Chapter 12 Quality management

Figure 12.1 Quality management is the activity of ensuring consistent conformance to customers’ expectations

Figure 12.2 Higher quality has a beneficial effect on both revenues and costs

Figure 12.3 A perception–expectation gap model of quality

Figure 12.4 (a) The traditional cost of quality model and (b) a more modern view

Figure 12.5 Increasing the effort spent on preventing errors occurring in the first place brings a more than equivalent reduction in other cost categories

Figure 12.6 Control charting – any aspect of the performance of a process is measured over time and may show trends in average performance, and/or changes in the variation of performance over time

Figure 12.7 Low process variation allows changes in process performance to be readily detected

Figure 12.8 The European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model

Figure 12.9 The natural variation of call times in a call centre can be described by a normal distribution

Figure 12.10 The distribution of sample means (averages) from any distribution will approximate to a normal distribution

Figure 12.11 Control chart for the average call length in a call centre: (a) without control limit; (b) with control limits derived from the natural variation of the process

Figure 12.12 Process capability compares the natural variation of the process with the specification range that is required

Figure 12.13 The completed control form for GAM’s torque machine showing the mean (X) and range (R) charts

Figure 12.14 Control chart for the percentage of customer accounts which are mailed outside their two-day period