1. Discuss the importance of quality partnering and strategic alliances
Quality Partnering: Partnering for mutual benefit is fundamental to total quality. In an intensely competitive marketplace, where quality is defined by the customer, such practices as low-bid contracts, antagonistic internal relationships, and attempts to operate as an island are being replaced by partnering.
The simplest way to understand the concept of partnering or the strategic alliance is to think of it as working together for mutual benefit. Those who work together may be suppliers, fellow employees, customers, and even businesses that are potential competitors
The maximum benefits of partnering are realized when all parties in the chain of partners cooperate.
Several benefits can be derived from partnering. Partnering can lead to continual improvements in such key areas as processes and products, relationships between customers and suppliers, and customer satisfaction. Internal partnering can improve relationships among employees and among departments within an organization.
Establishing partnering relationships with suppliers or customers is a process that should be undertaken in a systematic way.
For example, partnerships such as the one between Procter & Gamble and Walmart where they teamed up to improve shipping and receiving procedures which resulted in the improvement of service they provide to their customers.
Strategic Alliances: Strategic alliances is an agreement between Firms to do business together in a ways that go beyond normal company to company dealings but fall short of a merger or a full partnership.
Quality Partnering: Partnering for mutual benefit is fundamental to total quality. In an intensely competitive marketplace, where quality is defined by the customer, such practices as low-bid contracts, antagonistic internal relationships, and attempts to operate as an island are being replaced by partnering.
The simplest way to understand the concept of partnering or the strategic alliance is to think of it as working together for mutual benefit. Those who work together may be suppliers, fellow employees, customers, and even businesses that are potential competitors
The maximum benefits of partnering are realized when all parties in the chain of partners cooperate.
Several benefits can be derived from partnering. Partnering can lead to continual improvements in such key areas as processes and products, relationships between customers and suppliers, and customer satisfaction. Internal partnering can improve relationships among employees and among departments within an organization.
Establishing partnering relationships with suppliers or customers is a process that should be undertaken in a systematic way.
For example, partnerships such as the one between Procter & Gamble and Walmart where they teamed up to improve shipping and receiving procedures which resulted in the improvement of service they provide to their customers.
Strategic Alliances: Strategic alliances is an agreement between Firms to do business together in a ways that go beyond normal company to company dealings but fall short of a merger or a full partnership.
2. Discuss the various forms of quality partnering and strategic alliances
Partnership can be established in different ways and with different parties. In particular, Potential partners can be employees, suppliers, customers and also potential competitors.
1.Internal Partnering: Internal partnering is creating an environment and establishing mechanisms within it that bring managers and employees, teams, and individual employees together in mutually supportive alliances that maximize the human. The overall purpose of internal partnering is to harness the full potential of the workforce and focus it on the continuous improvement of quality.
2. Partnering with Suppliers: The goal is to create and maintain a loyal, trusting, reliable relationship that will allow both partners to win, while promoting the continuous improvement of quality, productivity, and competitiveness.
3. Partnering with Customers: The key to success in partnering with customers is to get them involved early in the product development cycle. Let them preview the design. Allow them to observe and even try prototype models. Get their feedback at every stage in the product development cycle, and make any needed changes. Partnership with customers leads to customer satisfaction.
4. Partnering with Potential Competitors: This is a strategy that applies more frequently to small- and medium-sized firms, but it can also be used by even the largest organizations, and sometimes is. For example, chips used in Apple iPhone are designed by Samsung.
5. Global Partnership: The partnering concept, like all contemporary business concepts, has a global aspect. Companies that market to customers worldwide should examine the possibility of partnering with suppliers worldwide.
6. Education and Business Partnerships: Two of the most important factors in continually improving the performance of an organization are the quality of employees and the quality of human interaction with technology. To improve performance, organizations must first improve their people and the interaction of their people with process technologies. Individuals who lack fundamental work skills cannot perform at globally competitive levels, and people who lack process skills cannot get the most out of technologies available to them.
3. Discuss the importance of quality culture
A quality culture is an organizational value system that results in an environment that is conductive to the establishment and continual improvement of quality. It consists of values, traditions, procedures, and expectations that promote quality.
