quality management

It’s Not Just Any Other Travel Website

Posted on by f1212shana

When searching for airplane tickets online, have you ever noticed the same exact flight having a different price on each travel site? Well, flight fox.com has come up with a way for travelers to get the absolute lowest airfare. Two men, Todd Sullivan and Lauren McLeod, founded this company in Mountain View, California. Todd Sullivan states that there are two types of airfare researchers, one being an “expert”. Members will need to apply in order to be experts. These applicants need to only show they are capable of finding low and good fares. Another type of researchers are “flight hackers”. These people “enjoy the sport of fare-hunting”.

To become apart of this traveler community, Flight fox requires the flyer to enter he or she’s destination and where they will be traveling from, as well as desired itinerary and preferences (connected flights, direct flight, where you would like to sit in the plane, etc.). If someone needs to travel with a pet or surfboard, there is an option for that. This results in a competition between the researchers (anyone apart of Flightfox) to find flights according to the specifications of the traveler.

 

 

 

 

Whoever ends up finding the cheapest fare that best complies with the traveler’s preferences will receive ” seventy-five percent of the finder’s fee that the traveler pays Flightfox when setting up the competition”. This allows for members to have an incentive and further motivation to look for these flights. In addition, it’s a new hobby people can start enjoying. Most people utilize a computer at least once a day, especially when there is down time. Now, you can earn a few bucks during that down time.

I believe this is a wonderful idea. There are many airplanes and websites that not everyone knows about and this site gives the opportunity to contribute such information and help others out, while at the same time having a possibility to win some money! One thing I am skeptical about is that prices of tickets can vary every day. One day, it can be the cheapest price you find and the next it can increase by sometimes a hundred dollars each way, so I wonder if the information given by the researcher is one hundred percent true or if the researcher needs to constantly update the information.

What are your opinions about this article? Would you consider using this site when it comes time to planning a trip, why or why not?

For the complete article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/technology/flightfox-lets-the-crowd-find-the-best-airfares.html?ref=technology.

Management in the Workplace

Posted on by f1221kcisneros

After reading Chapter 3 on Project Management, the first thing that came to my mind was my job. I have been working at Tino’s Menswear for almost seven years now. Tino’s Menswear is a small business located inside Discount Mall in Little Village. There is a lot of competition in the mall since there are a lot of other men stores around us. We focus on selling men dress suits for special occasions such as proms, graduations, weddings, and cotillions in the spring, but in fall we focus on casual apparel. We sell the most during spring because since the weather is nice, people plan their weddings and cotillions.

Every year around this time we start planning on what tactic we are going to use for next spring. We set our goals and plan on how we are going to attract customers to the store. During this time we also plan on how many people we are going to have to hire for the next season since we have gotten really busy for the past two years. We have a lot of customers that have been coming to buy suits from us for years. These customers recommend other people to come and purchase suits for whatever they may need. Tino’s Menswear relies a lot on our long-time customers because they are what keep our business alive. This past spring, my boss and I decided that in order to set ourselves apart from the other small businesses in the mall, we were going to offer free socks and belt when they would purchase suits for wedding or cotillion parties. We also gave customers a special discount if someone had recommended us to them. One of our biggest competitors would always give dress suits cheaper and we agreed that this incentive would attract more customers.

My job relates to project management because we plan, schedule, and control how much we are going to buy for next season. Since I am the manager at my workplace, I have to help my boss choose what suits are going to be sold the most and have to be organized with our inventory. I give my boss my ideas in order to increase our sales and how we should save money when sales do not go as expected. Our main focus is giving great customer service because that is what keeps customers coming back.

My question to you is what keeps you going back to stores to buy clothing? Is it the customer service or the prices? Any ideas on what we can offer our customers for next season?

Do content and warning labels influence quality?

Posted on by f1211rbradow

There is a blog entry on Businessweek’s website entitled “McDonald’s Enters the Age of Transparency.” It explains that starting this week McDonald’s will begin to post the calorie content of their food on the menu boards in each establishment. This is two years prior to a federal regulation, stemming from President Obama’s health care reform, requiring all restaurants to do so on their menus. The article goes on to explain that McDonald’s has done this prior to the regulation because it is something their customers want and it shows that they are not trying to hide anything, which the entry calls transparency, making them a responsible, trustworthy and respectable company. Many people are becoming more health conscious and are starting to count calories or eliminate certain foods and/or ingredients from their diet as they become more aware of what constitutes a healthy diet.

Awareness is not only becoming important in foods but in products as well. The driving force behind this article is the fact that people want to know exactly what is included in the items they purchase as we are not only becoming a health aware society, but an ecological one too. Whether you consider it a trend or rising worry over global warming and oil prices, one thing is certain–people are being more attentive and frugal. The frugality may, and probably is, a result of our current economy both countrywide and worldwide; on the other hand the idea of worth or quality in a product may also play a key role. As we have learned in class, quality is one of the main factors in determining whether or not someone purchases something. The only problem is how do you define quality? The definition is different to everyone. For some it may be reputable brand, others may judge on materials, appearance and price. This is why companies must do extensive research in designing and developing their products to ensure they meet the customer’s wants and needs as closely as possible as demonstrated in our paper plane project.

