Management
Implementing Quality Control Processes
Operations management centers on carefully managing the processes to manufacture and distribute products and services. Main, overall activities frequently include product creation, development, production and distribution. Related activities include managing purchases, inventory control, quality control, storage, logistics and evaluations of processes. There is often a great deal of focus put on competence and value of processes. Thus, operations management frequently includes considerable measurement and analysis of internal processes. In the end, the environment of how operations management is carried out in an organization depends a lot on the nature of the products or services in the company, like retail, manufacturing and wholesale (McNamara, n.d.).
All customers are concerned with the quality of the goods and services that they get. Because of this businesses have a vital, strategic interest in achieving and maintaining high quality standards. Furthermore, there is a positive link between quality and productive, giving an additional inducement for achieving high quality and being able to present that image to current and potential customers. The best business organizations view quality as a never ending voyage. That is, they strive for recurrent improvement with the attitude that no matter how good quality is, it can always be enhanced and there are benefits for doing so (Stevenson, 2012).
Quality assurance and product and service design are two vital links in the quality process. Organizations should constantly seek to augment the capability of the processes they use, so that they can move from a position of using inspection or extensive use of control charts in order to achieve desired levels of quality to one where quality is built into products and processes. This will ensure that little or no efforts are needed to assure quality. Processes that show evidence of non-randomness, or processes that are deemed to not be capable, should be looked at as opportunities for continues process improvement (Stevenson, 2012).
One way to ensure quality control is to implement MRP. This is a planning technique that generates a schedule for all the dependent-demand items. The major features of MRP are the time-phasing of necessities, calculation component requirements, and planned-order releases. In order to be victorious, MRP requires precise master production schedules, bills of materials and inventory data. Companies without rationally accurate records or schedules have experienced major difficulties in trying to . A potential weakness of MRP is the supposition of constant lead times (Stevenson, 2012).
Inventory management is a core operations management activity. is frequently the mark of a well run company. Inventory levels must be planned cautiously in order to balance the cost of holding inventory and the cost of providing reasonable levels of customer service. Successful inventory management necessitates a system to keep track of inventory transactions, precise information about demand and lead times, realistic estimates of certain inventory related costs, and a priority system for classifying the items in the inventory and allocating control efforts (Stevenson, 2012).
At Johnson & Johnson, the quality and safety of their companies’ products is their top priority. Every product they sell must meet their rigorous standards for purity, safety and efficacy. Product quality and safety processes begin during the design of the products and ingredients in order to ensure they meet internal and external standards. They employ pharmacists, toxicologists, laboratory analysts and other health scientists to conduct thorough evaluations before any raw material or ingredient is used. The safety and quality of these materials is critical to protecting their customers and to the success of the final products. Finished products also undergo thorough safety assessments. Even after the products reach the marketplace, they continue to monitor how the products are used as well as their safety and effectiveness (Johnson & Johnson, 2012).
The trust and confidence of their customers relies on the standards they set to make safe and effective products of the highest quality. As their companies progress to operate under a single quality framework with a common set of quality and compliance elements, these actions help to make sure the highest quality products on which their customers have relied for more than a century, continue to be available. Each Johnson & Johnson operating company is expected to make sure that:
Products meet safety and quality requirements and perform as required throughout their shelf life
All products and ingredients they purchase from suppliers meet their requirements
Changes to materials, product labeling, packaging, processes, systems, facilities, methods and equipment are reviewed and approved before they are made
Procedures are in place to prevent diversion of their products from their intended distribution channels and to protect them from counterfeiting (Johnson & Johnson, 2012).
Their companies work closely with health authorities, various standard setting bodies, and professional organizations worldwide to be sure their quality systems are up-to-date and are continuously improving. Many of their businesses and facilities have been certified to meet International Organization for Standardization (ISO) requirements for quality management. ISO certification means that a quality management system has been thoroughly reviewed by an outside audit committee and found to satisfy rigorous standards. All of their facilities that make medicines or medical devices meet current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP), as outlined by the FDA or one or more other national regulatory agencies. Training programs at the companies give employees the necessary tools to create and manage quality systems that ensure our products perform as intended and meet all regulatory requirements (Johnson & Johnson, 2012).
Their commitment to compliance extends to their external manufacturers who they rely on to produce ingredients as well as finished goods. The Johnson & Johnson Responsibility Standards for Suppliers helps them identify and select partners who operate in a manner consistent with their values, and they help their manufacturing partners understand their expectations. External manufacturers must meet agreed upon quality requirements in order to provide goods and services that consistently meet required specifications and customers’ needs, perform as intended and are safe for their intended use (Johnson & Johnson, 2012).
All companies have a bare minimum set of standards and quality that their product or service has to meet. Quality Control is a set of measures used and followed to make sure that the required minimum set of standards and quality are met. If the product or service is not meeting minimum necessities, a must look to make changes in procedures that will help improve product or service quality. It must be remembered that meeting minimum standards in no way assures excellence in quality to the consumer. Some company’s minimum required standards are really pretty poor quality in product or service. For some companies, they only do as little as required to make a product safe and that does not mean it is a good product in any way (Jacowski, 2010). In the example used about Johnson & Johnson, they have quality controls in place both internally and externally on how their products will be manufactured in order to make sure that no one using them gets sick. This does not mean that their products are of high quality it just means that they won’t kill you if you use them, which is the bare minimum that they are required to do by law.
References
Jacowski, T. (2010). Is for Your Business? Retrieved from http://ezinearticles.com/?Is-Quality-Control-Important-for-Your-
Business?&id=3538290
Johnson & Johnson. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.jnj.com/connect/
McNamara, C. (n.d.). Operations Management. Retrieved from http://managementhelp.org/operationsmanagement/index.htm
Stevenson, W.J. (2012). Operations management. (11th ed.) New York, NY: Irwin McGraw-
Hill.
