Globalization has seen the world transition from being diverse and separate in ways that were unimaginable in the recent past. As a result, trade has increased between countries located in different countries, a factor that has helped much in fostering foreign relationships. Significantly, the rise of multinational companies has also been experienced with the sprouting up of giant companies that have located themselves in almost every corner of the world. However, the managing of such widely networked companies is quite hard. Two main factors are crucial for the success of these companies: supply chain management and quality management (Machado et al., 2016). The quality of a supply chain is a very relevant and critical factor in the day to day business operations. This paper looks at the quality concepts and theories for supply chain management.
Quality Concepts and Theories of Supply Chain Management
A supply chain is a very sensitive aspect of a business as earlier on mentioned. The bringing on of quality management to SCM implies that there needs to be an effective working strategy that has been developed for each of the involved parties (Sharma, Garg, & Agarwal, 2012). In this case, the parties include the supplier, manufacturer, dealer, retailer, and eventually the customer. For quality to be realized, each of these involved parties ought to be satisfied. In an SCM, quality is primarily described as how fit a good or service is, according to the perceptions of the consumer, supplier or producer.
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In other cases, quality translates to other factors like how timely a good or service is delivered (Sharma, Garg, & Agarwal, 2012). Today, customers have the tendency to go with the organizations that avail their goods or services on time. If a particular supplier or retailer is characteristic of delays, the ease of losing clients to other competitors is increased. It is, therefore, paramount to ensure that time is of the essence in a supply chain. Most of these delays are caused by the middle men, especially if they are not fully endorsed into the chain or have some shortcomings with the manufacturers or producers.
Also, ensuring the delivery of goods and services in the best possible manner is key (Sharma, Garg, & Agarwal, 2012). As a result of the increased taking of goods from one individual to another, they might be destroyed in the process and lose their quality. This is a very demeaning factor in the SCM. Customers always want to have the best goods at their disposal. This implies that there is a very high risk of losing them if the standards they anticipate for the final goods and services are lower than their expectations.
Process Driven Quality and Customer Driven Quality
Quality can either be process driven or customer driven. The term process driven refers to the ability to carry out or rather put into effect an assignment without being dependent on other factors but sticking to the lines of process. As a result, process driven quality can be said to be quality that is influenced by certain specific processes as laid down by an organization. A good example of a process driven quality is seen in the telecommunications industry. Naturally, telecommunications is driven by the need to ensure that customers receive the best possible services. This triggers them to ensure that they offer nothing short of what is expected.
On the other side, people driven quality is quality that is primarily influenced by the perceptions of other individuals, especially the consumers. It has become one of the best methods of determining quality of products given that the consumers are the final receivers in the chain. Therefore, if consumers are not happy about a particular good or service, they will abandon it and go for other better choices in the market place. Organizations do thus have a role to ensure that they study consumer behaviour and obtain feedback for any goods and services provided. This way, they are able to limit their risk of offering what to them is quality but is not to the public, who form the consumers. A good example of a people driven quality can be seen in the offering of psychotherapy sessions. There is a way that people might respond to various types of counselling that are given by this individuals. A psychotherapist can, therefore gauge the quality of their service provision by looking at how well their clients progress after the sessions are over.
How different quality theories impact different industries
However, it should be noted that the various quality theories differ across the block. For instance, whereas the people driven theory is the most common today, it applies effectively only for some industries and does not work out well for others. The manufacturing industry cannot realize quality if they are fully going to rely on people’s perceptions to determine quality. They thus have to follow the process driven quality, where they work independently without being influenced by others. On the other side, the provision of services is a much different encounter. Its quality is duly justifiable by the results realized after the particular service has been offered and the perceptions and attitudes that people develop towards it.
Conclusion
Little focus might be placed on the importance of quality management in business but the impact it has is so great. As it has been, a company that is characterized by poor quality will definitely lose its market to a competitor. This is, therefore, a call for organizations to develop sensitivity towards the issue and adopt a culture of maintain quality depending on the type of industry they are in.
References
Machado, M., et al. (2016). Supply chain quality management. ILS Conference 2016 , 1-4.
Sharma, A., Garg, D., & Agarwal, A. (2012). Quality management in supply chains: the literature review. International Journal of Quality Research, 6 (3), 193-200.