While this transparency provides the customer with a clear picture of what is included in their purchases and the company with the possibility of greater profits, if they truly took customer opinion to heart. Looking deeper another benefit of transparency to a company is helping to reduce any liability issues if eventually sued. Cigarette and alcohol companies serve as the best examples since they are required to disclose the risks of using their merchandise in the form of Surgeon General Warnings. Toy companies also serve as a good example; they are required to state choking hazards on their products. The reducing liability aspect may be seen by some as a way of the company protecting itself, suggesting unsafe products or poor craftsmanship and possibly low quality. It all depends on the customer’s way of thinking showing that the customer truly leads the market.

What do you think?
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-18/mcdonald-s-enters-the-age-of-transparency

Google’s True Implications of Quality

Posted on by anthonyt301s12

It seems clear that Google is a company that will last into the undeterminable future. It feels this way because Google develops people with abilities to create and perform at levels that are undeterminable. Google’s strategy seems attainable at the rate which it creates these people. Just recently a former Google Tech Manager was giving a position to head Yahoo Inc. as president and CEO, Marissa Mayer. Marissa Mayer has a great reputation from her work at Google and on the Board of Wall Mart. She is an exceptionally hard working woman who defies the stereotype and brings a special way into encouraging and motivating future women leaders. Her time at Yahoo will not be easy, the company has been in serious reconstruction of it’s strategically pursuance of survival in a world dominated by Bing, Google and Facebook.  For Yahoo adding some previous Google employees would seem to be a good thing for the company. Twitter for example a thriving social media company has taken some on. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Some former Googlers have said they have taken what they have learned management-wise from Google to their new jobs. Twitter’s Mr. Costolo said in January that about 80 to 90 Twitter employees previously worked at Google, the biggest feeder for the start-up, which has more than 900 employees.” Although we learned about product quality, having a quality management system created by employees will most likely create a quality product. Most products even the most innovative ones need a strong functions management team behind it. This is what employees at Google offer. According to the WSJ, “In a 2010 interview, Mr. Armstrong said he also has tried to apply many valuable lessons learned from working at Google under Mr. Schmidt. Those include keeping in mind how much of Google’s success came from a willingness to make bold moves in its early days, as when the company dramatically revamped its AdWords online search advertising program roughly a decade ago, forming what would serve as a key source of revenue, said Mr. Armstrong.” The quality and strategy that former Google employees take away from working at Google is fascinating, I am not sure whether it’s because of their “open” company culture or Google’s continuous education programs, you can answer that in the comments if you would like. But what I have learned from reading about Google is that the characteristics of managing quality are supported by their ability to generate growth through all sorts of demanding tasks.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303612804577533073173479052.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories&_nocache=1342557535536&user=welcome

Marketing Driving Quality Control

Posted on by johnd301s1

While it’s true that upper and lower boundaries for SPC charts can be set by using some measure of central tendency and typical variation, there are sometimes other factors that will be used to determine process control limits. At Dremel, a power tool company owned by Bosch Power Tools, we heavily monitor and control our manufacturing processes. Dremel makes a line of light-duty power tools aimed at the DIY homeowner and craft/hobbyists markets. Many of their applications necessitate some degree of tool precision (of cut width, straightness, depth, smoothness, etc.) and so our processes are designed to achieve that end. Specifically, our manufacturing process controls for the presence of runout (misalignment between the tool axis and the cutting surface) and tests to look for excessive misalignment.

The interesting thing about our particular operation, though, is that the upper boundary for acceptable misalignment is not a function of the standard deviation of our process. Sure, it can be defined that way, but the number itself wasn’t selected using a statistical model. Rather, it was a marketing driven decision. Our product marketing group did extensive consumer insight research to determine what level of precision mattered for the types of projects our customers undertake. After determining that they were happy so long as the tools were at least some level of precise, the team reworked the manufacturing operation around achieving those numbers.

Of course Dremel uses some of the SPC tools we discussed in class to control its operations. For example, we track the number of defects and percent defective. It’s just that SPC isn’t the only framework in controlling our manufacturing process. Marketing, logistics, and other business functions also get involved and have a stake in making sure the products get made a certain way and according to a certain procedure. The manufacturing unit has to be responsive on all those fronts.

The point of bringing all of this up is two-fold. First, I wanted to highlight that in industry, while many of the operations management tools discussed in class are used, they are not applied in a vacuum and might be modified for a firm’s unique needs. Second, I wanted to encourage thinking about areas where  business functions begin to overlap. Where disciplines begin to intermingle, we need to have some way of making decisions about which framework (or frameworks) ought to take precedent. We need to really understand the goal being pursued and select the most appropriate bits from marketing, finance, accounting, operations, etc., to maximize success.

