ABSTRACT
Overview High quality is a core competency every organization should develop to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction, retain current customers, and increase productivity. Effective quality management ensures that customer requirements and internal specifications are met by an organization in its day-to-day activities. Also, competitive quality management systems continuously improve the process capability of their process workflows to reduce failure expenses related to warranty, returned goods, scrap, and rework. Table 16.1 lists several of these systems’ characteristics. In this chapter, we will discuss the roles of quality management from two perspectives. First, we will discuss quality management relative to its classic functions. is discussion will also include a very brief history of some of the more important quality initiatives that have been deployed over the last several decades. Unfortunately, much of this history will be left out of our discussion because our focus is Lean, Six Sigma, and operations management applications to global supply chains. A second
goal of this chapter will be to discuss important quality tools and methods, from the basic to more advanced, with an emphasis on Six Sigma methodology.
