Quality management and continuous improvement
Objective: Distinguish quality control from quality assurance, explain quality circles, TQM and Kaizen, and analyse the costs and benefits of managing quality.
What quality means in business
Quality refers to how well a product or service does what it is intended to do. It is not the same as luxury or a high price: a budget hotel and a luxury hotel can both be high quality, because quality is judged against what the customer was led to expect rather than against the highest possible specification.
Managing quality matters because defects are expensive twice over. The resources used to make a faulty unit are wasted, and the business then pays again to rework, replace or refund it, alongside any damage to its reputation.
- Quality
- How well a product or service does what it is intended to do
- Quality control
- Checking output for defects after production has taken place
- Quality assurance
- Building quality into every stage of the process so defects are prevented rather than detected