Are there any instances from your experience where one discipline seemed to be calling the shots in another’s area of expertise? (Exs. Did marketing ever drive finance? Did operations ever affect accounting?)

Do you have a Toyota?

Posted on by Bashayer

Do you remember the Toyota recall in Bahrain? Have you ever thought what really went wrong and why Toyota is recalling those vehicles?

I’ve read an interesting paper What Really Happened to Toyota?  that was analyzing the different recall acts of Toyota which took place in USA due to quality and safety issues. The paper analyzed the main reasons behind such issues as the brand image and sales revenue were severely impacted.

 Toyota and its chain of suppliers had always pioneered quality management methodologies of total quality control since they believed that quality, customer satisfaction and profits are deeply connected. Quality is a major component of Toyota’s strategy and production system, and was always looked at as a role model by other competitors, such as Ford, GE and Honda.

So what really happened that made “Quality” suffer?

The paper states that there are two main reasons behind the quality issues:

  1. Toyota executive management always believed that quality should have a high priority, however, when the new management came in, their focus has changed. The new focus was on rapid growth rather than quality. As Toyota expanded in new markets, from 2003 onward their sales grew faster than the company can manage, and therefore, growth had taken priority over the traditional focus on quality. The decisions were made in favor of meeting sales, cost cutting and profit target while sacrificing product development, supplier management and production.
  2.  The second reason is a result of the increasing complexity of car products due to technological changes. Government regulations on safety, emissions and fuel consumption and the rising customer demands for environment friendly cars with luxury features have all added to the complexity level. This point applies to other car manufacturer as well, but due to the continuous demand and market expansion, Toyota was faced with the challenge of changing its production process to meet the demand of safe, clean, fuel-efficient and comfortable cars.

 

Some of the process change decisions were to compress the lead time between exterior design approval and start of sales to less than 20 months. Another change in process was to introduce an accelerated design cycles that have stressed the development and production systems which have created conditions for quality failure.

 Toyota’s supplier management and its performance were also affected by the above two points. To meet the rapid demand and product complexity, Toyota had to outsource engineers and contract with new suppliers because the current engineers and suppliers were not sufficient. Most of those contract engineers and suppliers were inexperienced with Toyota’s standards and practices, and they were overseas (none Japanese speakers) contacts which had lead to coordination and communication problems.

I think that for any company, risk assessment should be conducted before moving with growth and expansion decision. With Toyota, the quality has suffered because they banded their core values of quality and focused on growth.

In your opinion, what went wrong with Toyota?

Sitting On Sustainable Luxury, A Process Not Many People Appreciate!

Posted on by danab502

Have you ever thought about how much time and effort it takes to produce the chair and sofa you sit on, or the bed you sleep on?

I can certainly relate to the chapters we studied relating to product design, and quality management and international standards. Working for a furniture company, I get to watch training videos of how our products are produced. I must admit furniture design is very intense. Every chair, bed, and table has to be designed according to the ergonomics of the human body, as well as international standards; since our furniture is sold worldwide. Every piece is designed to assure comfort, convenience and style. Along with product design, the main focus has now become on “ecodesign”, the following is the statement our company shares regarding sustainability:  “Like any industrial product, furniture is a source of environmental impact. Thereby participating in its degradation to the extent that it requires materials and energy, it must be transported and packaged, it can be maintained and repaired, and it will one day become a waste… This policy is now inseparable to our commitments of quality and creativity.” This statement clearly shows our company’s use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).

Our furniture pieces are designed by top European designers, creators and architects. Every piece of furniture produced goes through a very long production cycle. Furniture design begins with creativity, followed by design with the use of software such as Computer-aided design (CAD), and Design for manufacture and assembly (DFMA). Once the design is completed digitally, a prototype is then produced with the use of human labor as well as Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). The prototype is then tested by the designer and management.

Quality management is of crucial importance when it comes to the furniture we sell. To assure quality our furniture is only made with solid wood from environmentally sustainable forests, and the fabrics and leathers used in our furniture go through a series of detailed tests. Our fabrics go through a rub test, known as Martindale Test, which tests a fabric’s durability by counting the number of rubs it takes for a fabric to wear out. If a fabric wears out before 30,000 rubs then it is not durable, the most durable are fabrics from 30,000 to 100,000 rubs. Our leathers also go through a series of different testing methods such as absorbency, burning and stretching. A thorough inspection of the materials used is done by experts who “have the eye” to spot mistakes or natural defects. Some natural defects are usually found in leather. Since it comes from cows, some cows might get scars which are then found in the leather. A piece of furniture will only go into production, once it meets the European Furniture Standards and passes quality control.

Now that you have a better understanding about the creation of sustainable furniture, can you relate the importance of product design and quality management to other daily life objects?