Please answer all three questions.
- How does the Quality Office play an important role at both the strategic and tactical levels in enabling the organization to strive for quality and performance excellence? Give examples.
- The research and development function is positioned at the “fuzzy front end” of the innovation cycle and is subject to forces of both “market push” and “technology pull.” This sets the stage for unique problems and opportunities in managing quality. Please list and describe the major ones.
The best practices that have emerged and guided the way for rationalization of the need and the role of quality improvement in this domain includes 10 general best practices to attain software quality excellence. Please list and describe each. (https://www.nvtquality.com/white-papers/jurans-steps-for-quality-improvement/
Written Assignment 8
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Written Assignment 8
Quality management is key to the success of all organizations. This study will discuss some aspects of quality management. It will first discuss the roles of the quality office in ensuring quality and performance excellence, the opportunity and challenges associated with research and development, and finally, the 10 general best practices to attain software quality excellence, as recommended by Juran.
Roles of the Quality Office in Ensuring Quality and Performance Excellence
Developing and managing the quality of products and services has become popular with most organizations leading to the concept of quality management. According to Barone (2022), “quality management is the act of overseeing all activities and tasks that must be accomplished to maintain a desired level of excellence.” The department of quality management has been developed in most companies to execute the roles of ensuring the attainment of the desired quality of products and services at both the strategic and tactical levels. The department works via four essential elements of quality management, namely, quality planning, quality improvement, quality control, and quality assurance (Rodriguez, 2021).
During quality improvement, the department mirrors majorly on product improvement, people-based improvement, and method improvement. Various tools, particularly ISO, have widely been applied (Rodriguez, 2021). The Quality Management Team creates quality control policies, plans quality assurance programs, and also develops strategies to decrease waste in order to develop an organization’s productivity and profitability. It oversees processes to ensure they abide by set quality guidelines and standards, trains employees to understand quality requirements, manage inputs, analyze data, and leads teams to ensure quality and performance excellence (Rodriguez, 2021). Feedback and outcome guide the quality management team to the necessary adjustments that can ensure quality.
The Kanban system implemented by Toyota is a good example of Quality Management. Toyota has been implementing the just-in-time (JIT) inventory process using the Kanban concept (Barone, 2022). The concept works by creating a chain reaction that results in a specific action. The company keeps just enough inventory on hand by filling customer orders the moment they are generated to ensure a more efficient line assembly (Barone, 2022).
Problems and Opportunities Associated with Research and Development in Managing Quality
Research and development (R&D) has come to the fore of organizational operations due to the increasing complexity and globalization in the current business environment to ensure better performance (Wei, Wen, & Lee, 2015). R&D generally leads to the introduction of new concepts, innovations, knowledge, methodology, and technologies. However, there is a gap between the requirements of quality assurance and the principles of quality management systems with regard to R&D (Wei, Wen, & Lee, 2015). As a result, R&D poses a fair share of both challenges and opportunities.
Opportunities
- Risk mitigation. With R&D, future risks and challenges are identified before time and allow the early development of strategies and insights for reducing or eliminating the impacts of such risks (Earnshaw, 2020).
- Boosting sales. R&D enables companies to identify customer trends and preferences and develop products and services that can satisfy customer needs, thereby increasing buying propensity (Earnshaw, 2020).
- Development of new and better products and services. R&D enable entrepreneurs and innovators to identify gaps and opportunities in the market and develop new product and service or adjust the existing one to meet the everchanging customer needs and market dynamics. Information obtained from R&D also enables the exploitation of new opportunities that come with technological advancement and changes in the market environment (Earnshaw, 2020).
- Brand reputation identification. Companies use R&D to assess and track the progress of products and services. Consequently, they get to understand customers’ perceptions and opinions concerning their products and services for better decision-making, for example, building goodwill (Earnshaw, 2020).
- Right Utilization of Talent. R&D also enables a better understanding of an organizational workforce in order to exploit its potential optimally (Earnshaw, 2020).
Challenges
- Accelerating innovation cycles. This is attributed to the availability of simulation and automation technologies, and the growing reliance on software. Additionally, there is an increasing emergence of broadly applicable technologies, including digital and biotech (Brennan et al., 2020).
- Limited accountability metrics. Success in R&D is mostly described in terms of patents that are hard for corporate leaders to quantify compared to other parameters like profits. It is hard to value the contribution of a single component of a bigger product (Brennan et al., 2020).
- Prioritization of incremental projects. Most organizations favor “safe” projects with near-term returns. As such, they allocate more than half of an average company’s R&D investment to incremental projects for short-term gains rather than longer-term differentiation and growth objectives (Brennan et al., 2020).
10 General Best Practices to Attain Software Quality Excellence
Quality improvement is required by all organizations to develop processes for enhancing the efficiency, resolution, and safety of the result (Rodriguez, 2021). Juran recommends a ten-step process to be followed for quality improvement (Aerospace Quality Management System, 2022).
- Building awareness of needs and opportunities for improvement. This is the first step in which internal assessments are done to identify existing problems and causes. Relevant stakeholders are then informed to ensure that they work towards addressing these problems.
- Setting goals for improvement. After identifying the problems and pushing people to address them, goals to be achieved are set. A plan to achieve these goals, evaluate progress, and determine success, is made.
- Organizing to reach the goals. At this stage, the execution of the plan is arranged by identifying implementors, assigning roles, and setting dates for activities.
- Training. Participants who do not understand their roles and duties are trained for better performance and outcome.
- Carrying out projects to solve problems. The physical implementation of the developed strategies begins by taking recommended actions to address the identified problems.
- Reporting progress. This forms part of the project evaluation to check if the implementation is on the right track and generating the expected results. Adjustments can be made for a better outcome.
- Recognition and rewarding. After evaluation, good performance should be recognized and rewarded to boost morale for better performance and implementation
- Communicating results. The findings from the evaluation are communicated to all the relevant stakeholders to update them on the lesson learned, and adjustments made, and enable the making of joint and informed decisions that can lead to better results.
- Keeping scores. Regular evaluation and assessment of the implementation progress are maintained to guide the implementation process. It is then followed by communication, celebrations of success, and making necessary adjustments to activities and strategies.
- Maintaining momentum by making annual improvement part of the regular processes. This marks the final remarks made to ensure the whole process is maintained to ensure that the implementation morale is maintained.
Quality is a sensitive part of any organization. All organizations must ensure to apply quality management at all levels and activities of the company, including research and development. R&D ensures the development of new products and services that companies must ensure meet the necessary quality standards. The complexities involved in quality management necessitate the formation of a quality management department that can ensure that all the nitty-gritty of quality is achieved. For instance, companies can employ the Juran ten-step process of quality improvement for better success.
References
Aerospace Quality Management System. (2022). Juran’s steps for Quality Improvement. https://www.nvtquality.com/white-papers/jurans-steps-for-quality-improvement/
Barone, A. (2022). Quality Management. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/quality-management.asp
Brennan, T., Ernst, P., Katz, J., and Roth, E. (2020). Building an R&D strategy for modern times. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/building-an-r-and-d-strategy-for-modern-times
Earnshaw, R. (2020). Interdisciplinary Research and Development—Opportunities and Challenges. Springer Series on Cultural Computing; Earnshaw, R., Liggett, S., Excell, P., Thalmann, D., Eds, 373-387.
Rodriguez, D. (2021). The Roles & Responsibilities of A Quality Management Team. Invensis Inc. https://www.invensislearning.com/blog/roles-responsibilities-of-quality-management-team/
Wei, C. C., Wen, W. Y., & Lee, Y. H. (2015) Planning R&D Management System Based on ISO 9001.