Operations and Manufacturing Quality Management

Question: Discuss about the Operations and Manufacturing Quality Management. Answer: Introduction The assignment focuses on the specific operational process of an organization in order to satisfy customer needs. The chosen case study is CSR Sifang Co Ltd, headquartered in China. This company is a rolling stock manufacturer of passenger coaches, bi-level cars, diesel locomotives and others. CSR Sifang Co Ltd has presence in many countries such as US Singapore, Argentina. This company supplies locomotive parts to various countries. This company manufactures high sped trains, metro car and even permanent magnet straddled type monorail. Main customers of this company are Metro railway authority, Railways authority, monorail authority, land transport authority of different countries. The assignment starts discussion with two operational processes that are needed to follow by CSR Sifang Co Ltd in order to bring efficiency. This company has faced challenges regarding manufactured products in the overseas. Efficient quality management and operational process may improve the service quality. ITO framework is used to present brief description of the resources, transforming activities and the desirable outputs (Mok, Sparks and Kadampully 2013). IT outsourcing process addresses the requirements of suppliers and customers. Literature review section highlights the theories relating to quality management in operation and ITO framework. This paper also finds out the problems regarding ITP framework and their effect on the company followed by the recommendation for quality improvement. Description of the process In the view Parast and Adams (2012), operational process for a manufacturing firm has four main components such as inputs, output, resources and activities. Two processes can be mentioned such as total quality management (TQM) and six sigma, for improvement of production quality and service delivery in order to achieve customer satisfaction. As described by Mortimer and Mortimer (2015), total quality management is a process where the firm has to maintain total productivity in order to get long-term success for customer satisfaction. Mitra (2016) mentioned that total quality management involves several processes such as integrating quality into designing process, upgrading software system, employee training and product manufacturing process. Product manufacturing system involves the employment of inputs or resources, transformation of inputs into final good and the output (Nicolay et al. 2012) Total quality management process with product manufacturing system Input Transformation Output Feedback Customer issues invitation to tender for the suppliers Suppliers produce an outline design of the product as per buyer needs. Adaptation of standardization on the product design If preliminary design is accepted, decisions are taken for purchasing resources needed for rolling stock. . Need to sent for configuration control procedure Sheet steel for auto manufacturing Sheet steel is processed through deformation, bending steel, drawing into a curved shaped, stamping, extrusion and forging. Processed steel with specific shape that can be used in car or other automotive manufacturing. Car parts, , gas tanks, rear axles and drive shafts, gear boxes, steering box components, wheel drums, braking systems are installed. All the parts are assembled using pneumatically assisted tools. Parts are assembled for the final product Quality of all parts needs to be checked through quality control process. Paints are required for the assembled parts. All parts are painted for the final stage of production. Painted parts All assembled parts, gasoline, battery, tires, antifreeze. All parts are transformed into final cars Car prepared as a finished product Final audits are done at this stage regarding quality of service. Delivery of the final product to the distributors Various transportation modes and effective use of logistics Delivery of cars to the local and international distributors Value speed service is needed to check Table 1: Product manufacturing system (Source: created by author) Second ITO process for the manufacturing unit Activities Input Transformation Output/ service Feedback Refining steel Components, equipments, building, labour and energy These inputs are transformed into spares parts through skill and information used by labours. spare parts Quality checking of those parts Assembling locomotives Spare parts of the locomotives Wheel and traction motor assembly process Rail bogie This process needs a traction motor test, which is controlled by control panel. Delivering locomotives to dealers Locomotives Water transport mode for export Export goods to the other countries Collects feedback regarding quality of the product Repairing locomotives Defects locomotives Treatment of the defect materials Repairing the products Quality audit The ITO model shows the link between the input and the output. The model depicts the effectiveness of the resource utilisation in producing desirable outcome. Manufacturing activity of a product is associated with various activities such as product designing, tendering, and approval of design, manufacture of several parts of the car, coaches and others (Colledani et al. 2014). Quality needs to be assured at every steps of the manufacturing process. Configuration control process is applied at the initial stage of planning and designing. Positive feedback from suppliers, customers and other stakeholders leads to the final production. Quality audit is required at every stage of manufacturing