3D Home Printers Quality Management

Introduction

Quality control and management are essential in an institution to ensure the quality of its products and consumer satisfaction. Businesses maintain quality control as a major aspect to satisfy one of the most important stakeholders, who are consumers (Dahlgaard-Park et al., 2018). The control of quality is a procedure that begins from the management methods to the execution of such philosophies within an institution. Moreover, while engaging in quality control for an institution, businesses often create an ideal culture that suits all stakeholders (Al-Dhaafri et al., 2016). They implicate reliable control tools to ensure the success of their quality control goals. 3D Home Printers (HD) is a developing institution with a global reputation for its top-notch quality of products and services, which helps in consumer retention. As a market leader in terms of quality offered and the value for money for goods purchased, it recommends a new approach to appraising the quality and setting the minimum quality standards to be met by all new product lines. This study will determine the philosophies advocated for the business and control tools to enhance the attainment of its objectives.

Proposed Management Philosophies and their Analysis

The cooperation of all stakeholders is based on a culture, which is often instituted by the management philosophies or rather golden rules created by the management. The rules must highlight the needs of every stakeholder and enhance their motivation to improve on the quality demanded by the business. 3D-HD has five major philosophies that will be outlined as follows:

1. Maintain accountability at all times
2. Advocate for skill development and creation of attainable yet challenging goals
3. Create an efficient communication and information system that is fast and reliable to all stakeholders
4. Ensure a reliable working environment that enhances flexibility and innovativeness at work
5. Prioritize on consumer needs and effectively evaluate such needs

The selection of the five golden rules is informed by their ability to impact the quality achieved at every level of the institution in the race towards achieving only the minimum and even surpassing the standards set for a new line of products. The discussion on the rationale for every golden rule will be based on its benefits from a general perspective and how it will impact the institution.

The first golden rule is to maintain accountability at all times. This is a plan to ensure every stakeholder is accountable for their actions. The rule enhances responsibility and being able to charter creative paths to achieve the goals set by the institution (Dent & Bozeman, 2014). Accountability also enhances progress in that all employees will know what they need to do, how to do it, and feel the impact when they fail to achieve the set goals. Moreover, accountability among all stakeholders in 3D-HD will help the institution achieve a reliable system where every stakeholder is responsible for the tasks signed to them. They work hard to fulfil the minimum standards required of them.

Advocating for skill development and setting attainable goals is the second most important rule. Employee empowerment enhances their contribution to the daily activities of an institution. The skills empowerment can be through guidance or training services offered to help improve the quality of services (Dubey, Gunasekaran, & Ali, 2015). As a philosophy, this will ensure that the quality attained by each employee is exemplary, hence achieving the overall quality demands of the institution.

The communication and information system is another integral part of an organization. This is because it controls all manner of communication of commands, requests, and opinions from all management and employees (Oakland, 2014). Ensuring that the system is effective and that the employees utilize the set standards while communicating enhances the quality of services they provide to the institution. The outcome of an effective communication and information system in an institution is the reliability created, the ability to communicate challenges and ideas, and the ability to gather information for quality control (Sparrow & Makram, 2015).

A reliable environment where worker needs are identified and encourage flexibility and innovativeness promotes the feeling of belonging to all stakeholders. This rule requires every employee to enhance their flexibility, despite demanding accountability for their actions (Urbancova & Vnouckova, 2015). Moreover, it motivates the employees to try new things that are important to the institution. Applying this golden rule in 3D-HD will ensure employees communicate their new ideas and are flexible during the entire production process to create quality where fits.

The final golden rule is to prioritize consumer needs. Consumers are regarded as the most important stakeholders for any business. The project to ensure the quality of products ensures consumer retention, gathers new consumers for their new products, and creates loyalty among them (van Elk et al., 2021). This means that consumers are highly valued for the entire process; hence, all the other stakeholders must consider their needs, especially employees of 3D-HD.

