Quality and Performance Management of MS

Quality and Performance Management of MSQuality is the second of trio value components (Finch,Byron J., 2008).The commitment to producing property in service and intersections modifys wait on from vertical producing to producing things clients want. The development of the methods and techniques to manage flavour and a culture of employees who want to produce flavor is at the heart of any victoryful communication channel.INTRODUCTIONThis Chapter contains an insight into what select and performance management, meeting customers antepasts at label and Spencer. I provide touch on its history and the effect of whole tone management at the company will be examined. The basis of choosing M S is due to the fact that it is a well established company. More like an institution. Also I work for the company. roughly MSFor 125 years MS has been trusted by customers to carry high fictional character products at great value. It has grown from a Penny bazaar stall to become the UK s leading retailer of choice clothing, food and home products. With more(prenominal) than 21 million UK customers, the company is an expanding international force, now in 40 territories. A team of 78,000 people and over 2,000 suppliers form the bedrock of its business, ensuring their brand will continue to offer Quality, Value, Service, Innovation and Trust. These core values be as important today as they incessantly eat up been. They be all about doing the right thing which is, quite simply, how they do business (MS, 2009).Michael Mark started the business in 1884 selling items at no more than a penny. The business was subsequently joined by Tom Spencer when the partnership started. The business grew gradually and by 1926 there were about 125 inserts. tag Spencer has been built on the following valuesoffering customers a selective chain of mountains of high woodland tradeencouraging suppliers to maintain high character criterions in production and working environment store expansion planned for the convenience of customers, with a greater width of product choicesimplified operating proceduressupporting British industry and buying abroad only when natural ideas, technology, quality and value are non available in the UKfostering in force(p) human relations with customers, staff, suppliers and the community.(Whitehead, 1994).An insight into quality managementQuality is correctance to compulsions (Crosby, 1979), with emphasis on zero defects. (Swanson, 1995) however, implied quality management to be the add upity of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy given need honesty. Implicit in this presumption is a customer with needs and expectations to be satisfied. Quality is a measurable result quality management amendment is more about the journey than the result. What we do and how we do it determines quality and the actionable elements of quality involve the process rather than the outcome. Good quality reduces the cost of rework, waste, complaints and returns and around importantly, generates satisfied customers (Slack, 2007).Marks and Spencer has what is called a specious rule to always take ownership of share their customers and also getting feed sand about their services. Staffs at Marks and Spencer are expect to adhere to the following three principles when serving customersac acquaintance every customer with a hello or a smilebuild a relationship by talking and interacting with the customersaying effective bye and arrive good day to customers.Some feedback is make through online visual senses and some directly with their customers using survey forms. The result from the survey enables MS to review areas of improvement.I strongly believe that quality of services is MSs competitive edge. The golden rules means treating the customers with courtesy, interacting and engaging with the customers doing the sales with a smile, always helping to pack on the till, as king customers if there is still anything else we fundament do for them. All these are attri stilles of good customer services. Good customer service provides the likeliness that the customers would still want to come back. Mr David Williams, an MS customer recently stated It makes a pleasant day for me when a staff of Marks and Spencer says thank you for waiting, attention to their customers when there was a long queue. Consistency with these values make the customers always want to come back which goes a long way in a business.Furthermore, from the companys perspective it also means treating their employees with humanely, with dignity and respect. These in turn incite the employees to be equally sensitive to the needs and expectations of the customers. If staff feels that their efforts are being rewarded and that upcoming effort will also be rewarded, their quality of work is likely to improve. In this way, total quality can be improved. Moreover, where incremental strategic change is dependent on individual members of staff, acting upon, opportunities and threats, the reward system must be appropriate and motivating (Thompson Martin, 2010). From my experience, I sop up observed that when staff is non happy, they will not be able to deliver a good service to the customers, which whitethorn then affect the business.As an employee of Marks and Spencer, I can objectively say we are highly treated well. Staffs are rewarded in so many ways. Some of the incentives are 20% off any items in the store, promotion opportunities, recognition within