-based culture and communicating these values to the customers, is a strategy to be and should be adopted by all companies. In some industries, in some markets, and for some customers, values are more important than they are in other contexts.

Fifth, it seems as if values-based companies are more successful than other companies when we make comparisons with other companies within the same industry. To be linked to “the wrong values” may hurt a business tremendously. Thus, companies should pay careful attention to, and design in the values linked to, sustainable business, corporate social responsibility, and lean production and consumption.

5.3 Future research

Future research should investigate whether the dimensions of values-based service quality and the dimensions of sustainability, as presented in the model of values-based service quality for sustainable service business, are applicable to other companies and service industries – including financial services, telecommunications, transportation, and education. These service industries represent a wide range of services – from standardized to customised, and from discreet to continuous – and would thus provide interesting findings in respect of this important subject.

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