Category Archives: Quality Management

Service Guarantees Warrantees are common for products such as automobiles, washing machines, and televisions. Such warrantees guarantee that these products will work throughout a stated period of time or else they will be either repaired or replaced free of charge. Less common are guarantees for services. ever the less. Christopher Hart has suggested that the service guarantee can be a powerful tool for obtaini

Cost of Failure Costs of failure pertain to nonconforming and non performing products. Also included in this category are the costs associated with the evaluation and disposition of customer complaints As stated earlier, we further subdivide failure costs into internal and external failure costs.

Cost of Detection/Appraisal Costs of detection or appraisal are those costs associated with evaluating the quality of the product. Costs included in this category are incoming material inspection, tests and inspection throughout the transformation process, test equipment maintenance, and products destroyed during destructive testing.

Cost of Prevention Costs of prevention, by definition. are those costs incurred by an organization in its effort to prevent defective goods and services from being produced. Included in this category are investments in machinery, technology, as well as education and training programs, which are designed to reduce the number of defects that the process produces. Also included in this category are the costs to adm

The Cost of Quality Following Juran’s model, we divide the cost of quality into three major categories: (a) cost of prevention. (b) cost of detection/appraisal, and (c) cost of failure. The third category, the cost of failure, is further subdivided into internal failure costs and external failure costs. The total cost of quality is the sum of the costs in all three categories. The typical percentages of to

Expectations and Perceptions Another approach that is used to define quality in services is to measure how satisfied the customer is with the service received. Customers' satisfaction with service is related to both their prior expectations about the service and their perception of how well the service was provided. Customers develop a certain set of expectations based on a variety of inputs. They consider thei

Additional Views of Quality Technical Quality versus Functional Quality In service operations. as in manufacturing operations, it is important to note the distinction between technical quality. which relates to the core element of the good or service, and functional quality, which relates to the customers' perception of how the good functions or the service is delivered. For example, the appropriateness of the

Understanding the Customer This dimension refers to how well the service worker makes the effort to understand the specific needs of each customer. Parasuraman, Berry. and Zeithaml used these definitions and key elements as a basis for identifying five principal service quality gaps. These gaps address the customer's perception of service performance rather than the managerial decisions around changing.

Communication This is a very important dimension of quality in some services.When you are in an emergency room with a sick child, how well are you kept informed of the process of your child's care? How well do the nurses, doctors, and clerks listen to you.

Access Access relates to approachability and case of contact. How difficult is it to find a repair service for your computer? How many times are you transferred when you call your credit card company to resolve a billing problem.