Quality Management in

Business

Name : Doan Minh Thanh
ID number: P1007208
Course : Business Management
Module : Quality Management in Business
Lecture : Shamima Hossain
Due date : April

, 2014
Group : 1A

TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. QUALITY MANAGEMENT ............................................................................................................................... 4
What is Quality? ................................................................................................................................................ 4
The Evolvement of Quality Management ................................................................................................ 4
Identify different approaches of quality management and explain the similarities and
differences between them. ........................................................................................................................... 7
W. Edwards Deming ................................................................................................................................... 7
Joseph Juran ................................................................................................................................................ 10
Philip Crosby .............................................................................................................................................. 11
Similarities of three gurus ..................................................................................................................... 12
Differences .................................................................................................................................................. 13
II. THE BENEFITS OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT .................................................................................... 14
What is Customers Satisfaction? ............................................................................................................. 14
What is Continuous Improvement? ....................................................................................................... 15
Added-values To Be Gained ...................................................................................................................... 20
Types of Information and Effective Marketing Can Improve Quality ....................................... 21
III. QUALITY CONTROL .................................................................................................................................... 24
Quality Management Measurement ....................................................................................................... 24
Planning for quality ................................................................................................................................. 24
Organizing and Leading Quality.......................................................................................................... 24
Controlling for Quality ............................................................................................................................ 25
Users Surveys vs. Non-users Surveys .................................................................................................. 27
What are the methods of consultation employed in one quality scheme to encourage
participation by under-represented groups? ..................................................................................... 28
Identify the value of complaints procedures and analyse how they may be used to
improve quality .............................................................................................................................................. 29
IV. QUALITY MANAGEMENT & PERFORMANCE ................................................................................... 30
What is the role of self-assessment in order to determine an organizations current state
of health? ......................................................................................................................................................... 30
Benchmarking ............................................................................................................................................ 30
European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) .......................................................... 31
What are the importance of communication and record keeping? ........................................... 33
How quality scheme can be effectively implemented by following guidelines on the
stages of staff consultation. ....................................................................................................................... 35
Propose new systems or modifications to existing systems that could improve service
quality ................................................................................................................................................................ 36
CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................................... 37
REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................................................... 38


I. QUALITY MANAGEMENT
What is Quality?
Quality is the ability of a product or service provided by the company to do what it is
supposed to do and moreover, it also satisfies the expectation of the customers (Robbins &
Coulter, 2012). In another hand, Goestch & Davis (2012) defined that quality is a dynamic
state associated not only with the products and services but also people, processes, and
environments that meets and even exceeds the customers expectations as well as produce
the superior value. Moreover, Menezes (2012) emphasized the employees involvement and
continuous improvement in quality. Quality is also a key for the performance improvement
(Abdullah & Tar, 2012). However, Knowles (2011) discussed that the products or services
that derived from the outdated or defective market research information are unlikely to
meet the customers requirements or expectations. An example for the typical flawed
market research is the case of Coca-Cola in 1980 (Hartley, 2009) when the company
thought that the taste was the most important factor for the decrease in sales of Coca-Cola
in 1970s and 1980s. Therefore, they tried to make the Coke be sweeter and introduced the
New Coke with the new flavour. However, Coca-Cola did not calculate to the traditional and
symbolic value of the drink toward the Americans which was indispensable. The result
was that Coca-Cola had to bring back the original taste.
The Evolvement of Quality Management
Quality Management has evolved from the old management methods which focused
only on the volume of production and the cost of the product with the traditional
inspection (post production inspection method) and assurance into a real Total Quality
Management (TQM) which is defined as directing or managing the whole production
process to produce an excellent product or service to meet the customers needs (Gale,
2009).


The development of the Quality Management has gone through six periods
(Knowles, 2011):
1. The Era of Craftmanship Workers
2. The Period of Mass Production and Quality Assurance
3. Quality Control
4. Total Quality Management
5. Standards and Awards
6. Initiatives
In the period before the Industrial Revolution (end of 18
th
Century and in the
beginning of 20
th
Century), the production process was based totally on craftsman, who
was both the products maker and quality inspector. Therefore, at that time, due to the weak
distribution channels, it was very important for craftsman to create the reputation in the
local markets. As a result, the craftmanship guilds appeared, the guildmasters were the one
who made the tested or checked the members of the guild. The craftmen at that moment
would know who were their customers, or customers demand within the local areas.
During the Industrial Revolution and the Gold Rush in 1900s, the rapid
establishment of factories and automation, the factories owners did not need many skilled
and traditional workers or craftmen. The excellent representative for the mass production
would be Henry Ford with the famous Model-T who wanted to manufacture cars and
distribute them cheaply to a large number of customers (Gale, 2009). Therefore, more and
more unskilled workers appeared in the factories. Their only mission was to sustain the
mass production process. In order to segregate between the conforming and defective
products, some persons were employed as the inspectors. This was also the era of the
inspection and quality assurance. Frederick Winslow Taylor was the one who started
scientific management with detailed contribution toward the relationship management
between the inspectors and workers (Robbins & Coulter, 2012).
However, the critique on traditional method which is mainly based on inspection
and assurance due to the reasons below:
1. Lack of Leadership: Old conventional corporates emphasized the roles of control
and organisations (management) instead of vision and motivation (leadership)
(Knowles, 2011).
2. Output-orientation with short-term focus: because the managers tended to focus
into the short-term profits; therefore, the inspectors were orderd to accept even
the non-conforming products in order to increase the output.
3. In order to innovate the products, more and more technical issues appeared and
the unskilled workers with lacking of training could not have enough knowledge
to afford in the new working process.
During the 1920s, the statistical methods were applied in the monitoring of the
quality. At this time, the theory of statistical process control appeared with the great
contribution from Walter A. Shewhart and Edwards Deming (Gale, 2009). However, it was
only widely used after World War II when the Japanese industry was completely destroyed.
At that time, Japan leaders decided that they had to make an improvement in quality
production. Therefore, they asked the support from quality experts including of Juran,
Shewhart, Deming and Feigenbaum (Gale, 2009). The quality management has become the
production philosophy of Japanese.
Since the rapid breakthrough of quality management in Japan, the years of 1960s-
1970s witnessed the prevailed spreading of Made in Japan products in U.S. and Europe
because they were cheaper with higher quality.
The Western countries took late action until 1980s in Britain, in order to compete
the Japan products, the British Standard 5750 (BS5750) for quality management was born
in 1979 and in 1983, the National Quality Campaign started (Gale, 2009).
After that, the International Standardisation Organisation (ISO) 9000 appeared to
create the international standards for quality management. The Total Quality Management
(TQM) has developed and become a worldwide concept for performance and quality
management of firms all over the world.

