Quality on Operations Research

One of the objective that company conduct operations research is quality improvement
of their product and potential uses. Quality management programs lead to a successful bottom
line.
Quality management is a business principle that ensures excellence in a company's products,
services and internal processes. Companies that implement quality management programs use
the information from them to identify weaknesses, faults, areas for improvement and strengths.
This gives the company the ability to set standards, make adjustments as needed and to offer
greater value overall to their customer base. Although the approach to solving quality issues
varies with different programs, the goal remains the same to create a high quality, highperforming product or service that meets and exceeds internal and external customer
expectations. When companies focus on quality management, they create a plan for success.
Quality management programs improve a company's product. The primary aspects of
product quality management start with performance, reliability and durability of the product. With
quality management programs, manufactured products undergo testing to verify they perform
according to its stated promises or features. This allows a company responsiveness to change
problem areas or improve product strengths. By adding quality management aspects at the
design phase of new products, for example, this allows companies to design performance
benchmarks into the product. These programs can also help to ensure customer satisfaction. By
including customer surveys in the QM program, key personnel gain understanding of the
product features important to consumers. By widening the survey scope to include
noncustomers, this provides additional insight into why these people use the services of the
competitor, allowing the company to integrate these features into their products. Featurespecific surveys can target the areas of a product or service that need improvement or work well
already. These types of programs can help a business create products that customers desire. A
well-thought out quality management program can also help companies reduce waste.
Manufacturing companies, for example, that house raw material inventory pay for its storage,
management and tracking. These costs are built into the price of the product. By implementing a
supply-chain management program, a company can reduce the raw materials it has to keep on
hand, saving money and valuable space. Such a system injects a systematic approach to
keeping raw material needs equal to production requirements, which can help to bring down
product costs overall, improving the product's profit margin. Quality management programs also
can identify areas for improvements in internal processes. This approach can impact
productivity by eliminating unnecessary tasks or improving existing ones. It also generates
teamwork when a company implements employee-based mixed departmental teams that review
internal processes. An example of this is the balanced scorecard approach. This methodology
provides a mechanism for evaluating department operations against benchmarked performance
expectations. This type of quality program identifies how well individual areas of the company
perform when compared with its established goals. It defines whether a company needs to
streamline or re-engineer its internal processes. Quality management programs help companies
establish standards of operation in all departments. By using these programs in multiple areas,
a company can identify the strategies it needs to implement. Through these programs, it can
improve its reputation among its existing customers, which can also help it attract new ones.
This results in employees spending less time and raw material inventory to produce quality
products or services. This recaptures lost monies while refining product and service excellence,
ultimately leading to increased revenues and a better bottom line.

Based on my research, supply chain management with an emphasis on quality control

and management is also an important concept to operations research under inventory theory
and network optimization models. Supply chain management directly impacts product quality
and the overall profitability of a company. For these reasons, quality control in the supply chain
is critical for maintaining a competitive edge in the marketplace and reducing operating costs.
Without quality control, waste becomes prevalent beyond a tolerable amount. If raw materials
are flawed, it can make entire production lines inefficient and increase defect rates in finished
goods inventory. Also, inferior materials may require extra machining or refining, which adds to
employees workloads and total manufacturing costs. Vendors and the materials they provide
are often audited by supply chain staff members to ensure raw materials meet specifications. By
controlling the quality of production inputs, supply chain managers are protecting the integrity of
their companys operations. When supply chain quality control is poor, products are more likely
to break or wear out before their warranty period expires. There are a large number of failures
that can occur once a product leaves a manufacturing facility, depending on the nature of the
business. Customers who are forced to return items may lose respect for the company from
which they purchased the product. Quality control in the supply chain ultimately helps to protect
a companys reputation. The better the control over supplier inputs, the less risk of returns and
potentially hazardous product failures. Companies that experience large quantities of defects
and other forms of waste produced during manufacturing, often implement manual inspections
to ensure product quality. Inspections raise operating costs and are unnecessary if quality
controls are functioning properly. Quality control procedures and audits of supplier relationships
are critical for avoiding continual inspections on the production line. Otherwise, labor hours will
be lost inspecting materials and finished-good inventory that could be allocated to value-added
activities. Hazardous materials are used throughout the world for various purposes in
manufacturing, especially in defense-related industries. Quality control helps to protect
employees and other stakeholders from being exposed to the harmful side-effects of toxic
materials. The U.S. Department of Transportation prescribes important rules for the transport of
hazardous substances. Non-compliance can lead to penalties or fines, which makes quality
control imperative. The more efficiently and effectively toxic materials are handled in the supply
chain, the better for all internal and external stakeholders.