Good Maintaining Productivity And Quality Essay Example

Many organizations have sought to increase the productivity of its operations. Whilst productivity can be defined as output per hours, it is also highly determined by the number of input and the technology associated with the process of the operations (Steindel and Stiroh 2). With the ever-changing and developing knowledge and technologies, productivity rate could be improved by some great amount. However, on the other hand, a high productivity never meant a high quality.
Several tries to increase productivity led into the decline of quality. As workers tried to produce more, they put less attention to details and quality. Methods to capture a better quality have been published, however it again put some decline to the productivity. This paper will discuss further about Total Quality Management regarding the quality and productivity issues in goods production and service operations.

Goods Production and Service Operations

Quality and Productivity are distinguished in production and service environment. Even though productivity of both environment focused greatly on the output per input of labor, capital and investment, a service operations would then see the complexity of input and output, customisation and aggregation level (McLaughin and Coffey 46).
In a deeper level, quality of service is harder to perceive than the quality of goods production. There are so many kind of services with different quality measurement methods, however from several literatures, we can conclude that a quality of service is greatly determined mainly by customers satisfaction and expectation against the perceived performance (Gounaris 421-433; Weekes, Scott and Tidwell 25-36).
As both quality and productivity are important, a new term called Total Quality Management (TQM) was proposed by Edwrards Deming as a method to improve productivity and quality. Though it has been overshadowed by different operations management methods, TQM still live in many parts of the world.

Total Quality Management

TQM is a framework where the system approach is created to accommodate a good and continuous quality, wherefore it means that quality is everybody's responsibility (Gunasekaran, Goyal, Martikainen and Yli-Olli 947). Although it is focused on the quality, but it was proven that the improve in quality led into the improve of productivity which later on increases profitability of a firm (Arawati, Ahmad and Muhammad 87-88).
With TQM, qualities can be improved with an expectation that there will be less defects and can help to deliver a high quality product to customers. Defect is also considered as a waste in modern Lean philosophy and can be costly and should be avoided (Liker and Meier 36).

TQM has several tools which are used in an implementation of TQM project (Total Quality Management Tools) such as:

Pareto Chart. A chart to highlight the most important aspect between all other aspects. Using this, the organization can see the rate of importance or rate of occurrence in percentage.
Histogram. A statistical graphical presentation to show the distribution of aspects. Same like pareto, it shows how frequent an aspect occurs.
Control Chart. A graph showing how processes work overtime.
Scatter Diagram. A diagram to show a relationship between aspects.
Fishbone Diagram. A diagram to show cause and effects.
Check Points. Can be used to collect data which are done repeatedly by the same person/activity in the same area.
Flow Chart. A diagram showing the sequence of process or work-flow showing the step by step of an activity.
PDCA. A sequence of activities regarding the planning of project, the initiation of project (Do), auditing the process (Check) and adjust if necessary (Action). This helps an organization in implementing TQM and other tools can be used to facilitate this activity.

Works Cited

Arawati, Agus, Mhd Suhaimi Ahmad, and Jaafar Muhammad. "An empirical investigation on the impact of quality management on productivity and profitability: Associations and mediating effect." Contemporary Management Research 5.1 (2009).
Gounaris, Spiros. "Measuring Service Quality in b2b Services: An Evaluation of the SERVQUAL Scale Vis-à-Vis the INDSERV Scale." The Journal of Services Marketing 19.6 (2005): 421-435. ProQuest. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.
Gunasekaran, A., et al. "Total Quality Management: A New Perspective for Improving Quality and Productivity." The International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management 15.8 (1998): 947-68. ProQuest. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.
Liker, Jeffrey K., and David Meier. The Toyota Way Fieldbook: A Practical Guide for Implementing Toyota's 4Ps. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. Print.
McLaughlin, Curtis P., and Sydney Coffey. "Measuring productivity in services." International Journal of Service Industry Management 1.1 (1990): 46-64.
Steindel, Charles, and Kevin J. Stiroh. "Productivity: What is it, and why do we care about it?." FRB of New York Staff Report 122 (2001).
Weekes, David J., Mark E. Scott, and Paula M. Tidwell. "Measuring Quality and Client Satisfaction in Professional Business Services." Journal of professional services marketing 14.2 (1996): 25-37. ProQuest. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.