Identify different approaches of quality management and
explain the similarities and differences between them.
All of quality management approaches are based mainly on some specific products
or services quality standards. Moreover, the implementation will be conducted by the
quality control and planning to ensure the efficiency.
However, the approaches are still separated by some differences. For example,
continuous improvement will focus on improve the small amounts of issues with an
ongoing bias to create the incremental effect. Total Quality Management will include of a
whole big process and standardized quality programmes in the manufacturing. Last but not
least, the quality assurance will be focused in the quality assurance scheme.
In this part, an analysis on different approaches regarding to quality management of
typical gurus will be conducted to identify the similarities and differences among them.
Quality gurus include of W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, and Philip Crosby.
W. Edwards Deming
Regarding to Gale (2009), Deming is one of the most influential and well-known
quality guru with his main contribution in realizing the essential role of organisational
culture and attitude of employees. He emphasized the vital role of leadership and
managements responsibility to motivate the operation units (workers, employees, and so
on) can work better. His main theory concentrates on reducing the costs and increasing the
productivity through less re-work, mistakes, delays and taking advantage of materials as
well as time efficiently (Slack, et al., 2013). Deming had three notable theories: Fourteen
points, System of Profound Knowledge and PDCA Cycle.
First of all, Demings fourteen points for improvement of quality focuses on the
importance of statistical control methods, the participation of both management and
employees, on the job training for employees, the open working environment and
improvements purposes. Regarding to Slack et al. (2013), fourteen points are:
1. Create constancy of purpose or publish the organisations aims and plan.
2. Study and adopt new philosophy to eliminate the stubborn or common
acceptance of delay, mistakes or defects.
3. Cease dependence on inspection.
4. End awarding business that is based only on price.
5. Improve constantly the system of production and service.
6. Institute the on-the-job training.
7. Institute the role of leadership or supervison on employees productivity.
8. Drive out the fear, create a trusthworthy environment and an innovative
attitude.
9. Break down the barriers among departments and optimise the efforts among
staffs and teams.
10. Eliminate the numerical goals, encouragements or targets for employees and
provide the achievements approaches.
11. Eliminate the numerical quotas or work standards.
12. Give people the feeling of pride regarding to their jobs.
13. Develop the training and self-education programs.
14. Put people to work to achieve the above points.
However, beside the fourteen points that can help the transformation process in
organisation becomes more easily, Deming also pointed out Seven Deadly Diseases that can
avoid firms from implementing such transformation (Knowles, 2011):
1. Lack of constancy of purpose in order to plan the products or services.
2. Concentrate on short-term profits.
3. Personal evaluation or performance review based on management objectives.
This disease can eliminate the potential innovative factor because such poor
rating system will encourage people to do well within the system and discourage
people to make improvement.
4. Job hopping of management level.
5. Applying the visible data for decision making.
6. Excessive medical cost.
7. Excessive cost of liability.

Although Fourteen Points concentrated much on the management role and action
toward the responsibility to motive the employees for improving the organisation,
Demings System of Profound Knowledge focuses on the understanding of the
organisations sytem thinking combining with the other learning approaches generated
from other elements (Knowles, 2011). This creates the profound knowledge for Demings
philosophy regarding to quality management and he stated that without the profound
knowledge, the action of management level can cause ruination (Slack, et al., 2007).
Demings System of Profound Knowledge includes of four theories:
Theory of Systems Thinking: this theory emphasizes the important role of every
people within the organisation understand how the whole systems work and the process
that can generate outcomes (Knowles, 2011). This theory focuses on seeing the
organisation as a joint process instead of combination of individuals.
Theory of Variation: the theory focuses on how people can forecast and react to the
variation happening within the system and predicts the organisational behaviours
regarding to that variation.
Theory of Knowledge: Theory of Knowledge concentrates on the cummulative
growth regarding to experience and learning curve of the organisation.
Theory of Psychology: this theory focuses on the different humans feelings toward
the changes or innovation occurred. The management level has to aware these feelings in
order to support and enhance employees performance.

