Total Quality Management

Overview of the Company

Baby Shop is considered one of the biggest retail stores that develops baby products. Further. The mentioned organisation serves in 19 different countries and has more than 230 stores around the globe. Apart from their physical store, they also retail around 10,000 online products, which is their major key to success. The mentioned business venture has expanded its business to the UAE and opened its first store in Sharjah. Apart from that, the organisation has also started a campaign in order to focus on child safety and increase awareness (Llorca et al., 2010).

Cited firm has a varied range in their different product categories, and they focus on developing the best of the products to attract children from ages 0 to 16. Further, the company comes with the best designs and shades in the clothing segment, which attracts children towards that product. Moreover, the price of these products is generally negotiable and always within the budget of parents. This is the only reason why organisations have such immense goodwill around the globe.

Organisational products and their service quality

Baby Shop deals in a large range of products, and their range starts from infant bay products to toys and clothing. Apart from that, there are baby beds, cribs, and cradles; nursing and health care; strollers and car seats; toys and books; and various others. These all-mentioned products come in varied designs, shapes, and sizes that meet the expectations of the customer's and provide the best comfort to infants and children (Worsley, Chun Wang, and Hunter, 2011). Moreover, the mentioned organisation also has a lot of expectations from their suppliers as they render good-quality raw materials, which helps them increase their revenue and productivity year by year.

The service given by the organisation is also up to par, as if any defect comes to the product from the organisation's side, it is easily replaced within the warranty period. However, if any product is defective from the customer side, it can be corrected by taking a minimum charge or replaced by choosing the new one at the lowest cost. So, it is evident that the customer's is always in front, and this is the main reason for the organisation's success.

Cost of quality

In the process improvement cycle, quality cost is a means to quantify the total cost of quality-related efforts and varied deficiencies. Here, Baby Shop management decides the maximum cost that will be incurred in order to prepare the things. It includes various measurements, and some of them have been discussed below:

Quality planning

It is required that the company determine the quality so that they can execute the work accordingly. It acts as a base that helps the mentioned organisation enhance its overall quality.

Statistical procedure control

It is a technique in which a company sets the range for an acceptable level of quality, and the same helps in maintaining the acceptable level of quality within the product. Through this, products that don't fall within the quality range are removed.

Quality training and workforce development

Here, the company offers systematic training to employees so that they can maintain the quality of their work. This certainly develops the workforce to work as per quality standards.

Product-design verification

Product design needs to be verified in order to ensure that it meets standards.

Systems development and management

Based on the product and quality standards, the system is developed and maintained. This aids in developing standard products and, hence, certainly helps in reducing the cost of quality.

Inspection

In Baby Shop, quality checks can be done through inspection, where random products are selected for fitness. This aids in determining whether the lot meets the quality standard or not.

Testing

Testing for quality fitness is even done, through which errors can be identified and the same can be omitted with due care.

Checking

Checking is done to identify the default products. It is a time-consuming process and certainly incurs costs.

Setup for a test or inspection

The company needs to install premises where product inspections can be done. This increases the cost of operation.

Test and inspection equipment

The company even needs to install the necessary equipment for testing and inspection. The same needs to be maintained from time to time, and hence it increases the overall cost of quality.

Quality audits

Baby Shop needs to do audits, in which daily work gets hampered. This also adds to the quality cost.
Quality plays a crucial role, and customers require products that are of the best quality and available to them at an affordable price.

Quality tools

Quality tools can be used by cited firms in order to identify the problems they are facing within the business organisation and solve the troubleshooting with the best of the measures in order to improve the quality (Ghirardelli, Quinn, and Sugerman, 2011). There are seven basic quality tools that will help the mentioned organisation improve quality. These are:

cause-and-effect diagram

It identifies the major causes of problems, and management takes ideas and implies them within a business venture.

Check sheet

A check sheet is a structured way of collecting data that can be taken into consideration for different purposes (The 7 Basic Quality Tools for Process Improvement, 2016).

Control Chart

Graphs are used for studying how things change from one time period to another.

Histogram

This is the most common form to show the frequency distribution. This helps the mentioned firm tally the past results with the present ones.

Pareto Chart

These are made on a chart in order to see which factors are more dominant.

Scatter diagram

Here, graphs are paired with numerical data where one variable exists on each axis and focuses on developing a relationship (Francey et al., 2010).

Stratification

This is a technique that separates the gathered data from various sources so that a unique pattern is seen.

Quality measures that the organisation uses

Baby shops consider quality as their main source of revenue, and they focus on developing the best products at an affordable price. Moreover, they heavily rely on their suppliers, as they give them the best quality of products, which increases their turnover and develops an immense brand image. Moreover, the organisation sells more than 10,000 products online, so they have kept their official website simple, clean, and with an intuitive design. Further, all the products are beautifully presented in a detailed manner (Völkel, Kiranoglu, and Fromme, 2011). Further, different categories have been developed so that it will become easier for the audience to click on the desired category and choose their favourite of the products.

Moreover, they cited rolling their products through various quality checks and then presenting the same for purchase. Product testing, the quality of the material used, and the development process are all taken into consideration.

Conclusion

From the above report, it is clearly inferred that Body Shop is a global company that produces products for children and has operations around the globe. This report also showcases that organisations focus on developing the standard of their products, and therefore they move their products through different steps of the quality process.

References

• Francey, M., et al., 2010. New insights into the quality of urban storm water in south-eastern Australia. Journal of Environmental Engineering.
• Ghirardelli, A., Quinn, V., and Sugerman, S., 2011. Reliability of a retail food store survey and development of an accompanying retail scoring system to communicate survey findings and identify vendors for healthy food and marketing initiatives. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behaviour.
• Llorca, M., et al., 2010. Infant exposure to perfluorinated compounds: levels in breast milk and commercial baby food. Environment international.
• Oakland, J.S., 2012. Oakland on quality management. Routledge.
• Völkel, W., Kiranoglu, M., and Fromme, H., 2011. Determination of free and total bisphenol A in the urine of infants. Environmental research.
• Worsley, T., Chun Wang, W., and Hunter, W., 2011. Baby boomers' reasons for choosing specific food shops. International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management.
• The 7 Basic Quality Tools for Process Improvement.

UPTO55%

Avail The Benefit Today!

To View this & another 50000+ free

Enter Email

Submit