the organization and pension scheme. Also the company provide bon lend oneselfs, flexible working arrangement for all mothers and graduate scheme for new graduates. All these rewards and incentives are motivating factors that enable staff to perform to their utmost level in serving customers in a satisfactory way.Rewards depend upon the advantage of the Organization as a whole as well as individual, contribution to t he success (Thompson Martin, 2010).As an employee of Marks and Spencer, one thing that I work noticed was that when customers visits the store, they have the assurance that they are going to get exceptional services. Marks and Spencer are not trading in service quality gimmicks but also focus on giving what we call exceptional basics i.e. learning very carefully to their customers and giving thoughts to their needs and providing what they really need. For role model they offerthree items for the price of twocollect by cab for customers if the customer require a cab after sleuthpingsending customers special night club to them within three working days veffective and efficient refund policy. Marks and Spencer offers full refund to their customers with their receipt or if has been lost, a acknowledgement voucher is issuedMarks and Spencer credit card points and vouchers are given to all the card holders on a regular basis which I believe would encourage customers to use their M arks and Spencer credit card to pay at the tillMarks and Spencer require their staff to take ownership in everything they do.(Thompson Martin, 2010) emphasised on commitment to customers services, quality and continuous Improvement. Its this attention to detail that counts in providing good customer service to the customers. There is nothing more Important to Marks Spencer than their customers and achieving a high quality of service. The company encourages three things i.e., creativity, initiative and attitude. Attitude is one of the key attributes that management at Marks and Spencer imbues on their employees despite the training and skills developed. It is the quality reflection that sets us apart from the competition. Marks and Spencer have improved in their product offerings and looks like they hire people with positive attitude that takes great presumption in delivering exceptional service. commented by one of the customers. It is this type of attitude displayed by their e mployees that leads to innovation and creativity. For example, there was a time a deaf man came into the store for shopping, he wrote all he needed in a sheet of paper. Marks and Spencer already have some employees that help the blind and the deaf for their shopping. after helping him, he was so delighted that he now believes that everybody is treated in the same way without discriminating. Also if a customer likes a peculiar(prenominal) product which was recommended and is not in store and in order to satisfy the customer, they take total ownership to make sure they make arrangement for more stock to be available for the next visit of the customer in store. Marks and Spencer also track their product through surveys to know how well a particular product is performing.As explained by (Kanji,Gopal K Asher,Mike, 1996) To understand the process of total quality management (TQM),where all work is travel ton as process and total quality management is a continuous process of improvement for individuals, groups of people and whole organizations. What makes total quality management different from other management processes is the hard-fought focus on continuous improvement.Most of Marks and Spencer customers knows about their quality and are ready to pay more for the value. MS offers all most ever week, just to motivate customers to buy at the stated price of other competitors products like Tesco and Sainsbury just to let customers knows that there price is still the same as others but the quality is different. Marks and Spencer makes these offers to draw customers attention. They have succeeded as shown my consistently increasing their market share.Also there objectives is to exceed their expectation to deliver good quality to their customers and to achieve zero defects. They design their product to try to prevent errors occurring. Though, it is always impossible to prevent mistakes.Knowing the current quality banals of the product or service in your customers ha nds is the first stage of being able to improve. You can make mistake and you can measure your improvement if you know the origination you are starting from. Having the facts necessary to manage the business at all levels and giving that information to everyone so that decisions are based upon fact are the substantial aspect of Quality Management (Kanji,Gopal K Asher,Mike, 1996)Marks and Spencer rarely get formal complaints but when there is any they resolve it with the customer and they always listen to customers complain which at the end customers feels delighted and satisfy.