when intermediaries are produced as well as final products (Kneese 2013). Any identified defect is rectified at the product manufacturing stage. This process can reduce the extent of defect and increase product reliability to satisfy the customer. Six sigma methods enlist all the data at each stage of product designing, manufacturing, auditing, product distribution in a statistical tool. ERP software is effective in managing data. This process reduces the burden of manual task and reduces error in both production and business operation (Chryssolouris 2013). The software is effective to find gap between expected and perceived service quality of CSR Sifang Co Ltd through standard deviation of data from a target level of service quality. Literature review of the quality regarding the process Quality management procedure is concerned with production and service quality, relationship with suppliers and the customers. Evans and Lindsay (2013) discussed about eight principles of service quality management. The eight principles are customer centric business policies, leadership, involvement of people, process approach, and system approach to management, continuous improvement, factual approach for decision making, and mutually beneficial relationship with the suppliers. Eight principles of quality management and benefits for an organisation An organisation needs to focus on customer satisfaction, their needs and expectation to increase revenue and market share. In order to implement this policy, effective communication with the customers is needed. Companies need to act according to the feedback of the customer. Braha (2013) opined that the company should follow a balanced approach so that the company can satisfy customers along with other stakeholders such as employees, suppliers, investors, local communities. However, customer loyalty is important for the business as it helps for repeat business. Talib (2013) advocated for leadership principle in the organisation. Leaders can motivate the employees regarding the goal and objective of the organisation. The leader can create such internal and external environment that facilitates the business process. Team collaboration, integrity can enhance team performance and the service quality of the company. A leader can lead at the manufacturing level, product design level or quality auditing level. Effective leadership can mitigate miscommunication among several stakeholders. Parast and Adams (2012) stated that involvement of the employees with the work process increases effectiveness of the organisation. A company needs to arrange proper training regarding effective service quality, increase in responsibilities to take challenging job, effective communication skills while dealing with customer complaints. Customers give value to the responsiveness of the company in addressing complaints. Process approach focuses on management of activities and resources efficiently to get desirable output. This process is helpful for risk management, which considers impact of each activity on the customers and suppliers. Another criterion for increasing operational efficiency is integration of different system within an organisation and continuous improvement of production, distribution and service delivery method. As mentioned by Stark (2015), factual approach is a approach, which enables a company to review, to take challenge and change previous ineffective decision. SERVQUAL model for quality management in a manufacturing firm Timmons and Huang (2016) stated in their research paper that understanding service quality has become a new demand for manufacturing firms as the operational process is associated with customer satisfaction. Manufacturing business firms generally follow business to business setting where a firm manufactures products to distribute those among consumers through another firms. Talib (2013) presented a service classification process for a manufacturing firm. Product oriented services Customers process oriented services Transaction based services Documentation Transport to client Installation / Commissioning Product-orientation training Help desk Problem identification Repairing spare parts Product updates Machine brokering Process oriented engineering such as tests, optimisation and simulation Spare parts management Process oriented training Business oriented training Business oriented consulting Relationship based services Preventive maintenance Condition monitoring Spare parts management Full maintenance contract Managing maintenance function Managing operation Table 3: Service classification process (Source: Lam et al. 2012) The researchers to evaluate service quality of an organisation extensively use SERVQUAL model. This model measures consumer perception about service quality. Jhandir (2012) cited that SERVQUAL process is based on five basic parameters such as responsiveness, reliability, assurance, empathy and tangibility. Reliability is the ability of the firm to deliver service or product efficiently (Rahman, Khan and Haque 2012). Responsiveness measures the willingness of the employees to provide immediate services. The employees give assurance to the customers regarding product quality, distribution and value speed service. It measures the ability of the employees to build trust among customers regarding product and service. Tangibility measures the quality of physical facilities, equipment, safety and appearance of the personnel. Empathy is the care and attention given by the employees for customer satisfaction. As opined by Jhandir (2012), SERVQUAL finds a gap between expected and