How to Enhance Quality in Your Business

Every business must strive to provide quality products and services to customers. To achieve that objective the company must draw well thought out policies and procedures to ensure 100% achievement of the targets.

Here are some tips to ensure that your business attains and enhance quality:

Document Quality Objectives and Procedures

Quality management objectives, policies and guidelines must be set and published in manuals, in the business newsletter, on the notice board and wherever appropriate. This is to educate and remind employees and management and serve as guidelines. Even suppliers and customers should be informed on the company's quality management policies and where appropriate be advised to adhere to them.

Educate Employees on Quality Requirements

For total quality management to work everyone in the business must be educated and trained in its principles. Everyone must be brought on board ? from the cleaner, the gardener, the electrician, the clerk, and manager etc. Employees should be made to own the process and not to feel left out of the action. Employees should be organised in quality circles (groups) within departments to brainstorm and implement quality issues.

Foster a Policy of Zero Tolerance to Defects

One error could cause a thousand corresponding errors or negative consequences. Let's take a typical example of a car. A loose nut on the tyre can cause the tyre to run inappropriately and cause an accident. The accident may affect you and whoever you are carrying in the vehicle and probably passers by and other vehicles. It may lead to deaths and injury. The multiplier effect may affect your life and other people's lives without your knowledge just from a single defect. This is therefore to show every aspect of your business must be taken seriously.

All products and services must be checked for compliance to specifications and procedures. The business must foster a policy of zero tolerance to defects and all efforts should be made towards that end.

Use TQM Tools and Statistical Techniques to Measure Quality

Total Quality Management Tools (TQM) tools are a necessary component if you want to measure and enhance quality. Tools such as checklists, flowcharts, Gantt charts, Ishikawa diagrams and the like are important in the quality management process. Statistical techniques help to measure quality levels. By applying such techniques you would have set your business on the quality path. Ensure that you have minimum and quality levels for your products and services. You can use industry, national or international quality standards. If your business attains such standards, inform your customers by publishing your attainment or displaying the quality mark appropriately.

BRAINSTORM PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

A good approach to solving problems and technical challenges is to form quality circles, which will brainstorm problems and solutions and forward to management for approval. Root problems should be brainstormed, key solutions to them proposed and forwarded to management for approval.

REDUCE WASTAGE

Research has shown that most businesses have a 20% wastage rate. Check your dustbin. What do you see? What about the stores? How many goods have been returned because of defects in the past three months? You should work to attain zero defect in your products or services. Ensure that goods are made to specifications. Use statistical techniques to measure quality. Reduce paperwork. Improve the design and substance of your goods and services. Tighten controls. Reduce pilferage.

DELIGHT THE CUSTOMER

Quality management is not static but is a continuous process with the aim of ever delighting the customer. Remember that your competitors are working overtime to get your customers and stay on top. You should work ever harder to get their customers and delight your customers often. You can do that by anticipating customers' needs. Do surveys and research on customers' needs and expectations. Check what competitors are offering. Take action to continuously improve your goods and services.

LEARN FROM THE GURUS

Total quality management embodies a set of rules, policies and guidelines which are best learned from the pioneers. Get yourself books and manual quality management especially from the gurus such as Deming, Juran Crosby, Ishikawa, Fergenbaum and the like to learn more. Most of their ideas may be about manufacturing or not directly relevant to your business but they could be adapted to your business needs and requirements.

BE ACTION ORIENTED

A problem plaguing many people and businesses is their failure to take positive action and be mired by rhetoric and apathy. Management is tied down in endless meetings, conferences ad seminars whose recommendations are never implemented.

Prepare an action plan of your recommendations and solutions with set time frames and review periods. Check what makes action impossible to implement or bottlenecks to implementation.

Your action plan should be divided into short term, medium term and long-term activities. It should be backed by a budget for financing it.

Quality management or TQM is a broad subject and you require to learn more than what is provided briefly here. TQM is not the panacea for all business problems but they can be reduced by 50% if you adopt it appropriately.

To succeed in business you need the right business plan backed by adequate capital, the right product or service, the right marketing strategy, the right location and the right implementation strategy.

Quality management if well implemented could set your business on the path to profitability and success.

About The Author

Abdallah Khamis Abdallah is a freelance copywriter. He provides quality marketing solutions that can boost your business sales and website traffic. Participate in contests to win prizes and get free gifts. For details visit his website at: http://www.qualitywritingsolutions.com

quantumpro@lycos.com

---

Uncommon Common Sense ? Know What is the Most Important Thing in Your Business

Over 3 of my meetings with 3 business owners last week, what really shocked me was how uncommon common sense was. 2 out of 3 I spoke... Read More

Six Sigma Training 101 ? Better Management Basics

What is Six Sigma?Six Sigma is a quality management program that is designed to achieve a "six sigma" level of quality for products. In the mid 1980s,... Read More

Want to Manage Your Time? Get Real!