(Kanji,Gopal K Asher,Mike, 1996) Satisfying agreed customers requirements- relates to knowledgeable customers as well external ones it is necessary to achieve successful internal working relations in order to satisfy the needs of the external customers.The key is service recovery this is why empowerment is so important. (Slack, 2007) Marks and Spencer train their to turn around any negative experiences they may have into positive ones before the customers leaves the store and not to allow the customer to go home not satisfied. Its really worth the effort.Giving exceptional service has always been the motto of Marks and Spencer for years up till now. It is well cognize to everybody about their good customer services. They also get tremendous feedback from their customers and that is the more reason that most customers always want to come back despite the prices of their products. Older people are also helped with their shopping list by assigning a member of staff to the customer to do the shopping. It gives the customer confidence to know that their shopping is done to their satisfaction. One of MSs customers, Mrs Johnson commented that price is not the determinant factor for shopping at M&S it is the good customer services and the way staffs attends to me considering I have been shopping here for over 25 years. They are all well mannered, always with a smile on their face, they take ownership and always scatty to help to pack our shopping One of the key tasks of operation management is to ensure that quality goods and services are provided to both internal and external customers (Finch,Byron J., 2008). Marks and Spencer value their customers queues are monitored and customers are often thanked for waiting and are given the offer to pack their shopping for them. It is more than compensation to acknowledge someone and as a member of staff, I often hear from customers that how grateful and delighted they for the attention that is given to them. The professionalism shown by the MS employees emanated from the training provided and also interacting with customers makes our job more interesting. (Finch,Byron J., 2008) Contends that The best answer to a customers questions can often come only from the employee directly responsible for a good customers services to the customersMS gives customer choice. They have different range for customers, for the older women it is called classic range. This range was developed as result of the survey that was carried out. One of the survey participants, a customer known as Ms. Williams in the survey wrote It fits perfectly ok without any adjustment or complain, I just cannot go anywhere else to buy my clothes than Marks.Another range for the middle age is called Peruna, they are long lasting but very costly. Customers are happy to pay for what they get because of the quality of the finished products and is visible to see said one of their customers. A quality is the degree of fit between customers expectations and customer perception of the product or service. (Slack, 2007)Marks and Spencer respond quickly to customer demand. One key element of quality management is the dependence on empowered teams to document and then streamline processes based on team knowledge and understanding of customer needs and expectation. States customer requirements often fall short of defining customer needs and expectations (Swa nson, 1995)If a product was not in store. Marks and Spencer take responsibility to make sure they find an alternative way to get the product and send it to the customer address just for meeting the customers expectation and to make sure they satisfy customer demand.Dimensions of Quality(Finch,Byron J., 2008) identified eight product quality dimensions and five service quality dimensions which consist of the followingsPerformance relates to the perceive characteristics of the product.Features the additional or secondary capabilities of a product or service.Reliability - measures the dependency and how consistently it achieves the promises given about the product/service.Durability deals how long the product/service last for.Serviceability usually deals with after sales in terms of repairs guarantees and complaints resolution.Aesthetics deals with the appearance and style of the product/service.Response the relationship between the product/service provider and the customer.Repu tation deals with the perception of customers on the company.In addition to the above (Finch,Byron J., 2008)also identified five dimensions of service quality which includesReliability in terms of the company keeping to its promises.Responsiveness deals with how promptly the company responds to their customer needs.Assurance dealing with trust and confidence between the customers and employees.Empathy deals with how employees are sensitive to the needs of the customers.Tangibles showing care and attentions with respect to the physical facilities and written materials available at the company.Marks and Spencer provides both products and service to their customers and fully conforms to all the service/product quality dimensions mentioned above. This I believe has led to the consistent domination of market share in the retail industry by MS.Cost of QualityCost of quality relates to the cost associated with assuring quality of the product/services in addition to costs incurred in correcting defective items. (Finch,Byron J., 2008) explained cost of quality as the cost associated with maintaining and sustaining goods/services which can be categorised into primarily internal and external failure costs, prevention cost and appraisal costs. All of these costs are identifiable with MS. An example of external failure i.e. cost incurred after transfer of ownership to customers at MS are the returns made by customers when something goes wrong with the items purchased at the store when permutation would need to be made in additional to employee time involved in dealing with the defective product. Internal failure cost i.e. costs that may arise due