The Importance of Quality in Purchasing & Supply - Literature review Example

THE IMPORTANCE OF QUALITY IN PURCHASING & SUPPLY Prepared by (Student’s Name) Course Name Professor’s Name Date Product quality is the capacity of a given commodity or service to meet the immediate needs of the customer at hand (Kuei, Madu, & Lin, 2001). A product is considered to be of a high quality when it is able to fulfil the customers’ needs and expectations and, of poor or low quality when it is completely shunned by consumers. It is important to note that product quality is highly perceived in term of their immediate characteristics and attributes that continues to vary from one product to another (Rao & Ruekert, 1994). Of particular interest to note, product quality is extensively determined by their specifications- which is defined as the minimum level of requirement for which a product or service is generated and offered to the end client. In manufacturing setting, Kärnä (2014, p.2) notes that product quality is highly associated with the concept of conformance. Conformance is the immediate degree for which given products attribute seeks to ascertain its overall predetermined standards. Kotcharin, Eldridge and Freeman (2012, p.2-3) argues that it is also related to such other important parameters as reliability-which focuses on whether the underlying product would definitely function as expected and without any degree of failure; features- which involve extra attributes that are included beyond the fundamental characteristics; as well as durability, which ascertains the expected operational span of a given product. Research indicates that the concept of product quality affects customer satisfaction to greater extents so that most organisations would engage in intensive product research and development in coming up with innovative commodities for customers (Golder, Mitra, & Moorman, 2012). In the event that product quality is distorted, there is a high likelihood that customer satisfaction and trust in relation to given commodities will eventually dwindle and lose its popularity with the masses. According to Bar-Isaac and Shapiro (2013, p.65),the cost of poor quality amongst organisations is far much greater hence; companies embark on a route of ensuring that they invest heavily with research and development as well as adopt important total quality management practices to produce efficient end products. The aspect of total quality management is indeed a significant component of purchasing and supply process. In essence, total quality management, as a crucial component of purchasing and supply, is perceived to be a philosophy that seeks to embrace all manner of activities for which the overall needs and expectations of a given customer, the immediate set of objectives for organisations are indeed satisfied in a much effective and efficient manner (Wolf, 2014). It also seeks to meet these customer needs in a more cost effective way through maximisation of the potential existing employees in a continuance drive for improvement (Sroufe, & Curkovic, 2008). It is also a concept that seeks to continue its quest for perfection by way of formulating the right form of skills and attitudes amongst the existing and potential employees in order to prevent possible production of defect products hence satisfy the overall customers’ needs at all times (Fox, 2013). In essence, it is an organisation-wide model that should focus on reaching each and every individual within a given organisational setting. Total quality management has continued to be used for the purpose of attaining top notch progress and continual improvement in such important areas as cost; reliability; quality and innovativeness (Ghadge, Dani, & Kalawsky, 2012). It is fully engaged with the improvement of quality of goods and services that are provided through the participation of all manner of levels as well as functions of a given entity (Augusto, Lisboa, & Yasin, 2014). Most notably, it is engaged with the sole purpose of incorporating intensive level of efforts for purpose of ensuring that competitive advantage is attained through the improvisation of every attributes related to an organisational culture. Jiménez-Jiménez, Martinez-Costa, Martínez-Lorente and Rabeh (2015,p.328) notes that total quality management can further be perceived functionally as an incorporation of two fundamental attributes; total quality control and quality management functionality. In this regard, the aspect of TQM goes beyond integrating all employees together in order to make sure that there is improved product-process quality, work environment and, also the element of extensive work culture that results to positive outcomes. Bon and Mustafa (2013, p.524) puts up TQM in three dimensions that include; the product and service dimension; which focuses on the level for which end consumer is deemed to be satisfied with the availed product or service; the people dimension; which ascertains the degree for which a customer is indeed satisfied with the relations created with the supplying organisation; and, also the process dimension- which defines the level for which a supplier is satisfied with internal work processess, and which are adopted for the purpose of developing products and services provided to consumers (Kim, Kumar, & Kumar, 2012). Total quality management is deemed to different in relation to the conventional management in a number of ways that include; first, it certainly focuses on customers absolutely- a factor that allows organisation enjoys competitive edge. Second, it makes sure to generate products that goes way ahead to conquer the existing markets. Consequently, it focuses on perceiving total quality as possessing a multi-dimension level of characteristics (Roldán, Leal-Rodríguez, & Leal, 2012). Notably, it results to the formulation of a goal-oriented links between such