The set golden rules will have to be enacted, communicated, and observed by the business leaders. As a business leader, one has the mandate to oversight the implementation of each of the golden rules within the institution. The businesses leaders must offer guidance where necessary to improve understanding among the employees and promote motivation within the institution (Augusto, Lisboa, & Yasin, 2014). Additionally, the business leaders should act as role models to other stakeholders by demonstrating what needs to be done. This is by respecting all the golden business rules, applying them, and being accountable for their actions. Nevertheless, the philosophies introduce an employee-oriented and market-oriented culture (Calvo-Mora et al., 2014). The employee-oriented culture is concerned with the welfare and motivation of the employees. This includes acquiring reliable skills even while engaging in the company duties. On the other hand, the consumer-oriented culture advocates for satisfying all consumer needs (Chang, 2016). This is based on the institution’s quality and the communication approaches with the consumers. Therefore, the rules ascertain that all internal stakeholders within the institution adhere to their consumers’ needs. The five golden rules showcase the standards of operation and principles that all organization stakeholders must adopt.

Proposal of Engineering/Quality Control Tools

The process of maintaining and achieving quality within an institution requires sophisticated tools. Engineering tools are similar to the quality control tools and highly applicable in the case scenario for 3D-HP that needs to roll out their products and maintain minimum standards and even surpass such standards. As a highly focused company on the quality of the end product, various tools will be reliable in the sense that they will engage in the processes, the people, problems, and the end product (Ahmad et al., 2017). The following section demonstrates the top five quality control tools essential for 3D-HP, together with the analysis on how they will influence activities committed by the institution.

1. Pareto Chart
2. Stratification
3. Cause and Effect Diagram
4. Check Sheet
5. Control Chart

The different control tools affect the quality control approach to be established by 3D-HP. To begin with, the Pareto Chart is one of the most common quality control tools. The chart groups the problems or rather data identified by an institution (Besterfield et al., 2014). The grouping is then conducted in the order of priority. This means that the most likely outcome to affect the institution is eliminated or dealt with before engaging in others that have the most negligible consequences to the quality controls of the institution (Daroń, Górska, & Dunay, 2018). The second most prevalent approach is the use of the check sheet. The check sheet is also used in identifying data; however, the grouping does not occur at this level. The check sheets record every problem that is experienced along the way (Godfrey, 2018). The check sheets are used to create the Pareto Chart or other relevant graphs at given points. This control tool will help analyze all the problems available in managing production for new line products by 3D-HD.

The cause and effect diagram is commonly used to identify the causes and effects of problems along the implementation stages (Mitra, 2016). This diagram is often associated with the fishbone due to the structure. As a common tool to help in quality control, it helps establish the problems associated with every procedure in the manufacturing process. This will be an ideal tool for producing a new line of products by highlighting all problems, their causes, and effects for proper decision making (Mizuno & Bodek, 2020). Stratification analysis is a tool used to group data and evaluate them by highlighting their traits and similarities. This tool can be used in quality control to understand what occurs within the manufacturing processes to the point where the final product is issued in the market (Neyestani,, 2017; Povorina et al., 2017). In most cases, the outcome of the stratification analysis is used to create the cause-and-effect analysis of issues within an institution. The final tool is the control chart, which is also helpful in the end product analysis. Specific goals and standards are created during the manufacturing process, which must be attained to ensure the quality of the products (Pramono et al., 2018). In the case of the control charts, a comparison of the achievable after every step and what is achieved is conducted to determine whether the process is in line with the business objectives (Talapatra, Uddin, & Rahman, 2018). It also analyses whether the end product is what has met the minimum standards set by the institution. 3D-HP will utilize this tool to assess the procedures determine the quality achieved as it moves towards implementing the new products or introducing them to the market for their consumers. The following is a classification of all the tools and categories they best fall under.

Graphical Summary

Conclusion

The analysis on quality control philosophies and tools has established a reliable approach for 3D-HP to improve on its quality and maintain its market leader position when it comes to engineering quality. The identification of philosophies has gathered reliable information on how an organizational culture and principles influence the behaviour of all stakeholders. The philosophies as they have been indicated influence the behaviour of the management, employees, and even the consumers. The outcome of the analysis was integrated to the determination of quality control tools. Five specific quality control tools have been subjected to scrutiny to identify how they are of importance, as well as how they would benefit 3D-HP, the case study institution. The information established in the entire study is reliable in determining how institutions should maximize and maintain the quality of their products. The derivable include the philosophies set by an institution and the kind of tools used to administer the changes, or consumer needs incorporated into the business.

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