Joseph Juran
Joseph Juran is famous for his Quality Trilogy with the main philosophy of
emphasizing on product deficiencies management through quality planning, quality
control, and quality improvement (Knowles, 2011). Regarding to Gale (2009), the detail of
Quality Trilogy theory are:
The aim of quality planning is providing the management level the ability to make
the creating of products and services be able to satisfy clients requirements. In this section,
the firms have to clarify the customers segmentation (who the customers are) as well as
their needs. Then, the firms will produce the products or offer services that can adapt with
those needs. After that, the firms also need to create the process in order to distribute those
products and services. The operating staffs will be transferred the detailed plan. During the
operation process, not 100% of products are ensured good. The deficiency would be
occurred and the waste becomes chronic.
The purpose of quality control is avoiding the defect as much as possible because it
is unable to prevent the chronic waste. During this stage, the organisations will conduct the
inspection in order to make comparison between the actual products or services with the
details in plan. The chronic waste is an opportunity for improvement of quality which is
the third factor of Quality Trilogy.
Quality improvement has the purpose to seek the improvement of product quality
and reduce the mistakes or errros that can be occurred during the production. Through the
quality control, this stages will find for better quality management level through the
experience of the product deficiencies.
Additionally, Juran made the link between the customers satisfaction with the
product and pointed out ten steps for achievement the quality improvement:
1. Build awareness of the need and opportunity for improvement.
2. Set goals for improvement.
3. Organise to reach the goals.
4. Provide the training for employees.
5. Carry out projects to solve problems.
6. Report progress.
7. Give recognition.
8. Communicate results.
9. Keep score of improvements achieved.
10. Maintain momentum through making the annual improvement becomes a part
of organisations regular processes.
Philip Crosby
Philip Crosby is famous for his work on cost of quality (Slack, et al., 2007) and
defined the quality as Quality is conformance to requirements while non-quality is non-
conformance (Knowles, 2011). He developed the concepts of Zero Defects and the book
Quality is Free with the main philosophy so-called Crosbys Four Absolutes of Quality (Gale,
2009):
1. Quality is conformance to requirements, not goodness.
2. The system for causing quality is prevention, not appraisal.
3. The performance standard is zero defects and not just only nearly zero defect.
4. The measurement of quality is the price of non-conformance, not indexes.
In order to support for the theory of Four Absolutes of Quality, like Deming, Crosby
also developed Fourteen Steps of Quality Improvement (Gale, 2009):
1. Management commitment of formalising policy for quality.
2. Forming quality improvement teams.
3. Quality measurement: establishing the quality measures in order to identify the
possible improvement as well as taking action to correct if needed.
4. Evaluate the cost of quality in order to clarify whether the necessary action can
causes greater profit for organisation.
5. Quality awareness shoud be raised and all employees should have the attitude to
show their concerns toward the quality of products.
6. Corrective action is taken to eliminate the root of defects. In this step, it would be
efficient if the employees can have the habit to take the corrective action.
7. Zero-defects planning: the firms need to establish a committee to manage the
zero-defects programme.
8. Training the supervisor: the supervisors and managers have to attend the formal
training programme and understand all the steps clearly.
9. Zero-defects day: this day is used to announce the message of the plan to every
employee.
10. Goal setting: this activity is for encouraging the supervisors and employees to set
improvement goals.
11. Error cause removal: employees are encouraged to describe and communicate
with supervisors regarding to the problems that can cause obstacles for them
from conducting zero-defect tasks.
12. Recognition: formal recognition for employees who achieve the goals.
13. Quality council is established for quality management.
14. Do it all over again.
Similarities of three gurus
1. All three gurus emphasized on the important role of creating the internal culture
of quality management within the organisation.
2. Crosby, Deming and Juran all mentioned about the importance of training, self-
education programme among employees to motivate the quality management.
3. All three gurus agreed on the importance of the organisation operated as a
whole-intertwining body with the efficient collaboration, communication and
implementation among departments.
4. All three gurus share the same point of view that the quality management needs
the commitment of management level.
5. The quality management models or steps of three gurus are continuous and non-
stop cycles and processes in order to enhance the experience curve.
6. All three gurus have the same ideas regarding to the organisation must
communicate the goals and vision clearly to support employees in creating the
approaches or methods to achieve those goals.

Differences
Objectives
Deming with his System of Profound Knowledge concentrated on how to predict the
variations regarding to quality management and the necessary action in order to reduce
those variations. With the PDCA cycle, the organisation can have the incremental
experience everytime the process operates.
Crosby, in another way, emphasizes on absolute objective of zero-defects products
or services.
Juran connected the quality management with the fitness for customers usage and
organisations objectives.
Management responsibility
Deming insisted that 94% of the quality problems belongs to the management
responsibility (Richards, 2012).
Juran, in another hand, stated the management responsibility on the basis of pareto
analysis and 80/20 rules which means 20% part consists of vital parts. In Jurans work,
the 20% products defects can cause 80% problems. Concerning to his vew, less than 20%
of the quality problems are due to workers and the remaining part being caused by
management (Samatis, 1997).
For Croby, this guru just only stated that the primary responsibility for poor quality
belongs to management.
Measurement
Crosby and Juran focused the cost of quality while Deming calculated a number of
other varied costs (Radziwill, 2013).


