All societies have assigned within their circle of customs and behavioral habits a series of paradigms that define the behavior of their members, these guidelines also apply within companies, the change of any of these rules may be the key to not cease to have validity in the market.
Quality is currently recognized as a key concept in the competitiveness of companies in the market, the ideology of creating value is the starting point of current business administration, which is why it is of great importance for the new generation of analysts and professionals in this area to know the latest management philosophies regarding this topic.
The analysis of the points against quality are summarized in the differences of opinion expressed in the four main schools of quality management: Juran, Deming, Crosby and the Japanese Approach, on which the most important aspects of this writing are based..
Juran
This school emphasizes that if the quality of the company increases, the control costs increase and the costs of possible failures decrease, therefore it is necessary to implement a certain type of controls that do not affect the normal development of the activity, having as primary objective to find the level of quality that minimizes the total cost of quality.
Deming
This doctrine focuses on the costs of external failures in production and marketing and therefore the resulting loss of customers. This implies that quality costs are unnecessary and the purpose to pursue is to have zero defects.
Crosby
The foundation of this school is that the cost of quality will be minimized by doing things right the first time, all subsequent deviations will increase costs and become unsustainable, the intention as in the previous school is to have zero defects.
Japanese approach
The latter has its roots rooted in improving the quality of life of producers, consumers and investors, the goal is continuous improvement towards perfection using the cost of quality.
Quality = Success
The way of doing things, the circumstances and the conditions that lead us to occupy an important place in society is what really gives importance and validity to the tasks carried out in the organization.
Quality cost control
The control that is done on costs is the basis for the analysis of quality management, the paradigms in front of the company conception have been changing, this makes the «Traditional Approach» on management that affirms that mistakes are unavoidable and that it is too expensive to rectify all defects, therefore always the last error is the most expensive to detect and correct, this has been discarded by the current administration, the missteps that occur within the organization's activity must be analyzed Because of the errors, analyze them and take actions to remedy them, this is based on the fact that the total cost decreases until the last error is eliminated.
Therefore, it is necessary to make a comparison of the types of production (Just in Time and Traditional) that occurs in organizations to determine which of the costs are attributed to quality.
Production "Just in Time" or Just in Time
It aims at continuous processing, without production interruptions, minimizing the total time required from the start of manufacturing to product invoicing.
"The total time for a product is equal to the process time"
Comparison of just in time with traditional production:
| JUST IN TIME | TRADITIONAL P / N |
| Pull-through system | Pull-through system |
| Insignificant inventories | Significant inventories |
| Production cells | Departmental structure |
| Interdisciplinary workforce | Skilled labor |
| Total quality control | Acceptable quality level |
| Decentralized services | Centralized services |
The analysis of production costs is closely linked with the implementation of a total quality management system.
To optimize production costs, different processes can be used. One of the best known is presented below.
Benchmarking
It is a continuous process of measuring products, services and processes in relation to the strongest competitors, or those considered as world leaders in their sectors.
It is the search for the best practices of companies that lead to superior performance, it is an opportunity for an organization to learn from the experiences of others.
Benchmarking Types
Internal: Compare internal operations between the different business units.
Competitive: It makes a comparison between competitors using the product. (innovation, strategies).
Functional: A comparison is made between the functions within the same sector.
Generic: Compares the functions or processes of business, regardless of the sector (Change in organizational culture).
Benchmarking operation
Cost Driven Benchmarking:
Compare aspects of performance with competitors, generally using consultants as intermediaries. Reduce cost and incremental improvements are achieved. (outputs).
Process Driven Benchmarking:
It is a continuous process and with continuous improvement, the focus is on the partner and there is no cost reduction (reasons)
In order not to be left behind by the new organizational models, it is necessary in the first instance to change the way of seeing our company and all the factors that influence its operation, it means "starting again", it is the fundamental revision and radical redesign of processes In order to achieve improvements in critical performance measures such as costs, quality, service and speed, you must then focus on the fundamental and natural processes of the business, not on its sections or on other organizational units, applying the criteria of the processes found in greater difficulties, which are those that have the greatest impact and finally which processes are most appropriate for the new form of production and its management.