to inadequacy of quality before transfer of ownership to customers occurs at MS when inspection staff have noticed a tergiversation in a product line and had to be withdrawn before r for each oneing the floor level. All the costs associated with this defective product including production and statistical distribution costs aggregates to the internal failure costs. The appraisal costs are those cost associated with meeting quality specification which may include inspection, testing and sampling. At MS this category of quality cost are incurred before the products are distributed to various stores. Usually the quality audits are carried taking samples from millions of product items to ensure they meet quality specification. (Finch,Byron J., 2008) stated that a frequent cause of poor quality is the failure of system that are intended to maintain quality. Hence organisations need to ensure their quality system is audited to ensure that they meet their quality requirements and thereby reduce their appraisal cost. The cost associated to cut back appraisal costs can be categorised as prevention costs. Some these costs includes cost of training, improving the process, quality planning activities. Where more efforts are put in prevention, it should have an impact in reducing the other category of quality cos ts. However, as can be seen from figure1 below, quality cost increases as quality problems gets to customers. simulacrum 1 (Finch,Byron J., 2008)Cost of quality ginmillInternal failureExternal failureCost of quality from Prevention to external failure essential Quality ManagementAs defined by (Chartered Institute of Management Accountant, 2002), TQM is a programme that ensures that goods or services supplied are of the highest quality. However, (Feigenbaum, 1986)defined TQM as an effective system for integrating the quality development, quality tutelage and quality improvement efforts of the various groups in an organisation so as to enable production and service at the most economical levels which allows a full customer satisfaction. TQM as a process must encompass everyone in the organisation and with full commitment of senior management. (Finch,Byron J., 2008) put forward that TQM is based on three principlescustomer focuscontinuous process improvement andtotal involvement.With customer focus, the customer defines what quality is. A distinction is required between what is known as internal customers that are employees within the organisation and external customers who buys the products or services. Each employee in the organisation should have a well defined customer so that there is what is known as supplier-customer relationship extending from the internal customers to the final consumer who consumes the product. For instance in MS an output from a staff (internal supplier) then becomes and infix for another staff (internal customer). This chain feeds itself into the final consumer. If the process is broken i.e. the supplier-customer relationship and the quality needs of the internal customer is not met, it is bound to affect the ultimate consumer.Continuous process improvement is about reducing or eliminating variability from quality processes. Outcomes from processes should be predic hedge and when this is not the case it may become difficult to cons istently meet customer expectations. Continuous process improvement at MS has a very low variability if all any. Continuous process improvement is part of MS Plan A which is quality management plan that contains a comprehensive set of objectives that governs how MS does business. The plan came into existence in January 2007 and commits to changing one hundred things over five years. Plan A is makes a real change to the environment, customers, employees and people working in the MSs supply chains. through Plan A, MS have introduced products and services to help customers live in a sustainably way, continued contribution to local communities and with additional profit generated ploughed back into the business. MS engages every one of its 21 million customers by building Plan A qualities into all of its products and helping customers to develop their own Plan A eco-plans. MS has integrated its Plan A from being a Plan to How We Do Business by integrating it into processes and giving i ts workforce the skills, tools and motivation required to make a difference. (MS, 2009)I believe that it is the commitment from management and the active involvement of employees in developing and implementing their quality objectives Plan A that have contributed to the success of the company. To continue to sustain the level of confidence of quality assurance, managers need to ensure that everyone consistently adhere to their standards and ensured it is continuously measured and monitored. Where necessary corrective action should be taken as advocated by (Deming, 1982) to use of the Shewharts PDCA cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act), as an approach to process analysis. This cycle inevitably leads to redesign and improvement in quality.Tools for solving quality problemsThere are several processes available for quality improvement including DMAIC(Design, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control) and DMADV (Define, Measure, Analyse, Design and Verify) of Six Sigma improvement projects. DMAIC is us ed for existing processes where performance is below what is expect while DMADV is for developing new products/service in order to meet the desired