Cambridge IGCSE Business Studies 4.3 – Achieving quality production

4.3.1 – Why quality is important and how quality production might be achieved

Quality – to produce a good or service which meets customers expectations.

Why Is Quality important for a business?

• Gives competitive advantage
• Encourages return purchases
• Provides customers with information and builds consumer confidence in the brand
• Reduces costs incurred in solving past sales problem (Customer refunds etc..)
• Helps improve efficiency

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Quality control – Checking product quality at the end of the production process. If defected products are found, the entire batch will be thrown away/repaired

Advantages of QC 

• Faults are found before product is sold to customers
• Less training for the worker is required (compared to quality assurance)

Disadvantages of QC

• Hiring employee to check product costs money
• QC does not explain how fault occurred and can happen again.
• Fixing defected products cost money

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Quality Assurance – Checking quality standards of a product throughout the production process.

Advantages of QA

• Fewer customer complaints
• Tries to eliminate faults or errors before the customer receives the product
• Fewer defected(low quality) products produced (Reduce cost because there will be less broken/low quality products to fix)

Disadvantages of QA

• Expensive to train employees
• Relies on employees following instructions

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Total Quality Management – Continuous improvement of products and processes by focusing on quality at each stage of production

Advantages of TQM

• All employees are aware of the need for quality
• Less likely to receive customer complaints
• Waste (defected products) is removed and efficiency increases

Disadvantages of TQM

• Expensive to train employees for TQM
• Relies heavily on employees following this idea