Journal #1: Quality Management
Miché Jones
Kaplan University
MT435: Operations Management
Professor Jason Jackson
January 13, 2015

Journal #1: Quality Management
Quality Tools Roberta S. Russell and Bernard W. Taylor III, authors of Operations and Supply Chain Management discussed quality tools and their importance to organizations. The authors conveyed that W. Edwards Deming, along with many other successful individuals who focused on quality, created an immense number of tools to discover the causes of quality issues. Fortunately, the tools are still being implemented by organizations today. The quality methods represent graphical techniques and consist of Pareto Charts, Process Flowcharts, Checksheets, Histograms, Scatter Diagrams, Statistical Process Control Charts, and Cause-and-Effect Diagrams. Russell and Taylor III clearly define the tools and their representation. Pareto Charts are designed for tallying the percentage of defects in which result from different causes to identify major quality issues; Process Flowcharts assist with focusing on where a quality issue may appear during a particular process; Checksheets demonstrate tallies of the number of defects for a list of problems that were discovered in the past; Histograms provide management with a frequency of data that is relevant to the quality problem; Scatter Diagrams identify "a pattern that may cause a quality problem" (Russell & Taylor III, 2014, p. 61); Statistical Process Control Charts consist of upper and lower boundaries. "If the process stays between these limits over time, it is in control and problem does not exist" (Russell & Taylor III, 2014, p. 61); and Cause-and-Effect Diagrams, also referred to as "fishbone" diagrams, according to the authors, divides the causes of a quality problem into categories. The quality tools are indeed unique in their own way and have been coined by many as the "magnificent seven."
Cost of Quality "Quality costs have traditionally served as the basis for evaluating investments in quality programs," conveyed Russell and Taylor III (Russell & Taylor III, 2014, p. 84). The costs of quality are those that become subject to achieving consumer satisfaction as well as achieving good quality. It is not, according to "Cost of Quality (COQ)," a price of creating a quality product or service, but instead, it is the cost of not creating a quality product or service. "The cost of quality isn't the price of creating a quality product or service. It's the cost of NOT creating a quality product or service" ("Cost of Quality (COQ)," n.d., p. 1). These type of costs fall into two categories, according to Russell and Taylor III. Those categories are the cost of achieving good quality and the cost linked to poor-quality products. The cost of achieving good quality focuses on prevention costs and appraisal costs. Management utilizes prevention costs when attempting to prevent products that are considered poor-quality from reaching consumers. Appraisal costs are costs associated with testing a product to ensure that product-quality specifications are being met to satisfied consumer needs. The cost associated to poor-quality products is generally categorized as internal or external failure costs. Internal failure costs result when products of poor quality are discovered before reaching consumers. External failure costs incur after a consumer has received a poor-quality product. This aspect results in poor customer service and can affect an organization.