The culture awareness of quality, its importance to the business and its customer’s must be led and supported by senior management who also has the duty to set an environment who also has the duty to set an environment which fosters a customer oriented culture and the importance of quality in everyday business operations.
A company culture which has a big focus on quality can be attained through active engagement with customers and their needs, tracking quality performance not only through the sales and marketing department but also throughout all levels of the organization.
In order for an organization to remain competitive in the market, they must form an environment that fosters supportive teamwork where employees are treated with respect and trust. Also, by establishing a quality culture and making quality an essential value, organizations reduce costs since it eliminates costs associating with fixing mistakes.
4. Explain the difference between traditional and modern quality cultures
There are several differences between traditional and modern quality culture, these differences will be most noticeable in the following areas:
1. Operating philosophy: Organization with traditional quality culture the primary focus is on return on investment and short-term profits. On the other hand, organization with modern quality culture the core focus is on customer satisfaction. More attention is given on what is necessary to exceed reasonable expectations of the customers.
2. Objectives: Organizations with traditional culture adopt and develop short-term objectives approach. Organizations with modern culture develop strategic plan, having both short-term and long-term objectives.
3. Management approach: In organizations with traditional cultures, managers are seen as the bosses who give orders and enforce policies, procedures and rules. In organizations with modern culture, managers are seen as coaches of the team. They communicate the vision and goals, provide resources and seek employee feedback and input, build trust and provide training.
4. Attitude towards customers: Organizations with traditional culture tend to look inward and are more concerned about their needs rather than the customers. In organizations with modern culture are customer focused and customer satisfaction is the highest priority.
5. Problem-solving approach: Quality culture focuses the attention on identifying and isolating the roots of the problem, and not just its symptoms, in order to eliminate all causes. The goal is to create solutions and prevent that the same problem recurs.
6. Supplier relationships: In Organizations with traditional culture pressurize the suppliers to bring the prices and speed up delivery, which might result in adverse outcomes. However, organizations with modern culture, customers and suppliers work together as partners to continually improve the relationship and performance.
7. Performance-improvement approach: Organizations with traditional culture have an erratic, reactive undertaking approach for performance-improvement while modern culture focuses on improvement of people, products and processes the working environment and every factor that affects performance at core of operating philosophy.
5. How do you understand who is a customer?
In a total quality setting, customers define quality and employees produce it. Historically, organizations have viewed customers as people who buy and use their products. These are external customers.
There are also internal customers within any organization—the staff. With this background, an accurate recasting of the first sentence is as follows: In a total quality setting, external customers define quality and internal customers produce it. This chapter provides the information modern managers need to establish in their organizations a customer focus that encompasses both internal and external customers.
In a total quality setting, customers and suppliers exist inside and outside the organization. Any employee whose work precedes that of another employee is a supplier for that employee. Correspondingly, any employee whose work follows that of another employee and is dependent on it in some way is a customer. This concept of dependency is critical in the supplier–customer relationship. A customer, whether internal or external, depends on suppliers to provide quality work and produce quality products.
6. Explain customer defined value, value analysis and retention.
Customer defined value: It is important for organizations to understand how customers define value. The value of a product or service is the sum of a customer’s perceptions of the following factors:
1. Product or service quality
2. Service provided by the organization
3. The organization’s personnel
4. The organization’s image
5. Selling price of the product/service
6. Overall cost of the product/service
Customer value analysis: Organizations that don’t know what their customers value run the risk of wasting valuable resources and, in turn, improve the wrong things. The process used to determine what is important to customers is called customer value analysis. This process consists of the following five steps:
1. Determine what attributes customer’s value most.
2. Rate the relative importance of the attributes.
3. Assess your organization’s performance relative to the prioritized list of attributes.
4. Ask customers to rate all attributes of your product or service against the same attributes of a competitor’s product or service
5. Repeat the process periodically
Customer Retention: It is the activity that a selling organization undertakes in order to reduce customer defections. Successful customer retention starts with the first contact an organization has with a customer and continues throughout the entire lifetime of a relationship.
