Chapter 17 Quality Management
What is quality and why is it so important?
Revenues can be increased by better sales and enhanced prices in the market. At the same time,
costs can be brough down by improved efficiencies, productivity and the use of capital. So, a key task
of the operations function must be to ensure that it provides quality goods and services, both to its
internal and external customers.
The operation’s view of quality
Quality: consistent conformance to customers’ expectations.
Customers’ view of quality
Customer may perceive a service or product in different ways. So quality needs to be understood
from a customer’s point of view because, to the customer, the quality of a particular service or
product is whatever he or she perceives it to be. Also customers may be unable to judge the
‘technical’ specification of the service or product and so use surrogate measures as a basis for their
perception of quality.
Reconciling the operation’s and the customer’s views of quality
The operation’s view of quality is concerned with trying to meet customer expectations. The
customer’s view of quality is what he or she perceives the service or product to be. To create a
unified view, quality can be defined as the degree of fit between customers’ expectations an
customer perception of the service or product.
1
,Both customers’ expectations and perceptions are influenced by a number of factors, some of which
cannot be controlled by the operation and some of which, to a certain extent, can be managed.
Within the operation’s domain, management is responsible for designing the service or product and
providing a specification of the quality to which the service or product has to be created. Within the
customer’s domain, his or her expectations are shaped by such factors as previous experiences with
the particular service or product, the marketing image provided by the organization and word-of-
mouth information from other users.
2
, How can quality problems be diagnosed?
If the perceived quality gap is such that customers’ perceptions of the service or product fail to
match their expectations of it, then the reason (or reasons) must lie in other gaps elsewhere in the
model as follows:
Gap 1: The customer’s specification-operation’s specification gap: perceived quality could be poor
because there may be a mismatch between the organization’s own internal quality specification and
the specification which is expected by the customer.
Gap 2: The concept-specification gap: perceived quality could be poor because there is a mismatch
between the service or product concept and the way the organization has specified quality
internally.
Gap 3: The quality specification-actual quality gap: perceived quality could be poor because there is
a mismatch between actual quality and the internal quality specification (conformance to
specification).
Gap 4: The actual quality-communicated image gap: perceived quality could be poor because there
is a gap between the organization’s external communications or market image and the actual quality
delivered to the customer. This may be because the marketing function has set unachievable
expectations or operations is not capable of the level of quality expected by the customer.
‘Quality’, ‘Quality of service’ and ‘quality of experience’
The definition of quality that we use here is useful because it can be used to describe ‘quality for
either physical products, or intangible services, or any offering that combines both tangible and
intangible elements. However, not all authorities or individual operations view ‘quality’ in this way,
which can lead to some confusion.
The term quality of service (QoS) is often used to describe how an operation serves its customers by
combining what we have called ‘quality’ with some or all of ‘speed’, ‘dependability’ and ‘flexibility’.
The limitation of QoS is that it may not capture the overall satisfaction with the service as perceived
by the users.
Quality of experience (QoE) is the overall acceptability of the service, as perceived subjectively by
the end-user. QoE is clearly related to, but differs from, QoS in that it expresses, and focuses on, user
satisfaction both objectively and subjectively. QoS generally includes the aspects of a service that are
under the control of the operation creating the services, whereas QoE involves both the aspects
governed by the operation and those that are a function of the individual customer and the context
in which the service is consumed.
3
What is quality and why is it so important?
Revenues can be increased by better sales and enhanced prices in the market. At the same time,
costs can be brough down by improved efficiencies, productivity and the use of capital. So, a key task
of the operations function must be to ensure that it provides quality goods and services, both to its
internal and external customers.
The operation’s view of quality
Quality: consistent conformance to customers’ expectations.
Customers’ view of quality
Customer may perceive a service or product in different ways. So quality needs to be understood
from a customer’s point of view because, to the customer, the quality of a particular service or
product is whatever he or she perceives it to be. Also customers may be unable to judge the
‘technical’ specification of the service or product and so use surrogate measures as a basis for their
perception of quality.
Reconciling the operation’s and the customer’s views of quality
The operation’s view of quality is concerned with trying to meet customer expectations. The
customer’s view of quality is what he or she perceives the service or product to be. To create a
unified view, quality can be defined as the degree of fit between customers’ expectations an
customer perception of the service or product.
1
,Both customers’ expectations and perceptions are influenced by a number of factors, some of which
cannot be controlled by the operation and some of which, to a certain extent, can be managed.
Within the operation’s domain, management is responsible for designing the service or product and
providing a specification of the quality to which the service or product has to be created. Within the
customer’s domain, his or her expectations are shaped by such factors as previous experiences with
the particular service or product, the marketing image provided by the organization and word-of-
mouth information from other users.
2
, How can quality problems be diagnosed?
If the perceived quality gap is such that customers’ perceptions of the service or product fail to
match their expectations of it, then the reason (or reasons) must lie in other gaps elsewhere in the
model as follows:
Gap 1: The customer’s specification-operation’s specification gap: perceived quality could be poor
because there may be a mismatch between the organization’s own internal quality specification and
the specification which is expected by the customer.
Gap 2: The concept-specification gap: perceived quality could be poor because there is a mismatch
between the service or product concept and the way the organization has specified quality
internally.
Gap 3: The quality specification-actual quality gap: perceived quality could be poor because there is
a mismatch between actual quality and the internal quality specification (conformance to
specification).
Gap 4: The actual quality-communicated image gap: perceived quality could be poor because there
is a gap between the organization’s external communications or market image and the actual quality
delivered to the customer. This may be because the marketing function has set unachievable
expectations or operations is not capable of the level of quality expected by the customer.
‘Quality’, ‘Quality of service’ and ‘quality of experience’
The definition of quality that we use here is useful because it can be used to describe ‘quality for
either physical products, or intangible services, or any offering that combines both tangible and
intangible elements. However, not all authorities or individual operations view ‘quality’ in this way,
which can lead to some confusion.
The term quality of service (QoS) is often used to describe how an operation serves its customers by
combining what we have called ‘quality’ with some or all of ‘speed’, ‘dependability’ and ‘flexibility’.
The limitation of QoS is that it may not capture the overall satisfaction with the service as perceived
by the users.
Quality of experience (QoE) is the overall acceptability of the service, as perceived subjectively by
the end-user. QoE is clearly related to, but differs from, QoS in that it expresses, and focuses on, user
satisfaction both objectively and subjectively. QoS generally includes the aspects of a service that are
under the control of the operation creating the services, whereas QoE involves both the aspects
governed by the operation and those that are a function of the individual customer and the context
in which the service is consumed.
3