parties as customers; managers as well as overall workers. For this reason, each and every employee is motivated towards contributing to the overall success of quality. To ensure that the aspect of total quality management is adhered to the latter; an organisation is expected to invest heavily on matters related to quality assurance. Quality assurance is deemed to be a continuous effort by organisation to establish and overcome issues related with quality (Hartmann, Kerkfeld, & Henke, 2012). The concept’s fundamental purpose is to ensure that the consumer is able to enjoy the level of product quality required and specified. In fact, quality assurance seeks to ensure that it sorts out issues that might arise in the course of supply of products and services (Zu & Kaynak, 2012). It is a concept that is fairly comprehensive in comparison to quality control and in essence; it includes quality control in conjunction with other forms of management models. It further ensure that a task is conducted right in the first instance and in a much qualitative manner hence replaces the conventional approach that relate to the cost of inspection as well as other aspects of quality control in comparison to the cost that results from defective products that quality control fails to detect. There is a distinctive approach that organisations use to test for product control and reliability aspect. In fact, to ensure product quality and assurance, organisations embark on adopting a distinctive set of tests for ascertaining both quality control and reliability functions (Ghadge, Dani, & Kalawsky, 2012). To sum up, some of the most popular methods used for this purpose include; full examination of products that is conducting a 100% inspection analysis; conducting spot checks for already generated products or services offered to customers; and also, executing a statistical quality control by way of inspecting samples in relation to some systematic plan that is focused on probability theorem (Weele, & Raaij, 2014). Zhao, Huo, Sun and Zhao (2013, p.158) notes that statistical quality control is a test that seeks to avail a systematic approach for purpose of formulating plans for acceptance inspection through sampling technique and, also ensuring that the products at hand conforms to the requirements and specification set forth. References List Augusto, M.G., Lisboa, J.V. & Yasin, M.M., 2014. Organisational performance and innovation in the context of a total quality management philosophy: An empirical investigation. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 25(9-10), pp.1141-1155. Bar-Isaac, H. & Shapiro, J., 2013. Ratings quality over the business cycle. Journal of Financial Economics, 108(1), pp.62-78. Bon, A.T. & Mustafa, E.M., 2013. Impact of Total Quality Management on innovation in service organizations: literature review and new conceptual framework. Procedia Engineering, 53, pp.516-529. Choon Tan, K., Lyman, S.B. and Wisner, J.D., 2002. Supply chain management: a strategic perspective. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 22(6), pp.614-631. Fox, M.J., 2013. Quality assurance management. Springer. Golder, P.N., Mitra, D. & Moorman, C., 2012. What is quality? An integrative framework of processes and states. Journal of Marketing, 76(4), pp.1-23. Ghadge, A., Dani, S. & Kalawsky, R., 2012. Supply chain risk management: present and future scope. The International Journal of Logistics Management, 23(3), pp.313-339. Hartmann, E., Kerkfeld, D. & Henke, M., 2012. Top and bottom line relevance of purchasing and supply management. Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, 18(1), pp.22-34. Jiménez-Jiménez, D., Martinez-Costa, M., Martínez-Lorente, A.R. & Rabeh, H.A.D., 2015. Total quality management performance in multinational companies. TQM Journal, 27(3), p.328. Kotcharin, S., Eldridge, S. & Freeman, J., 2012. The relationship between internal and supplier integration: Effects on product quality, cost efficiency and market performance. In Proceedings of the 21st IPSERA conference (pp. 1-4). Kuei, C.H., Madu, C.N. & Lin, C., 2001. The relationship between supply chain quality management practices and organizational performance. International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 18(8), pp.864-872. Kim, D.Y., Kumar, V. & Kumar, U., 2012. Relationship between quality management practices and innovation. Journal of operations management, 30(4), pp.295-315. Kärnä, S., 2014. Analysing customer satisfaction and quality in construction–the case of public and private customers. Nordic journal of surveying and real estate research, 2. Rao, A.R.& Ruekert, R.W., 1994. Brand alliances as signals of product quality. Sloan management review, 36(1), p.87. Roldán, J.L., Leal-Rodríguez, A.L. & Leal, A.G., 2012. The influence of organisational culture on the Total Quality Management programme performance. Investigaciones Europeas de Dirección y Economía de la Empresa, 18(3), pp.183-189. Sroufe, R. & Curkovic, S., 2008. An examination of ISO 9000: 2000 and supply chain quality assurance. Journal of operations management, 26(4), pp.503-520. Weele, A.J. & Raaij, E.M., 2014. The future of purchasing and supply management research: About relevance and rigor. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 50(1), pp.56-72. Wolf, J., 2014. The relationship between sustainable supply chain management, stakeholder pressure and corporate sustainability performance. Journal of business ethics, 119(3), pp.317-328. Zhao, L., Huo, B., Sun, L. & Zhao, X., 2013. The impact of supply chain risk on supply chain integration and company performance: a global investigation. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 18(2), pp.115-131. Zu, X. & Kaynak, H., 2012. An agency theory perspective on supply chain quality management. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 32(4), pp.423-446 Read More