A company’s ability to attract and retain new customers, is not only related to its product or services, but strongly related to the way it services its existing customers and the reputation it creates within and across the marketplace
To retain customers over the long term, organizations must turn them into partners and proactively seek their input rather than waiting for and reacting to feedback provided after a problem has occurred.
7. Discuss product innovation models for customer retention
In order to retain customers and customer loyalty, organizations should constantly provide superior value with zero defects. Through innovation, this goal can be achieved. Innovation models that organizations can use to keep products up-to-date, attractive, and relevant for the customers. It contains the following five process steps:
1. Target the Opportunity: Focus on identifying customer needs and use them to guide innovations.
2. Explore the Idea: Conduct a thorough research to ensure that the proposed innovation will be successful in the marketplace.
3. Develop Alternatives: Develop a variety of alternatives for the innovation-prototypes-and test them thoroughly to determine which is the best.
4. Optimize the Solution: Take the chosen alternative and optimize it for production and delivery.
5. Commercialize the innovation. Develop and deploy an effective marketing program for the innovation. Never let an innovation fail for lack of effective marketing.
In order to retain customers over the long term in today’s hyper-competitive global environment, organizations must innovate.
8. Discuss employee empowerment
Employee empowerment means different things in different organizations, based on culture and work design. However, empowerment is based on the concepts of job enlargement and job enrichment.
Job enlargement: Changing the scope of the job to include a greater portion of the horizontal process.
Example: A bank teller not only handles deposits and disbursement, but also distributes traveler's checks and sells certificates of deposit.
Job enrichment: Increasing the depth of the job to include responsibilities that have traditionally been carried out at higher levels of the organization.
Example: The teller also has the authority to help a client fill out a loan application, and to determine whether or not to approve the loan.
Employee empowerment also means giving up some of the power traditionally held by management, which means managers also must take on new roles, knowledge and responsibilities.
It does not mean that management relinquishes all authority, totally delegate’s decision-making and allows operations to run without accountability. It requires a significant investment of time and effort to develop mutual trust, assess and add to individuals' capabilities and develop clear agreements about roles, responsibilities, risk taking and boundaries.
9. Discuss leadership for quality
Leadership for quality is leadership from the perspective of total quality. It is about applying the principles of leadership set forth in the preceding section in such a way as to continually improve the performance of people, processes, and products. Leadership for quality is based on the philosophy that continually improving people, processes, and products will, in turn, improve the Quality, Value, Productivity, Service-Market share, Longevity, Business expansion, Return on investment
Key Elements of Leadership for Quality are as follows
a. Customer focus
b. Obsession with quality
c. Recognizing the structure of work
d. Freedom through control
e. Unity of purpose
f. Looking for faults in systems
g. Teamwork
h. Continuing education and training
i. Emphasis on best practices and peak performance
10. How to lead for a better quality change
Leading people in organizations through change initiatives require a concerted and systematic effort. The following change-implementation model is designed to help leaders systematically overcome the various factors that inhibit organizational change:
Develop a compelling change picture.
Communicate the change picture to all stakeholders
Conduct a comprehensive roadblock analysis
Remove or mitigate all roadblocks identified
Implement the change
Monitor and adjust
The application of Total Quality Management brings forth all-round benefits and makes the organization more competitive. In the new business environment marked by demolition of barriers and free flow of information and products, organizations retain their competitive advantage by reducing prices, improving existing products and innovating new products. TQM is a business strategy that allows organizations to achieve all this and much more.
SOCIAL NETWORKING ASSIGNMENT:
6. Explain customer defined value, value analysis and retention.
Customer defined value: It is important for organizations to understand how customers define value. The value of a product or service is the sum of a customer’s perceptions of the following factors:
1. Product or service quality
2. Service provided by the organization
3. The organization’s personnel
4. The organization’s image
5. Selling price of the product/service
6. Overall cost of the product/service
Customer value analysis: Organizations that don’t know what their customers value run the risk of wasting valuable resources and, in turn, improve the wrong things. The process used to determine what is important to customers is called customer value analysis. This process consists of the following five steps:
1. Determine what attributes customer’s value most.
2. Rate the relative importance of the attributes.
3. Assess your organization’s performance relative to the prioritized list of attributes.
4. Ask customers to rate all attributes of your product or service against the same attributes of a competitor’s product or service
5. Repeat the process periodically
Customer Retention: It is the activity that a selling organization undertakes in order to reduce customer defections. Successful customer retention starts with the first contact an organization has with a customer and continues throughout the entire lifetime of a relationship.
