The Value of Quality in Marketing terms

It is incumbent upon the marketing function to both understand and provide a holistic view of how the market defines the value of quality. This requires expanding the view of how value is created and delivered throughout the entire delivery system of the organization. It is essential to understand that value at the point of production does not necessarily translate into value at the point of consumption. Issues of product support, parts availability, service, warranty and so forth all figure prominently into how customers and markets define and evaluate the value offerings of competing suppliers. Consequently, the value information collected and provided by marketing must identify those factors that are critical to quality (CTQ) throughout the organization’s value stream.

            The marketing role also should include linking value information from the marketplace to internal processes throughout the organization that create and deliver value. This is the process so critical to the identification of Six Sigma projects, linking the organization’s processes (inputs) to competitive performance criteria associated with the CTQs (outputs). The tools used to identify the linkages must allow the organization to set project priorities.

            Once Six Sigma projects are under way, an important function in the analysis of information is the development of appropriate tracking metrics to monitor market-perceived changes in value based on changes brought about through Six Sigma projects.

Strategies of Six Sigma

The decades-old manufacturing theory is getting new life as it’s applied to business-process strategies. In this metric-conscious economy, many managers like the fact that Six Sigma is a highly disciplined, project-based methodology that can help companies focus on developing and delivering near-perfect products and services. Six Sigma concepts are proactive tactics based on the idea that rather than wasting time and money fixing products that come out wrong, and dealing with the customer-service fallout and refunds that result, companies should work toward achieving “zero defects”–or as close as possible to that mark–in the first place. Few would dispute that goal.

          Six Sigma has both management and technical components. On the management side it focuses on getting the right process metrics and goals, the right projects and right people to work on the projects and use of management systems to successfully complete the projects and sustain the gains over time. On the technical side the focus is on enhancing process performance (improving the average level of performance and reducing variation) using process data, statistical thinking and methods, and a disciplined and focused process improvement methodology .This is accomplished through the use of two Six Sigma sub-methodologies: DMAIC and DMADV. The Six Sigma DMAIC process (defines, measure, analyze, improve, control) is an improvement system for existing processes falling below specification and looking for incremental improvement. The Six Sigma DMADV process (define, measure, analyze, design, verify) is an improvement system used to develop new processes or products at Six Sigma quality levels. It can also be employed if a current process requires more than just incremental improvement.

What is TQM??why does it fail very often??

“Total Quality Management” one of the buzzing words now a days…what does this Total Quality Management(TQM) really mean?? does it mean that we have to change the current on going process in which every onr is comfortable…or just introduce a new way of doing the same thing??? Many of the companies are behind implementing the TQM methods may it be to achieve the “6 sigma level ” or the heighest of the “CMM” levels….and now its the time for the Quality team to come up with new fancy terms and introduce some other way of doing the same work…then why dosent any thing change in the company??? why dosent the sigma level increase???? Few of the reasons may be

#1Most of the management functions are left to “experts and specialists” 

#2 The management is bureaucratic.

#3.People and their activities are confined to small functional activities.

           Many companies/organizations are facing this problem of “Small Functional Activities”. Due to these the employees are actually unaware of the customers needs and expectations,they fail to understand who is responsible for reaching the customers expectations and this leads to bad grevience handling and the employee ends up to limit his thinking within the boundraies set for him.The basic principle of TQM is all about the “customer first attitude” and to involve people and encourage out of the box thinking.TQM is a process, a process that  combines the customers the people and the process of the organization all working towards the common goal of “customer satisfaction”.

                       When any company/organization wants to implement TQM they should first have the acceptence and willingness from each and every employee including the top management,but this does not happen in most of the cases as man is basically comfortable in his own comfort zone and would never like to change,,,but what one needs to know is “Change is in-evitable” and once every body understands this implementing TQM methods would be very simple.

          The other reason why implementing TQM is not successful mostly is its a very slow process which includes a total cultural change in the process,it involves changing the organization from a function focused to customer focused.Many organizations think that TQM is very costly to implement but what they need to know is about “The cost of quality” i.e. they should know the cost of attaining quality,cost of running a quality department and above all the cost of having a poor quality.Not every body is interested in statistics and numbers which acts as one of the reasons for TQM to fail as most of the methods include the statistical calculators and complex numbers.

TQM is a process of continious small improvement which involves customers,money and people,the best way to implement TQM is to implement “design in quality” instead of ”test in quality” and the output is “Extraordinary results”!!!