Service Design

Despite the number and variety of opinions concerning quality expressed both in the literature and at a consultancy level, all agree on four issues: 1. Quality involves the entire company, management included, which must endorse quality policies and ensur

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Service Design

4.1

The Quality of Service

Despite the number and variety of opinions concerning quality expressed both in the literature and at a consultancy level, all agree on four issues: 1. Quality involves the entire company, management included, which must endorse quality policies and ensure the necessary commitment. 2. The focus must be set on customer satisfaction (rather than mere compliance with the standards), a customer who can also be internal (i.e. inside the company). 3. The importance of continuous improvement (a company must also improve during the period between the issuing of two official specifications). 4. The reduction/elimination of variance in the manufacturing processes is a source of quality (the qualitative level depending on the design process, which should have released specifications ensuring conformity of quality). Process management can be considered pivotal for quality management in the new production contexts, and acts as a powerful catalyst for the deployment of quality programmes. Figure 4.1 illustrates how the concept of quality has evolved, and the current relationship existing between quality and process management: ●



From quality based on standards, we have passed to quality intended as customer satisfaction (quality as a means of meeting customer requirements, by supplying an adequate level of service too: quality coincides with value, which in turn is decreed by the customer). All processes serve to add value, and must consistently focus on the customer (both final = external, and internal). From quality control alone, we have reached a trilogy consisting of planning (which must meet increasingly severe standards), control (along the entire production line, carried out in real time and using sophisticated statistical procedures) and improvement (by training, coaching and accepting suggestions). Improvement by learning can indeed be considered as a key objective of these processes.

S. Tonchia, Industrial Project Management: Planning, Design, and Construction, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008

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4 Service Design

QUALITY TODAY

Impact of Process PROCESS Management on MANAGEMENT Quality

Conformance to standards

Customer satisfaction

Value generation + customer visibility

Quality controls

Planning, control and imp rovement

Learning for imp rovement

Functional resp onsibility

Commitment and transversal (shared) resp onsibility

Team o wrk + internal customer

Reduce scrap s and rew orking

Produce u qality (Prevention)

Synergic effect on eprformance

QUALITY IN THE PAST

Quality Management evolution

Fig. 4.1 Quality and process management





Functional responsibility has become shared responsibility, integrating quality management even during the first stages of design and development (hence, the concept of upstream quality management). In process management, the existence of internal customer/supplier relationships and teamwork is at the root of shared responsibility. The inspection approach, featuring measurements, controls and reprocessing