Product design is determined by a number of factors; one is the customer’s requirements whereby the product designers have to study what the targeted customers want so that the product can satisfy them in terms of performance, durability, quality, and reliability hence creating confidence in the product so that the customers can be loyal to the product. Another important factor is the production facilities; the product designers should corporate with the production department to see if they have the necessary amenities in production hence making the production job easy. The quality of the raw materials used influences the design of the product so the product designer should have latest ideas of the latest raw materials (Ulrich, 2003). Quality policy guides the design of the product, and it gives guidelines for the quality standard. The reputation of the company also influences the product design, in this case, the product designer should put into consideration the reputation of the company in the targeted market so to have goodwill.
We have five differences between manufacturing and service products; one is the tangibility of the output because services are not tangible, unlike products which are tangible. Service companies, unlike manufacturing companies they don’t hold inventory, the services are created when a client requires it, but manufacturing companies manufacture goods and stock them. Another difference is the labor whereby the service companies employ people with knowledge and the skill in the service delivering discipline hence it cannot be automated while manufacturers can automate most of the production process (Ulrich, 2003). Service companies do not require a strategic location for physical production while manufacturers must have a physical location for its production and stock of the products.
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The learning curve happens to be a very important concept in the cumulative experiences in product production over a period when time increases efficiency in the inputs like raw materials and labor, and it lowers the cost per unit of the output. One of the leading pioneers who came up with the learning curve concept is K.J Arrow, and according to him, when a company produces a lot of output over a certain period of time, the company learns to produce more with the given amount of resources (Carothers, 2011). So with the increase in efficiency and saving of the resources like raw materials and labor, the cost of per unit of the output decreases.
A learning curve is graphically represented whereby we have the X-axis and the Y-axis, a good example is a learning curve whereby we have a cumulative total output in a certain period of time in the X-axis and on the Y-axis we have the cost per unit of the total output measured. So the learning curve drops down which means we have a decline in cost per unit of the output and as we have an increase in the cumulative output over a certain period of time and one learns from this experience (Carothers, 2011).
TQM is the total quality management which is the management approaches of a customer satisfaction success in long-term. In this total quality management effort, all the employees and members of the organization contribute to the improvement process and their working culture. Total quality management is also referred to as the total production maintenance which is a system for the customer-focused company and involves all the members in its improvement (Cua, 2001).
Six Sigma is a collection of techniques the improvement of a process. It improves the output’s quality of a process by the use of identification and removal of causes of defects and the variability minimization in the business hence using a collection of quality management methods such as statistical, empirical and works in creating a good infrastructure of the employees within the company who are good experts in such methods (Cua, 2001).
Benefits of Statistical Quality Control is that it helps one get to understand the root causes of issues and problems affecting a business and helps the clients have long-lasting solutions. These benefits are; statistical quality control provides better means of error detection during an inspection and also reduces the cost of that inspection, it gives uniformity in quality production, it gives a good relationship between the customer at the organization at large, it reduces the number of rejected materials hence cost cutting in the cost of the materials and lastly it provides better ways of capacity and manufacturing determination (Stevenson 2007).
A statistical control is executed using a control chart which is a graph that is used in studying process changes over a period of time. The data is plotted in order of time. The control chart has an average central line, the upper control limit which is the upper line and a lower control limit line which is the lower line and they are all determined using historical data (Montgomery, 2007). By the comparison of the current data lines to these mentioned lines, one can draw a conclusion on whether the variation is consistent in the process.
References
Ulrich, K. T. (2003). Product design and development . New York: Tata McGraw-Hill Education.
Carothers, T. (2011). Aiding democracy abroad: The learning curve . Washington D.C: Carnegie Endowment for Int'l Peace.
Cua, K. O., McKone, K. E., & Schroeder, R. G. (2001). Relationships between implementation of TQM, JIT, and TPM and manufacturing performance. Journal of operations management , 19 (6 ), 675-694.
Stevenson, W. J., & Hojati, M. (2007). Operations management (Vol. 8). New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
Montgomery, D. C. (2007). Introduction to statistical quality control . Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