II. THE BENEFITS OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT
What is Customers Satisfaction?
Customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction occurs when customers feel that they are
please or disappointed with a product or service perceived performance in comparison
with their expectations: if the products performance does not meet their expectation, the
customers will feel dissatisfied; if the products performance reach the customers
expectations, they are surely satisfied; and if that performance can exceed their
expectation, the customers are delighted and highly satisfied and they surely recommend
or make the loyalty commitment (Kotler & Keller, 2012).
In the case of InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), they use the tool so-called Guest
Satisfaction Tracking System (GSTS) with a complicated sets of feedback factors for the
customers to give a comprehensive assessment about their experience during the stay at
the hotel. For example, the below image is some of the assessment factors related to the
customers experience in an InterContinental hotel regarding to the Food and Beverage
(F&B) in Meetings:

There are some factors such as: food presentation, service time, authentic food
options, and so on. There are eight customers gave feedback toward the F&B during
Meetings. The overall satisfaction score for the F&B quality was 86.6 YTD (year-to-date)
and overall satisfaction score for the F&B service was 88.8 YTD. While the F&B quality did
not show much fluctative figures in the analysis of three months variance, the F&B service
had a decline in the overall satisfaction.
Through the example of IHG, key factors identification plays an important part in
driving customers to contribute in giving feedback process and supporting the
organisations in recognizing which fields would need to be improved.
What is Continuous Improvement?
Continuous improvement is defined as a large number of small improvements are
implemented in all departments, areas, and functions in organisations continuously and on
an ongoing bias to create an incremental outcome (Daft, 2010). The continuous
improvement will involve everybody within organisation (Knowles, 2011). There is a
popular word for continuous improvement so-called kaizen in Japanese (kai means
change and zen means good). Regarding to Gale (2009), there are two typical kaizen
types in a day-to-day basis organisations.
The first one is called point kaizen, this means the immediately implementation
will be made whenever the managers, or the employees identify there are a problem in the
business process. Right after the problems are pointed out, the solutions will be made right
on the spot.
The second one is called system kaizen which involves a more whole organisation
change. System kaizen main focus is the firm transition or evolution to another state. A list
of steps or schedule will be planned and operated, the resources will be evaluated and
gathered in order to reach the desire state.
For IHG, the company has been applying the system kaizen. The top corporate
level managers will identify and plan the necessary implementation program with list of
steps in order for the organisation applies. For example, they develop a matrix for the
leadership competencies development among employees (InterContinental Hotels Group,
2012):


A more obvious way to carry out the continuous improvement regarding to quality
is identifying the quality gaps on the basis of between the Customers expectations
concerning to the products or services with Customers perceptions concerning to the
products or services (Slack, et al., 2013). Gap analysis helps the organisations to identify the
perspectives of satisfaction and the areas that need improving. Parasuraman et al. (1985)
in a book of Slack et al. (2013) pointed out a conceptual model of service quality related to
customers domains and operation domains of organisations.

Figure 1. Parasuraman model of service quality (Slack, et al., 2013)
Basically, Gale (2009) clarified there were five gaps that an organisation need to
consider to improve the quality management:
Service Quality Gap: this is the difference between the services or products that
customers actually received with the services or products that they expected. For instance,
the customers may want to buy a pack of instant noodle with full of dried meat, vegetables
and so on that being advertised; however, in fact, they just receive the instant noodle pack
with soup and added spicies.
Management Understanding Gap : this is the difference between the quality of
services or products that perceived by management in comparison with customers
expectation.
Service Design Gap (Image of product of service The actual product or
service): this is the difference between the managements perception concerning to
customers perception and the development of this perception into delivery standard.
Service Delivery Gap: this is the difference between the actual delivery standard
and the planned one.
Communication Gap: this concentrates on what is communicated to deliver to
consumers and what is actually delivered.
As a result, when the customer experiences exceed the customer expectation, the
organisations can create the competitive advantage to sustain and even expand within the
market. Therefore, the organisation can use various methods to collect the data regarding
to the customers expectation in order to have strategic implementation to adapt with
those needs. The questionnaire in the aspect of SERVQUAL to help customers evaluate
particular service providers. Regarding to Buttle (1996), the SERVQUAL questionnaire can
be categorised into five fields:
1. Reliability: it is the ability of the organisation to perform the promised service
dependably and accurately.
2. Assurance: in this aspect, it rates the staffs knowledge and courtesy as well as
their abilities to carry out trust and confidence.
3. Tangibles: it is the appearance of the tangible facilities, human resources, and
communication materials.
4. Empathy: it is used to rate whether the employees deliver the caring spirit,
individualized attention to customers.
5. Responsiveness: it is used to rate the degree that employees are willing to
support customers in a professional manner and with prompt service.
In the case of IHG, an example of InterContinental Hanoi Westlake Hotel with the
Event & Convention Sale team will be analysed. The figure below shows the Guests
Satisfaction Survey result of this hotel in November 2012.


