After companies determine customer needs, they must concentrate on meeting those needs by yielding high quality products at an efficient rate. Companies can improve quality and productivity by securing the commitments of all three levels of management and employees as follows:
Productivity is the relationship between a given amount of output and the amount of input needed to produce it. Profitability results when money is left over from sales after costs are paid. The expenditures made to ensure that the product or service meets quality specifications affect the final or overall cost of the products and/or services involved. Efficiency of costs will be an important consideration in all stages of the market system from manufacturing to consumption. Quality affects productivity. Both affect profitability. The drive for any one of the three must not interfere with the drive for the others. Efforts at improvement need to be coordinated and integrated. The real cost of quality is the cost of avoiding nonconformance and failure. Another cost is the cost of not having quality—of losing customers and wasting resources.
As long as companies continually interact with their customers and various partners, and develop learning relationships between all levels of management and employees, the levels of productivity and quality should remain high.
Step 1
Analyze your processes. Focus not on the people performing the job but on the tasks they do. Standardize policies and procedures through your company to maximize efficiency. Train all personnel adequately so they can produce high-quality products and take pride in their work.
Step 2
Align your business processes with other companies in your industry. The American Productivity and Quality Center website provides tools, including the Process Classification Framework, to help you improve your company’s business performance.
Step 3
Develop performance measurements. Benchmark your current processes, identify problems, predict future outcomes and measure productivity gains using key performance indicators for your industry. For example, measure quality and productivity in your customer support center by measuring the time it takes to resolve customer issues and the customer satisfaction rate for those support cases.
Step 4
Build quality testing into your processes -- not at the end when it is more expensive to fix. Perform testing on an iterative basis. Resolve defective component problems as you encounter them without waiting for the entire testing cycle to complete. Implement automated testing if possible, because it executes without human intervention and results in a pass or fail outcome that is easy to interpret and act upon.
Step 5
Use business strategies such as Six Sigma to improve quality and productivity. Create projects that define a problem, measure the current process, gather relevant data and analyze the data to validate the cause-and-effect relations. Determine the root cause of issues and design interventions to improve or optimize the processes. Control production so that defects get corrected early on before they impact your final product.
Step 6
Value employee, customer, supplier and business partner feedback and input regarding solving product or service problems. Measure quality and productivity gains by increases in customer satisfaction. Use customer feedback to improve current products and influence the design of new ones. Leveraging customer requirements in your process redesign efforts can help you focus your efforts on the most lucrative areas of business in your industry. For example, conduct surveys or focus groups to gather information to resolve top issues with your product or service. Prepare a report summarizing findings, and distribute the report throughout your organization to improve quality and productivity.
- Top‐level management: Implement sound management practices, use research and development effectively, adopt modern manufacturing techniques, and improve time management.
- Middle management: Plan and coordinate quality and productivity efforts.
- Low‐level management: Work with employees to improve productivity through acceptance of change, commitment to quality, and continually improving all facets of their work.
As long as companies continually interact with their customers and various partners, and develop learning relationships between all levels of management and employees, the levels of productivity and quality should remain high.
Step 1
Analyze your processes. Focus not on the people performing the job but on the tasks they do. Standardize policies and procedures through your company to maximize efficiency. Train all personnel adequately so they can produce high-quality products and take pride in their work.
Step 2
Align your business processes with other companies in your industry. The American Productivity and Quality Center website provides tools, including the Process Classification Framework, to help you improve your company’s business performance.
Step 3
Develop performance measurements. Benchmark your current processes, identify problems, predict future outcomes and measure productivity gains using key performance indicators for your industry. For example, measure quality and productivity in your customer support center by measuring the time it takes to resolve customer issues and the customer satisfaction rate for those support cases.
Step 4
Build quality testing into your processes -- not at the end when it is more expensive to fix. Perform testing on an iterative basis. Resolve defective component problems as you encounter them without waiting for the entire testing cycle to complete. Implement automated testing if possible, because it executes without human intervention and results in a pass or fail outcome that is easy to interpret and act upon.
Step 5
Use business strategies such as Six Sigma to improve quality and productivity. Create projects that define a problem, measure the current process, gather relevant data and analyze the data to validate the cause-and-effect relations. Determine the root cause of issues and design interventions to improve or optimize the processes. Control production so that defects get corrected early on before they impact your final product.
Step 6
Value employee, customer, supplier and business partner feedback and input regarding solving product or service problems. Measure quality and productivity gains by increases in customer satisfaction. Use customer feedback to improve current products and influence the design of new ones. Leveraging customer requirements in your process redesign efforts can help you focus your efforts on the most lucrative areas of business in your industry. For example, conduct surveys or focus groups to gather information to resolve top issues with your product or service. Prepare a report summarizing findings, and distribute the report throughout your organization to improve quality and productivity.
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