You know the drill - the ridiculous deadlines, the relentless barrage of email, voicemail, phone calls, all those "got a minute" interruptions, the constant worrying that one... Read More

Assertive Communication - 6 Tips For Effective Use

What IS assertive communication? Assertive communication is the ability to express positive and negative ideas and feelings in an open, honest and direct way. It... Read More

Spinning Gold from Straw: Low-Cost Employee Retention and Motivation Tools in a Changing Economy

New York, NY, February 25, 2005 ? Employee retention and motivation?why should employers care? A storm is brewing. National productivity was up 3.9% in the second quarter... Read More

Turn Your Speech Into A Leadership Talk

My experience working with thousands of leaders world wide for the past two decades teaches me that most leaders are screwing up their careers.On a daily basis,... Read More

He Hate Me: Turning Their Bad Attitude Into Your Great Results

"He Hate Me" was the nickname of Rod Smart, a leading rusher in 2002 for the Las Vegas Outlaws of the now defunct XFL pro football league.... Read More

Managing Employees Is A Little Like Herding Cats

Q: I started my small business about a year ago and it's grown steadily. I like having my own business, but I'm having a tough time managing... Read More

HRM: Contributing to Well-being or Ill-being at Work?

If you were to take the people out of an organisation you would be left with some stock and machinery that would be of little value, and... Read More

6 Ways to Keep Things Simple

Six Ways to Keep Things Simple We can have greater success with our Clients when we make our work processes and agreements simpler and more elegant. This... Read More

Is Busyness Affecting Your Business?

I'm too busy; I'd love to but I'm very busy; I'll get round to that when I'm not so busy.How often have you said any of those... Read More

Performance Management Made Easy

Performance Management is a process that both employer and employee often fear!Why is this so!There is much misinformation about the performance management process and performance appraisals in... Read More

Getting to Consensus

The need to get people in an organization to pull together comes out often in discussions about communication.Let's think of it as getting to consensus, to roll... Read More

Managing the Human Resource Project

We obtain strategic results by aligning HR mission, vision and values. The following overview highlights a macro approach to project management. Seeking a stretch assignment, such as... Read More

What Makes a Crisis a Crisis?

If you're old enough and were living in America about 30 years ago, you may remember the scandal in the motion picture industry known as "the Begelman... Read More

Performance Appraisal Checklist: Raise Not Just Appraise Performance

It's that time again! Perhaps the most dreaded management practice is the annual performance review. Whenever the subject comes up, out comes the groans from both managers... Read More

Have You Fixed the Broken Window?

Left alone it doesn't take long for a building with a single broken window to rapidly become a building with many broken windows. Fixing problems when they... Read More

Make Them GLAD Youre Their Boss

Criticism has the power to do good when there is something that must be destroyed, dissolved or reduced, but it is capable only of harm when there... Read More

Top 7 Methods to Empower Employees

How many times have you asked someone to do something like "draw up a plan for such and such project"? Your employee completes the plan, but then... Read More

Effective Meetings by Phone - Part 1, How to Plan a Teleconference

Teleconferences can be a boon or a bust. On the positive side, they allow people at different locations to attend meetings without having to travel. On the... Read More

The Ins and Outs of Internal and External Relations

INTERNAL PUBLIC RELATIONS: Never overlook an opportunity to do internal public relations about your department and its offerings. A training department must, first and foremost, be visible... Read More

Diversity Training: The Worst Possible Reasons to Request Executive Funding

You're on your organization's diversity committee. You have the best of intentions.And that's the problem.It leads you to appeal for funding for all the wrong reasons.Take healthcare... Read More

Are You A B.O.S.S. -- Boisterous, Omnipotent, Self Indulgent, Sociopath

Boisterous, Omnipotent, Self- indulgent Sociopath. Avoid the B.O.S.S. syndrome with five leadership principles that translate academic leadership theory to real world, 21st century application.There are many academic... Read More

Lawyers With 2 Hands And Everything Else

I heard this back a few years ago. The boss yelled, "Get me a good lawyer but not the one with two hands!""Huh?" secretary was puzzled.Boss continued... Read More

Discover the Astonishing Power of Words Today!

Picture all the people you know who are dynamic, successful and self-confident. The ones who are the stars of every gathering. The people who are witty, intelligent... Read More

What Every Manager Should Know About How to Overcome Boredom

Do you find yourself easily becoming bored or tired at work for no apparent reason? If that's the case, then pay close attention. Research has shown that... Read More