In the figure, the statistical data is totally followed in SERVQUAL five fields. For
example, in the aspect of Reliability, the question Sent me a proposal within agreed time
of InterContinental Hanoi Westlake has a slight increase to 93.7% agreed customers. For
the Assurance field, however, the question Understood what I needed for a successful
event and met my needs has a decrease to 90.5% customers agreed with this.
Through the detail report regarding to different gaps between the customers
expectations and the actual experiences that employees can bring to them, the
management can plan for the upcoming goals and specific steps to enhance the services
quality.
Added-values To Be Gained
The added value is the value that the business owners or vendors add to their
products or services that they provide and make the implementation or modification in a
specific way to create a greater value regarding to their customers (Gilliam & Voss, 2013).
There are various types of added value that the business owners can provide to
their customers; it could be quality added value, corporate social responsibility (CSR)
added value, cultural added value, causal relationship added value, financial added value,
or marketing added value and so on.
In the case of IHG, the organisation has taken advantage of their unique resources:
Priority Club Reward (PCR) which is one of the largest membership program in the world
with 77.8 million members worldwide (IHG, 2013) to add the value in order to attract new
customers and maintain the loyalty rate. IHG has formed the strategic alliances with
MasterCard, Air France, British Airways, Qantas, and other services providers to help
customers save the point whenever they use the service from these companies such as
spending as many as possible in the MasterCard credit account, the customers will be
awarded with the points or when customers fly, they can exchange the miles into points.
The points after that can be redeemed to exchange the room night or other services in any
hotels of IHG. Moreover, when the customers reach enough capacity of points, they will be
automatic upgraded to a new level of members (PCR has three levels: Standard, Gold and
Platinum).
From the above analysis parts, it can be agreed that IHG has been conducting well in
creating the channels to collect the general perspective of customers toward products and
services that the company provides. As a result, once conducting efficient continuous
quality management, the organisation can bring as well as achieve added values below:
Cultural values lead to financial added-value the altogether parts of
company, customers and suppliers: Regarding to Woods (1998), the continuous quality
management to bring better experiences of products and services to customers can help to
enhance the people identification of the company not just only a building, a brandname, an
asset but also a kind of culture in developing win-win-win strategy among company,
customers and suppliers. The quality products that adapt well with customers perception
can increase their loyalty with the company and together with the collaboration of airlines,
MasterCards or other allied services getting along with the membership program, it can
bring financial added value to customers customers can have discount regarding to not
only hotel rooms but also flight ticket or credit loan. The other suppliers can have potential
value from updating customers database from five-stars hotel. The hotels with the stable
generated revenue can have the employees loyalty and reduce the financial loss from
human resources turnover, absenteeism and so on.
Financial added-value of superior products with reduced price for customers:
with the continuous improvement process from the survey and other methods, the
customers can be ensured that the delivered services or products are continuously
updated. Together with the increasing pleasant feeling after using the products or services
is the typical brandname identification that adapt with customers expectation. For
example, because customers are satisfied with an IHG hotel and become more satisfactory,
this can lead them to automatically choose and consider all IHGs hotels are superior. The
more times the customers use the service, together with membership card program, the
cheaper they will have to pay for future similar service.
Types of Information and Effective Marketing Can Improve
Quality
Regarding to Solomon, Bamossy, Askegaard, & Hogg (2006), the consumers when
they decide to go buying a product, they may recognize the need and then search the
marketplace for the specific information. Once they have the information, they will have the
cognitive toward the products, the awareness, the interest and then the desire to possess
the products and if they are satisfied with the products, it will become habitual consuming
behaviour. Hence, that company will have loyalty customers. The main goal of a business
marketing expert is he or she must create and maintain strong relationship with customers
and provide them the added value. This leads to the rapid growth of relationship marketing
in comparison with conventional transactional marketing. The relationship marketing
emphasizes in developing a long-term bonds and interactive relationship between the
marketers and customers in which the main concern of a marketer is to move the
customers up the ladder of loyalty to the main objective that customers will become a
partner (Lancaster & Massingham, 2011).
For this reason, the firms will have the objectives to provide the information for
customers as much as possible. In the rapid growth era of e-commerce, the customers will
have trend to search for information on the Internet first because this is the fastest and
more interactive way with immediate information. The customers will have the general
information about the companys vision, mission statement and an overview about the
products that the company offers. In the case of IHG, the companys vision provides for the
customers with the products it has When we have great brands, the values, people and
ways of working and the vision of the company to Become one of the worlds great
companies (InterContinental Hotels Group, 2012):

Figure 2. IHGs Vision (IHG, 2013)
After the company and products overview, the customers will have tendency to
search further for information. Hence, the firms have to present the products details and
their features in order for customers to easily search the right products which meet their
demands. For example, in order to brief introduce the features of Crowne Plaza, IHG made a
statement An upscale brand in major urban centres, gateway cities and resort destinations
offering business travellers high levels of comfort, service and amenities (IHG, 2013).
Beside that, IHG also gives out the hyperlink that lead to the booking page in order
to make it be easy for customers to pre-order the rooms or services. The IHGs booking
website will show for customers the detailed information about their destinations as well
as the available IHG hotels in those places. Moreover, the booking page also helps
customers to catch up with the price along with the benefits, VAT, breakfast and service
charge information.
In the aspect of Quality Management, regarding to Slack et al. (2013), the
marketings important role is to communicate the organistations products or services to
the market to generate requirement from customers. Therefore, an effective marketing can
help the customers as well as company in various fields:
Reducing the Service Design Gap: through the effective marketing programmes,
the management can communicate efficiently the companys message and perception to
customers and implement or maybe able to change the customers perception to deliver the
designed services or products concerning to management perception. A typical example of
IHG is the launching of the new brand in China market Hualuxe Hotel which is an upscale
hotel brand. Although the core delivered products and services standard is totally similar
to another upper scale of IHG InterContinental; however, through the mass media
marketing, IHG creates a perception for customers in China is that this brand is a totally
excellent and better hotel chain which is particularly built for China market.
Enhancing the information flow regarding to the quality and capabilities of
operation: the effective marketing approaches can motivate the customers in increasing
the communicating flow between them and the company. With this information regarding
to customers requirement, marketing function can cordination with the other operation
department to identify the capabilities as well as the constraints that exist within the
internal processes (Slack, et al., 2013).




