The issue of quality control of goods and services produced by organizations is one of the most important to ensure the minimum acceptable quality of them. For tangible goods, like cars, tools, medical equipment, raw materials, processed foods, computers and other electronic equipment, appliances, medicines, etc.., statistical techniques are used for controlling the processes involved in the production of such goods.
These statistical techniques involve mainly issues related to probabilities, such as Control Chart (which uses the Central Limit Theory), Process Capability, and Acceptance Sampling.
In fact, all of them are of great practical use, because one way or another they allow establishing the minimum acceptable levels for the organization, of the quality of the goods they supply to consumers. Generally speaking, companies seek to produce goods of the highest quality to ensure good productivity over competitors. And the statistics techniques are very efficient for achieving this goal.
For example, when to setting limits using monitoring samples, it is very easy to understand what samples are out of control (Which ones of those samples fall outside the averages of the lower and upper limits Control). Once you have detected the samples averages that are out of the limits, you can conclude that the process is becoming erratic and is not in control. Therefore, you have to make decisions to correct the situation. Otherwise, the company could reduce its productivity and competitiveness, which can generate lower sales. Thus, net income could be reduced as well.
It is good to note that the statistical techniques used for quality control are quite flexible in its application. This means that the computations of some elements are a little difficult to calculate, or they are not available, like standard deviation process. Then, we turn to the determination of the control limits by calculating ranges instead of calculating the standard deviations.
Anyway, it is emphasized, the quality control of tangible is easier than that of services. When it comes to controlling the quality of services provided by organizations such as the health agencies, legal services, telecommunications, transportation of passengers and cargo, hotel services and tourism, the human component plays a very important role. This means that the skills and behavior of people are determining factors in the time that is required to provide services to consumers or users. As an example, assume the hosting services of a hotel where the receptionist is not polite with a customer, due to personal problems. Well, the hotel service quality is seriously affected, as quite possibly the customer could feel this is the kind of attention of all personnel of the entity.
So, the question that appears is this: How can Statistical Tools help organizations to control easier process services quality?