Improving Profitability through Quality Management

In order to achieve profitability, the answer to the many questions is to answer the demands of the customers themselves. Only through total customer satisfaction can profitability be gained. So the important question now is this: how do you ensure total customer satisfaction?

            The demands of the target market are the value marks when it comes to setting the standards and requirements for a product or service’s rate of quality. There are certain characteristics and specifications that the customers have which define what they need and want from a certain product or service. These characteristics and specifications are the determinants of whether or not a certain product or service meets the demands and therefore the satisfaction of the customers. Without addressing these matters, profitability may be highly debilitated. In order to answer to the needs of the target market, a good company must have a good system set for a good quality management program.

            A good quality management program means that the product or service to be constructed is something that will meet the requirements and expectations of the target market; good service performance in aiding the customers with their new products after sales have been made is also part of a good quality management program.

            Of course, before being able to construct a quality management program, the company must first organize a system of quality that will determine how they will judge their products. This quality system will contain the characteristics to be judged in order to define the quality of the particular product or service to be produced for the market.

            The first characteristic of quality is the quality of the product’s blueprint or plan. This is the engineering that is involved with the scheme of the product or service and how good it is, as well as how good it answers the needs and wants of the target market. This first step is one that is involved with planning the product.

            The second characteristic in defining quality is the rate of how the finished product is then seen to have strictly adhered to the specifications that were set by the initial plans and designs. Not all the time manufacturing processes yield a product that has been constructed exactly according to plan (in certain manufacturing situations, there are concerns that cause compromises to be made such as costs of materials, time of production, availability of resources, etc.) and that’s why determining whether a certain finished product measures up to the initial plan accordingly is an important factor in determining quality.

            The third characteristic for determining quality is the satisfaction based on good customer service. After the product has been planned, designed, the blueprint and the process have been laid out, next comes the actual construction of the product. After the manufacturing processes, then the process of selling the product comes into play. Measuring performance on this third process is very important because in this third phase, actual contact with the target customers is put into play and this is where customer trust, satisfaction and loyalty may or may not be firmly established. It is important to remember that no matter how good a product may be, if it is not presented accordingly to the customers, and if the concerns of the customers afterwards are not given the proper attention and appropriate action, then satisfaction, trust, and loyalty may suffer, and then follows viability and profitability for the business.

            In all these aspects of quality, customer satisfaction is the topmost focus. These three characteristics of quality are of equal importance because if a certain level of incompetence is present in either of these quality specifiers, the fate of the product and the business will surely suffer the critical consequences.