III. QUALITY CONTROL
Quality Management Measurement
In order to achieve the quality, the management functions include of planning,
organizing, leading and controlling need to be conducted (Robbins & Coulter, 2012).
Planning for quality
The managers must have goals regarding to the quality improvement and plan
strategies to accomplish those goals (Robbins & Coulter, 2012). Mauch (2010) has the
planning defined as the management function with the main role of producing and
incorporating objectives, strategies and business policies to answer three main questions:
1. Where are we at the moment?
2. Where do we want to be?
3. How can we get there from here?
For instance, UnitedHealthcare implement a new accountable care innitiative to
make the collaboration with 130 hospitals and 19,500 physicians within the states of
Wisconsin, United States to achieve faster service, improve the quality and reduce the cost
(Business Wire, 2013).
The quality planning process will help the organisation to produce the Quality Plan
which is a document that help the firms to define the activities operations in order to
achieve the requirement of quality.
Organizing and Leading Quality
Quality improvement initiatives are fulfilled by the corporate employees; therefore,
top managers play an important role in organizating and leading these employees in order
to achieve the best outcomes (Robbins & Coulter, 2012). Therefore, the managers are
considered as the individuals in charge of strategy and decision making is the crucial part
related to organisations success; hence, the managers have to integrate the quality
management implementation into the corporate strategy (Albacete-Saez, et al., 2011).

Controlling for Quality
The initiatives for quality improvement will not be possible if there is no any
approach to monitor and evaluate the progress (Robbins & Coulter, 2012). The most
concerning issue of the monitoring process is that it also needs the objective realization
since at the top management levels, there appears the issue when the organizations
objectives are not being met and in the middle or lower levels of mangement, the objectives
that the managers are responsible are not being met (Mauch, 2010). As a result, the quality
objectives should be qualified and the management levels should treat the quality as a
priority and strategic issues (Albacete-Saez, et al., 2011). Regarding to Mauch (2010), there
are ten items that the managers can use to establish the objectives and key quality factors:
1. Profitability
2. Productivity
3. Products
4. Markets
5. Financial resources
6. Physical facilities
7. Research and innovation
8. Human Resources
9. Organisation
10. Customer services
Therefore, after realizing the objectives of the organisation. The organisations
leaders will be establish a department or centre which has the key responsibility in
managing the key quality factors. They will keep the activities logging book in order to keep
track with daily work routine and the feedback process from customers. Then they will use
some of quantiative tools and standards for measuring the quality management such as:
Statistical Process Control (SPC), Total Quality Management (TQM), ISO-9000, Six Sigma
and so on.


Six Sigma
Being developed by Motorola in 1986, Six Sigma has the purpose to enhance the
outputs quality through effort of eliminating the causal defects (Knowles, 2011). Regarding
to Gale (2009), Six Sigma has three key principles. The first principle of Six Sigma is
measuring the quality management and this also means that measuring wrong issues can
cause wrong results. Secondly, all the measures should be publicly visible and the
leadership commitment to make decision making based totally on openly statistical data.
Last but not least, the third principle of Six Sigma is when occurring change or
implementation, the performance may go down but it requires the management patience
before it recovers.
Six Sigma provides problem-solving methodology of five-stages DMAIC to support
management:
Define (D): in this stage, the management will identify the areas or processes that
have poor performance. After that, organisations put the objectives to implement in those
processes with the cost calculation of positive financial effect.
Measuring (M): in this stage, key critical factors or aspects of the processes will be
measured and relevant information will be collected.
Analyse (A): some various analysis methods and tools such as SPC, hypothesis
testing and so on are used in order to identify the problems laid within the process.
Improve (I): a corrective process will be designed in order to reach the desired level
of improvement.
Control (C): the organisations adjust process control tools in order to manage the
process constantly.



Users Surveys vs. Non-users Surveys
In order to gain the feedback from the customers, the XYZ Ltd can use the survey
methods to get the comment from customers. The surveys can be carried out toward both
users and non-users.
For the users survey, the users can help XYZ Ltd in understanding the customer
loyalty scale toward the companies products or services and their feedbacks can help the
firms to organise the actual internal factors related to strengths and weaknesses. Through
collecting the primary data from users survey, the data which is related to customers
perspective toward the products and services would be relevant. Since these customers
have been using the products or services of the company; therefore, their comments and
feedback would be represented for the demands and needs of other customers.
For the non-users survey, XYZ Ltd can gain the benefit from this type of survey.
Since the non-users are not the customers of the organisation; hence, they can help XYZ Ltd
to know the actual reasons why they are not keen in using companys products. As a result,
the firm can have the information about their requirement as well as their expectation
related to the products and services. XYZ Ltd then will know which competitive advantages
that they are lacking in comparison with other competitors and the company will make
implementation accordingly. This type of information will help XYZ in pulling the non-users
with appropriate strategy and make them become customers.
However, there are some disadvantages appear regarding to the survey:
1. The respondents may not feel comfortable with some sort of questions and they
can give inaccurate answers.
2. The conductor needs to spend time to ensure the sample is representative;
moreover, the design and pilot tasks are also carried out to ensure good
response rate (Saunders, et al., 2009).
3. The high cost if conducting the surveys through postal or telephones.
4. The survey conductor may make mistake in data storage and encounter with
high risk of spreading respondents information.
What are the methods of consultation employed in one quality
scheme to encourage participation by under-represented
groups?
The under-represented groups are the group of users or customers that do not have
or little communication with the company and hence, they do not give or have little
feedback regarding to the companys products or servcies. However, the lack of
communication does not mean their information or potential feedback would not be useful
for the company, vice versa, their details could be very valuable toward the strategic
quality implementation of the company and more of them join in feedback process, more
errors in statistical measurements will be deducted.
There are many reasons to explain why these group are underrepresented. It could
be the customer satisfaction tracking system cannot reach or make an easy access for them,
the difference in language, or even the different communication culture, and so on.
If the customer satisfaction tracking system cannot reach the customers to get the
information, the company should find a way in order to make it be more easy for customers
to access such as building the survey interface right on the companys website. In case the
linguistic difference is the main problem, the company can build up more language options
and support for customers. Additionally, if the different communication culture is the main
problem, the company can carry out the group survey in order to encourage the customers
to express their ideas more.
There are some types of consultation that can be employed to encourage these
under-represented group to give out their feedback: (1) Survey by mail, telephone, paper,
questionnaire, etc.; (2) Focus group interview; (3) Conference; (4) Online interactive
survey

