The Benefits of Maintaining Good Quality - Essay Example

Running Head: Consequences of Bad Quality Consequences of Bad Quality The paper discusses the significance of quality of product and service for a business and indentifies some of the consequences that the organizations have to encounter in case of poor quality of the products or services. The paper also explains the benefits of maintaining good quality and discusses some measures through which the organizations could assure the maintenance of quality to avoid the negative impacts of poor quality upon their businesses. It is unveiled that product quality possesses great importance for the organization and in case of failure of meeting the quality standards of the products, the organizations have to face serious setbacks in terms of loss of business, liability, productivity and increased cost of production. INTRODUCTION Product quality possesses great importance for the organizations operating in different sectors and industries because they could survive in the highly competitive market place on behalf of high quality of their products and services. Product quality refers to the ability of the product to meet the expectations and needs of the customers. The product quality assures that it will work reliability and will perform all of its functions in adequate manner (Anderson et al, 1993). The organizations are required to pay keen attention towards the issue of quality because quality of product and services work to increase the profitability of the businesses. The quality assures that the customers are satisfied having expected quality in return of their money and they recognize the quality delivered by the company that keep them loyal and willing to pay for the products. The product quality also works for establishing and strengthening the brand name and brand image and poor quality tends to have direct and strong impact upon the brand stability (Christopher, 2000). The research paper intends to identify the consequences of poor quality upon the businesses using a qualitative research approach. The paper identifies the importance of quality for the businesses and explains different negative impacts drawn by the poor quality. METHOD The paper employs a qualitative research approach to deal with the issue under study. The paper attains its desired objective of identifying the consequences of poor quality through secondary analysis of data. The information for the research paper has been collected from different secondary sources like books, magazines, journals and research studies. The collected information has been reviewed and analysed to identify the major consequences of poor quality. FINDING The paper basically focuses upon the subject of poor quality consequences. Hence, it ends up with identification of importance of quality for the organizations and the negative consequences of poor quality. It is found that the organizations have to face variety of negative consequences resulting from poor quality. The paper also found some benefits of good quality of the products. Benefits of Good Quality The quality of the products could be assured by following a systematic process that initiated with the decisions of top management regarding the designs and attributes of the planned products. In the next phase the products are designed and taken to the procurement and production process (Anderson et al, 1993). At this stage, the management has to perform the important job of quality assurance so that before the packaging, marketing and sales of the products, their quality could be assured. The quality of the products and services help the companies in building the corporate identity and brands and also support the brand resulting in increased profitability. The winning companies in the game of quality struggle not only succeed to get the attention and recognition from the customers and business world but also record significant increment in their sales volume and profits. Better quality of the products and services results in increased productivity, low warranty and marketing cost and stability of businesses (Fine, 2006). Consequences of Poor Quality The organizations have to pay high cost of poor quality in terms of loss of business, liability, increase of cost and productivity. Loss of Business The organizations experience loss of business due to poor quality because poor quality compel the customers to switch the brand or company so that they could get better quality product or services from other source. In this way, the organizations lose their customer base that ultimately affects their sales and revenue generation (Anderson et al, 1993). The below standard quality of the product could be the major source of dissatisfaction of the buyers and in such situations there are always possibilities that the buyer will not buy that product again and they will also lose the faith upon the brand name and will avoid other products manufactured by same company. The buyers will also tell other people in their friends and family circle about their bad experience with the product and ultimately, these people will also reconsider their decisions while buying the products of that company (Fine, 2006. The organizations face loss of business due to poor quality because the poor quality leads to the failure of the products. The companies have to spent lot of time, money and effort to design and introduce new product or the improved version of same product in the market. But above that they have to exercise strategic efforts and policies to regain the trust and loyalty of their customer that has become a very tough task in the highly competitive marketplace that rarely gives second chance to the companies (Boulding and Kirmani, 1993). Liability The poor quality of the products also result places serious liabilities upon the company. The failure of the products to meet its claimed functions could cause harm or losses to the customers and they could also file law suits against the companies. The manufacturers, suppliers and other parties involved in the production and delivery of products to the customer are obliged by law to provide promised quality to the customers. If the product fails to meet the quality standards then all the people are held responsible for the injuries and losses caused by the low standard quality of the products. The product quality of products and services generally claims three types of liability upon the manufacturers including design defects, manufacturing defects and marketing defects that basically refer to the failure of making people aware about the defect or flaws in the products and services (Anderson et al, 1993). Loss of Productivity The productivity of the organizations is strongly affected due to poor quality because the productivity and quality are closely associated with each other. The poor quality of the products most of the times adversely affects the productivity during the manufacturing process. If the quality of the raw material or parts required to manufacture the products are faulty or defected then there is possibility that the production process will not flow smoothly and the assembler has to spend lot of time and efforts to fix the right parts at right place to make possible the production of the products. If the quality of the tools and equipment is not standardized then there is possibility of injuries and defective outputs and the production department will need to rework on the defective outputs to remove the faults. In this way, the productivity of the firm is badly affected because lot of time and effort is wasted in dealing with the defects and faults induced by poor quality (Boulding and Kirmani, 1993). . Increased Cost Due to the identification of poor quality of products or services the organizations have to spend more money to compensate the below standard quality of their products. The cost of production increases for them because usually the companies have to either replace or repair the products or they have to call back the poor quality products and introduce the new one for the maintenance of their good will and market reputation (Boulding and Kirmani, 1993). The organizations have to face following cost resulting from the poor quality Failure cost: it is the cost that is incurred by the defective parts of the product or due to some fault in the products and services. The company has to compensate the damages caused by the failure and fault of their products. Internal Failure cost: if the poor quality is identified before the distribution and sales of the products then the organizations have to play the internal failure cost to fix the problems detected before the delivery of products or services to the customers External Failure Cost: if the poor quality of the product is identified after its delivery to the customers then the company has to pay the cost involved in recalling of the product or their replacement and fixation of the detected problem. Appraisal Cost: the organizations have to pay for all the activities that are designed to assure that he revised version of the product or service will not contain any fault or quality issue Prevention Cost: This cost includes the expenses involved in the TQ (total quality) staff training, planning, and assessment of the customer needs to prevent the occurrence of quality failure in the products. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION The paper identified some of the major consequences of poor quality that the organizations have to face due to poor quality of their products or services. It has been unveiled that quality is the main area of concern for the businesses of today because they can cater the customers through provision of high quality products and services. The organizations neglecting the quality of their products and services take their business at high risk position where they not only lose their customer base, sales and revenues but also have to pay high internal and external cost due to the replacement or reproduction of the products. The entire discussion could be sum up with the conclusion that poor quality draws severe impacts upon the organizations, their brand name, sales volume and revenues. The assurance of product and service quality is very critical element for all the businesses because this attribute of the product could help them surviving in the marketplace and they could retain their customers while maintaining their brand image only through assuring high quality of their products and services. References Anderson, E. W., Claes F., and Donald R. L. (1993), Economic Consequences of Providing Quality and Customer Satisfaction, Report No. 93-112. Cambridge, MA: Marketing Science Institute Boulding, W. and Kirmani, A. (1993), ‘A Consumer-Side Experimental Examination of Signalling Theory: Do Consumers Perceive Warranties As Signals of Quality’? Journal of Consumer Research, 20(6): pp111-123 Christopher, M. (2000), Fast Cycle Time: How to Align Purpose, Strategy, and the Structure for Speed, New York: Free Press Fine, C. H. (2006), ‘Quality Improvement and Learning in Productive Systems’, Management Science 32 (10): pp1301-1315 Read More