A company’s ability to attract and retain new customers, is not only related to its product or services, but strongly related to the way it services its existing customers and the reputation it creates within and across the marketplace
To retain customers over the long term, organizations must turn them into partners and proactively seek their input rather than waiting for and reacting to feedback provided after a problem has occurred.
7. Discuss product innovation models for customer retention
In order to retain customers and customer loyalty, organizations should constantly provide superior value with zero defects. Through innovation, this goal can be achieved. Innovation models that organizations can use to keep products up-to-date, attractive, and relevant for the customers. It contains the following five process steps:
1. Target the Opportunity: Focus on identifying customer needs and use them to guide innovations.
2. Explore the Idea: Conduct a thorough research to ensure that the proposed innovation will be successful in the marketplace.
3. Develop Alternatives: Develop a variety of alternatives for the innovation-prototypes-and test them thoroughly to determine which is the best.
4. Optimize the Solution: Take the chosen alternative and optimize it for production and delivery.
5. Commercialize the innovation. Develop and deploy an effective marketing program for the innovation. Never let an innovation fail for lack of effective marketing.
In order to retain customers over the long term in today’s hyper-competitive global environment, organizations must innovate.
8. Discuss employee empowerment
Employee empowerment means different things in different organizations, based on culture and work design. However, empowerment is based on the concepts of job enlargement and job enrichment.
Job enlargement: Changing the scope of the job to include a greater portion of the horizontal process.
Example: A bank teller not only handles deposits and disbursement, but also distributes traveler's checks and sells certificates of deposit.
Job enrichment: Increasing the depth of the job to include responsibilities that have traditionally been carried out at higher levels of the organization.
Example: The teller also has the authority to help a client fill out a loan application, and to determine whether or not to approve the loan.
Employee empowerment also means giving up some of the power traditionally held by management, which means managers also must take on new roles, knowledge and responsibilities.
It does not mean that management relinquishes all authority, totally delegate’s decision-making and allows operations to run without accountability. It requires a significant investment of time and effort to develop mutual trust, assess and add to individuals' capabilities and develop clear agreements about roles, responsibilities, risk taking and boundaries.
9. Discuss leadership for quality
Leadership for quality is leadership from the perspective of total quality. It is about applying the principles of leadership set forth in the preceding section in such a way as to continually improve the performance of people, processes, and products. Leadership for quality is based on the philosophy that continually improving people, processes, and products will, in turn, improve the Quality, Value, Productivity, Service-Market share, Longevity, Business expansion, Return on investment
Key Elements of Leadership for Quality are as follows
a. Customer focus
b. Obsession with quality
c. Recognizing the structure of work
d. Freedom through control
e. Unity of purpose
f. Looking for faults in systems
g. Teamwork
h. Continuing education and training
i. Emphasis on best practices and peak performance
10. How to lead for a better quality change
Leading people in organizations through change initiatives require a concerted and systematic effort. The following change-implementation model is designed to help leaders systematically overcome the various factors that inhibit organizational change:
Develop a compelling change picture.
Communicate the change picture to all stakeholders
Conduct a comprehensive roadblock analysis
Remove or mitigate all roadblocks identified
Implement the change
Monitor and adjust
The application of Total Quality Management brings forth all-round benefits and makes the organization more competitive. In the new business environment marked by demolition of barriers and free flow of information and products, organizations retain their competitive advantage by reducing prices, improving existing products and innovating new products. TQM is a business strategy that allows organizations to achieve all this and much more.
SOCIAL NETWORKING ASSIGNMENT:
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