Identify the value of complaints procedures and analyse how
they may be used to improve quality
Organisations also design the complaints procedures and process in order for
customers to express their comments regarding to the imperfect sides of the products or
services. The handling complaints process would be very important because the customers
would create a mass effect toward the word-of-mouth marketing. The handling process
would bring back the loyalty customers and more potential customers will be attracted. In
the other hand, bad handling method would destroy the companys reputation.
Not only do the customers complain about the products or services, they can give
bad feedback toward the staffs or companys human resources due to the attitude or the
way those staffs provide the services.
Once the company XYZ Ltd can identify which sources of complaints, the leaders can
have proper implementation. In case the complaints came from bad products or services,
the company can check again the production process through the daily logging activities
and the quality management stage. Otherwise, if the complaints came from the staffs,
proper department training programs have to be scheduled.

IV. QUALITY MANAGEMENT & PERFORMANCE
What is the role of self-assessment in order to determine an
organizations current state of health?
Slack et al. (2013) stated that self-assessment as a comprehensive, systematic and
regular review of an organisations activities and results referenced against a model of
business excellence. Regarding to Knowles (2011), the purpose of self-assessment is to
help the organisation in identifying and put action on areas or fields of improvement
process that require additional effort and maintain that which is already going well.
It is important for the firms to acknowledge the state of health so that they can
identify if the business operation status is good or bad. In the planning and controlling
process, the firms will have to determine their business objectives and implement the
appropriate activities in order to reach the goals. Moreover, a process of assessment for
those activities should be conducted in order to see if they are carried out well and to
which extent the firms have achieved. In addition, the firms can have a clear understanding
in which aspect needed improving.
Benchmarking
The Benchmarking could be a popular tool for the self-assessment process.
Benchmarking is defined as the activity of comparing methods and/or performance with
other processes in order to learn from them and/or assess performance (Slack, et al.,
2013). By using this tool, the organisation can be allowed to make the comparison with the
other competitors and find out their own strengths, weaknesses, rooms for improvements.
The principles of Benchmarking are based on the two ideas:
1. Problems in managing the processes are mostly shared by other processes in
somewhere else.
2. There probably exists another operation elsewhere that has developed better
approaches to do things.


Regarding to Slack et al. (2013), Benchmarking can be applied as continuous
process comparison in order to constantly indentify the weaknesses as well as strengths
among competitors or processes so the organisations can create own competitive
advantages regarding to quality improvement once they can develop other better business
model or techniques.
Secondly, Benchmarking, in another hand, does not provide any particular solutions
except of ideas and information that can help organisation to assess themselves for
improvement.
Thirdly, applying Benchmarking does not mean copying other operations or
processes, it requires studying and adapting new processes with a pragmatic manner.
Last but not least, Bechmarking would require investment.
Beside the Benchmarking, the organisations can carry out the Employees Survey or
Internal assessment by questionnaires to identify the fields that would require the
improvements. Another popular and standard method can be applied is the model
developed by European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM).
European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM)
EFQM Excellence Model is the model that supports to clarifies the categories of
activity that supposedly ensure high levels of quality; now used by many companies to
examine their own quality-related procedures (Slack, et al., 2013). According to EFQM
Excellence Model, an excellent organisation would achieve such categories (Knowles,
2011):

1. Achieving a balanced set of results through adapting with customers satisfaction
and requirements of other stakeholders in long-term.
2. Adding value for customers through the continuous innovation process
concerning to products and services.
3. Leading with vision, inspiration and integrity.
4. Succeeding through people and considering human resources as main
competitive advantage.
5. Nurturing creativity and innovation.
6. Building good partnership.
7. Taking responsibility for a sustainable future regarding to environmental
factors.
As a results, through above categories of such excellent organisation, EFQM
developed a model that provide holistic view regarding to organisation in the aspect of
pursuing excellence (Knowles, 2009).