perceived service quality on theses five dimensions. As stated by Goetsch and Davis (2014), Six Sigma is the product manufacturing and service delivery managing tools that is effective for business organisation. This tool focuses on the variability in manufacturing process, removing causes of defects and increase efficiency in product manufacturing, delivery. Oakland (2014) mentioned that this process creates a special environment in the organisation that facilitates the employees to produce better service and customer satisfaction. However, Kim, Kumar and Kumar (2012) criticised this process by stating that this process is inadequate for complex manufacturing. Moreover, this process reliant on the statistical tools. Although this process has drawback, still it is effective for quality control process for a manufacturing organisation. This process is directly associated with the customer satisfaction method. Six sigma processes has six standard deviations between the process mean nearest specified limit (Ross 2013). Mean of process mov es away from the centre with the increase in standard deviation. Quality issues with the ITO process CSR Sifang has faced several challenges in its operational process regarding quality of the products manufactured by this company. As the company export rolling stock of passenger coaches, bi-level cars, diesel locomotives to different countries including domestic country, consumers expect high quality products from this company. During 2013, Singapore returned 26 defective Chinese metro trains manufactured by CSR Sifang (Karnstedt and Winter 2015). The crack was found in the structure connecting between car body and bogie. This fault indicates gap in production quality management and monitoring system in this organisation. The company has failed to deploy total quality management system mentioned earlier. Vasagar, Mitchell and Whipp (2016) mentioned that the technical, manufacturing and quality assurance components in this company are unacceptable. It has been traced that defect was in the aluminium alloy using during manufacturing process (Timmons and Huang 2016). This incidence put the company under question regarding production quality management. CSR Sifang has been facing problems in the manufacturing process for several years. These problems show gaps in the ITO process in CSR Sifang. There is problem in input processing. The configuration control procedure is not effective to find loophole in the supply of quality raw materials. If defects cannot be mitigated at the initial stage, this can appear at a large volume later in the production process. Gap is there in the input transformation process. Decline in service quality also indicates decrease in service quality of CSR Sifang. There is lack of implementation of SERVQUAl model in the organisation. Inefficiency in management regulatory, lack of proper supervision, hiding quality problems from higher management, not meeting operational standard are possible causes of criticism (Shanka 2012). Moreover, as described in the literature review, five parameters of SERVQUAL model have not been achieved. Increasing fault in product fails to built reliability and tangibility of the product. However, CSR Sifang assures customers regarding improvement of the product in near future through technological up gradation. As the expectation of oversees customers are high, theses defects have significant impact on the business profitability as product quality is decreasing. There is a lack of six-sigma process in this company. There is no enterprise resource planning techniques, which can integrate data of planning, designing, manufacturing and distribution. Quality review techniques have not been implemented properly. The ERP software can identify the gap between expected and service quality (Jhandir 2012). There is gap in the distribution process also. There is lack of internal quality process to find out the defects before export and domestic use. If operation manager can identify possible faults, they can be mitigated at the initial level. Conclusion: It can be concluded from the report that CSR Sifang has been suffering from operational inefficiency for several years. Problems has been facing in configuration control process, product manufacturing process, input transforming process, quality auditing process and distribution process. Employees need to be more responsive in problem solving. Primary criteria for customer satisfaction are having good knowledge about the problem and solutions. Effective implementation of ERP system and risk management tools can reduce these issues. Deployment of effective software in production process can readily identify the defects as well as the gap in service quality. Quality auditing needs to be done throughout the production process starting from fitting panels, dynamics, functioning of electrical components, engine and wheel alignment. Environmental issues are also needed to keep in mind while doing quality auditing. Technological advancement in production will bring cost efficiency, increases efficiency and reduction in pollution. The company may face challenges during quality improvement in the absence of any required training to the employees. Problems may be faced during effective resource utilisation and cost minimisation process. Deployment of ERP software is also costly. Improvement in supply chain management in both demand and supply side can help to overcome these problems. Establishment of good relationship with the customers and raw material suppliers can be effective. 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