quality level. Also there is the PDCA cycle as illustrated by (Finch,Byron J., 2008) where he identified seven steps to quality improvement summarised as followsFigure 2 PDCA Quality Improvement tool (Finch,Byron J., 2008)Most organisations including MS can improve their quality by implementing any of the available quality improvement processes. Any process used need to be supported by applying appropriate tools for each step. There are various tools and techniques that can be applied as illustrated in figure 3 belowAnalytical toolsMostly used a great deal usedIdea Generation ToolsConsensus toolsProcess DefinitionData CollectionAnalysing move effectAnalysing displaying dataPlanning toolsMeeting management toolsBenchmarkingQuestionnairesPLAN job identificationAnalysis of current situationAnalysis root causesCHECKSelection planning of solutionCheck resultACTStandardise consequence / next cycleFigure 3 Quality Improvement Tools Technique Matrix (Swanson, 1995)In using the above tools and techniques, analysts should list activities to be carried out and the expected output/results of each step. Though not prescriptive in nature employees or analysts can be flexible with the tools they apply depending on the situation theyre faced. The quality improvement models identified above provides an iterative steps but do not provide how the steps are to be prosecuted but there are tools that will aid the accomplishments of the steps identified within the quality improvement model. These tools as identified by (Swanson, 1995) are not exhaustive but absolute majority of them have been converted into a matrix as illustrated in figure 4 below.Idea Generation ToolsConsensus toolsProcess DefinitionData CollectionAnalysing Cause effectAnalysing displaying dataPlanning toolsMeeting management toolsBenchmarkingQuestionnairesFigu re 4 Tools and techniques matrixQuality Awards and Quality StandardsMany customers are quality assured discriminating a business has quality award accreditation. It provides the customer with the confidence that they are buying quality product or quality service. In many cases businesses use quality award as marketing tool which are visible in their marketing and promotion. In some cases some businesses can afford to practice at a premium as a result of quality accreditation. A quality award enables a business or organisation to conform to certain specified standard. A standard that must be consistently adhered to and where a business conducts its business internationally, it may well be a requirement to have and internationally recognised quality standard accreditation. Two internationally recognised standards are the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the International Standards Organisation. The ISO is one of the most world-acclaimed quality standard award/accreditatio n is the ISO quality standards amongst others. According to (International Standards Organisation Discover ISO, 2010) the objectives of the standards where implemented, are to enable products/services to be more efficient, safer and cleaner trade facilitation process governments with technical foundation for legislation in health safety sharing of good management practice safeguarding of consumers and making life simpler. With the insistence of having ISO quality standard in place, it ensures that certified company have the capacity, capability and infrastructure available to produce quality products/services. (Finch,Byron J., 2008). There are various other specific awards depending on the industry. Marks and Spencer especially in the last couple of years have had several awards in recognition of its performance when compared to its competitors in the industry. Some of these awards include are listed below.AwardsPositionEnvironmental Investigation Agencys Supermarket refrigeration tableWinnerCosmopolitan Magazine AwardsWinner of Most Ethical retailerCarbon Trust standardCertificationPesticide Action Network UK supermarket pesticide league tableWinnerEthisphere Worlds Most Ethical CompaniesTop 100Consumer Focus Green to the Core supermarket league tableJoint WinnerGreener Package AwardsRetail Leadership AwardRSPCA Good Business AwardsFashion Commitment AwardLetsrecycle.com AwardsHigh Street Recycling angiotensin-converting enzyme 2009International Wine Challenge AwardsEnvironmental Initiative of the yearForest Footprint Disclosure ProjectBest General Retail Sector factorBusiness in the Community 2009 Corporate Responsibility IndexPlatinum performerThe Independent Green Awards2010 Best SupermarketENDS Carbon2009 Brand Emissions LeaderFigure 5 MS Awards (Marks and Spencer, 2010)ConclusionMost organisations including MS strive to continue to satisfy or meet their customer requirements. MS over years have consistently developed and sell quality products to thei r consumers. This is reflected as they continue to dominate their industry and the fact that consumers believes that whatever they purchase from MS, it is essentially a quality item. Total Quality Management is a continuous process and must have the contribution of everyone in the organisation from the corporate leadership right down to the shop floor staff in order for the organisation to continue to meet their responsibility in delivering quality. Organisations with quality standards and awards must continually review their processes and find a way to continue to improve in order to maintain their market share and most importantly their profitability and competitiveness.