Figure 3. EFQM Excellence Model (Slack, et al., 2013)


What are the importance of communication and record
keeping?
The communication plays a crucial part in the daily work routine of the organisation
since it is the decisive factor for the flow of information within the internal organisation. In
the aspect of quality managemet, the firms would have to get the proper information as
soon as possible since it can help them to make the immediate implementation and
enhance the customers experience. Moreover, the communication also accelerates the
innovation and creative ideas to augment the production. With the good communication
with customers, the firms can know which aspect they need to improve or which are the
strengths in their services or products. As a result, the firms can add more values into the
products and ladder up the customer satisfaction by exceed their expectation. Regarding to
Oakland (2003), the organisation quality management directive must be signed by all
business unit, division or process leaders and every employee within organisation must be
distributed. The directive should include of (Oakland, 2003):
Need for improvement
Concept for total quality
Importance of understanding business process
Approach that will be taken and peoples role
Individual and process group responsibilities
Principles of process measurement
Changes in technology
Regarding to the internal control, the flow of information may help the leaders to
plan the implementation of quality control. The recordings of the past information play
important roles in supporting the leaders make the appropriate comparison and forecast.
Moreover, they also point out the non-conforming process or products that can cause the
fall in quality. The reasons for the record keeping are:
1. Recording can help to track the achievement of the process through the
comparison and benchmarking of different information and data.
2. The record keepings can help the management to identify the change regarding
to customers expectations and the gap between expectation and experiences
exist at that time.
3. Record can support the management in confronting with the past and at the
moment data to make improvement if needed.
4. Record keeping can help the management in monitoring the situation of using
the resources and materials to implement the change regarding to improvement.
5. The record keeping can be valuable primary source of data for management to
conduct benchmarking between their organisations process with other
competitors operation process.
However, during the usage of record keeping, the staffs have to take notice to some
details as below:
1. The data of recording must be legible and retrievable for internal usage.
2. The data must be secured carefully and confidentially to prevent other external
factors that can cause damage to data storage and even espionage.
3. The storage must prevent the external modification or any impact that can cause
change or damage to the data.
In another hand, the record keeping also encounters with some factors of
disadvantages of:
1. It quite takes time and tremendous effort to record and categorise of such large
amount of data.
2. The organisation have to invest cost in implementing an appropriate system for
record keeping process.
3. The organisation have to invest cost in training and developing particular staffs
for operating such system.
4. It requires the commitment from leadership and management concerning to
continuous, integrity and confidential of recording data.

How quality scheme can be effectively implemented by following
guidelines on the stages of staff consultation.
In order to make an appropriate implementation of a quality scheme, the leaders
should make a proper communication, consultation or even the training for the staffs since
the human resource is the key factor of the organisation operation and those staffs will be
responsible for transmitting the visionary objectives of the leaders into reality. During the
implementation process, the staffs should be treated as they are the important parts of the
organisations instead of being ordered
For example, when adjusting the new Leadership Competencies Program, IHG had
to make it become a training program firstly in order to support the staffs to have the clear
understanding about the benefits of having leadership competencies (InterContinental
Hotels Group, 2012). After the training, IHG made that progame become an internal audit
and culture in working for staffs.
Deming suggested a model in order to support for such implementation with
Demings Cycle of PDCA. PDCA is an acronym of Plan-Do-Check-Act. Regarding to Slack et
al. (2013), through the continuous PDCA process, the organisation can have the
incremental growth regarding to the experiences in quality management.
1. Plan (P): the organisation will plan a change or test.
2. Do (D): conduct the change or test, better on small proportion first.
3. Check (C): check the results.
4. Act (A): take action based on the results.
After the step 4 Act (A) the organisation can repeat Step 1 with new knowledge.


Propose new systems or modifications to existing systems that
could improve service quality
For the InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), the main problem of the organisation
is that it has so many brands to control and manage (a total of eleven brands worldwide).
Although it has a diversified portfolio of brands and hotel rooms IHG is the largest hotel
chain measured by room with 679,050 rooms worldwide, the culture and specific values of
those hotel brands bringing to the customers are not clear. So many hotel brands make the
customers feel confuse about the quality as well as the standard of each of them.
Therefore, IHG need to develop the hotel values in the vertical way in stead of
horizontal way. Creating more added value and relationship marketing programs to
enhance the brand awareness of the customers instead of developing more new
brandnames. In addition, IHG can pursue the merge and acquisition strategy to buy the
local authentic hotels to augment the local experience for customers. Moreover, IHG should
focus in training and performance appraisal and management program. Creating a new
comprehensive and interactive training programs in order to help the hotels departments
to catch up with the other departments job specification. This will increase the smooth in
operation conduct.
Another aspect that causes the defect in service quality of IHG comes from the
unappropriate management of daily routine mistakes and errors of employees. IHG should
implement a statistical method to identify the most popular mistakes that employees
usually make in order to create suitable training programs to improve their skills as well as
abilities. The recommended approach would be Statistical Process Control (SPC), which can
help IHG in putting the data collection of issues in a more systematic way. IHG needs to
apply the PDCA model of Deming to repeat the solving process until the mistakes becoming
zero.
1. Plan (P): IHG collects the data regarding to frequent mistakes that employees
make in daily routine. Then, IHG establishes the corrective actions that can help
employees to improve themselves.
2. Do (D): IHG tests on a small proportion of employees. Regarding on the collected
result after the test, IHG can make the change to improve the plan.
3. Check (C): IHG checks the results of the change.
4. Act (A): in case the results are positive, IHG then can expand the action to larger
proportion of employees.
Repeating the Steap 1 for other new mistakes.
CONCLUSION
Quality management plays crucial role for any organisation all over the world. The
quality management helps the organisations to create the products and deliver the services
to reach the customers expectations and those make the organisations to own the
competitive advantage within the market.
However, the quality management cannot be implemented in an appropriate way if
there does not exist the harmonic collaboration between employees and management. In
most theories of gurus in the aspect of quality management, leadership plays a vital part to
help make the intertwining link between the quality improvement with the strategic
objectives as well as benefits of organisation. With the appropriate objectives, it would be
easy for employees to follow.


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