Quality is everyone’s responsibility but somedepartments impact it more than others. Engineering department impacts most the quality problem at Koala Tech. Quality is not one-step process its a continuous approach. A product is developed based on marketing survey and inputs taken from potential customers. Quality can easily controlled at lowest cost in the initial stages of product development. Products designed with robust designs and proper planning result in fewer quality problems. In the current situation Engineering department created a design based on the directions given to them without taking in consideration, its production feasibility and complications. If suggestions and inputs from the production department were taken then they would have made suggestions to change the design and it would have been much easier to modify the design to incorporate their requirements without compromising on quality.
Koala Tech is in quality crisis. Company’s overall quality needs to be improved and each department needs to play a part in this. Quality assurance department should operate individually and independently. All its policies & objectives must be clearly laid. And department must make sure to train everybody from time to time. It should also conduct quality audits. Engineering department plays a vital role when it comes to quality. Design is the basis of any product. So design people should work closely with production department in initial stages of product development. Purchasing department again plays a significant role. Quality of a product depends upon the parts used to produce it. Quality of the parts should not be compromised for making or saving some extra bucks. Finally, production is the main step in quality control. All the employees working on the assembly line must be properly trained. Machinery should be maintained properly to prevent breakdowns.
Koala Tech is facing a serious quality problem. Quality problem is a whole company’s problem and not just related to some department. If a company wants to compete in the business and run successfully it has to believe in quality. After investigating the problem on hand following recommendations, can be made.
- Communication: One problem that surfaced after talking to various individuals was lack of proper communication. An effort should be made to increase communication between individuals and departments.
- Cooperation: Everybody was involved thinking about their own department and not for organization as a whole. As a result each department was delivering good results but the organization was failing.
- Cross-functional teams: Cross-functional project teams are recommended with members from each involved department.
- Future orders:The company should not take any future orders until the current situation is fixed because this will only increase production pressure.
- Total Quality Management: Company should lay emphasis on TQM. It is a process, which aims at zero defects and maximum customer satisfaction.
Quality department should play a major role. More authority should be given to quality assurance department to implement its policies. High quality is the basic requirement for any company to survive these days.
- Quality assurance department should arrange and provide training and motivating environment to its employees.
- Quality policy objectives and its various processes should be clearly defined, understood and must be implemented at all levels.
- Adequate resources must be provided to implement the policies.
- Quality audits should be conducted from time to time.
- The objective of this department should be to provide a world-class effective quality assurance system.
