Summary
The Quality Management System (SGC) contributes to increasing customer satisfaction for the product or service provided by recognizing and controlling the processes that lead to excellence, offering the fundamental link for continuous improvement, safety and guarantee of the product or service, both to the company and to its customers. Within this system, quality costs are the main indicator, being a fairly approximate index of business management that determines the optimal level of expenses and the increase in efficiency in the production or provision of services.
Introduction
At the present time, the Quality Management System (QMS) is implemented in various companies, as it helps to contribute to increasing customer satisfaction, whether for the product or service provided, meeting their expectations; It allows to recognize and control the processes that lead in one way or another to excellence and provides the fundamental link for continuous improvement as well as the security and guarantee of its product or service to both the organization and its customers. Within this and according to the requirements of ISO 9004: 2000 Quality Management Systems and the Guidelines for performance improvement in its requirement 8.2.1.4 called: Financial Measures, Quality Costs are inserted,those that give to a great extent a fairly approximate index of business management as it guarantees the determination of the optimal level of expenses and the increase in production efficiency, as well as the use of different methods for the detection and control of these expenses; allowing an analysis of the economic activity of the company in question ensuring an adequate use of the available resources taking into account the social interests.
Development
The proper implementation of a Quality Management System, leads to the success of business activity, with the domain and knowledge of all its members, since it is an administrative tool, which allows users of accounting information (tax, bank, leaders, workers) have quality information, where the cost of services provided is directly proportional to income for the same period, contributing to correct decision-making, which fosters an increase in the level of trust and reciprocity among specialists in the branch. It also helps the insertion or elaboration of strategies aimed at obtaining efficiency with relevant results.
It should be noted, then, that it is not enough for a company to have a quality system based on any of the international certifications if the necessary mechanisms are not in place and created to learn from the errors, defects, failures and deviations that, appropriately quantified, allow an organization to become aware of the need for continuous improvement by applying corrective and preventive actions.
The most important objective of the cost of quality is to translate quality problems into a language for senior management - the language of money - Jurán, 1992 observed that both workers and supervisors speak the language of "things", such like units and defects. Therefore, quality problems expressed as the number of defects typically have little impact on senior management, who is more focused on the financial aspect of the organization. Therefore, if the magnitude of quality problems is expressed in monetary terms, the eyes of management will open to the interest in the cost of quality.
Generally, the measurement of quality costs is directed towards areas of high impact and identified as potential sources of cost reduction and that allow to quantify development and provide an internal basis of comparison between products, services, processes and departments.
It is usual to classify quality costs into:
Compliance costs are those incurred to ensure that the goods and services provided meet the specifications. They include the costs of the design and manufacturing stages aimed at preventing the lack of compliance with the standards, and they are classified as prevention and evaluation costs. Non-conformity costs are associated with failures, that is, they are linked to products or services that do not meet the specifications. They are classified into internal failure costs and external failure costs.
Prevention costs are those that occur when trying to reduce or avoid failures. They are the cost of all the activities carried out to avoid defects in design and development; in the purchase of supplies, equipment, facilities and materials; in labor, and in other aspects of starting and creating a product or service. Those prevention and measurement activities carried out during the commercialization cycle are included.
The evaluation costs are produced when carrying out checks to know the quality level that the company offers. This verification requires the development of activities such as: audits, inspections, homologation and quality reviews, market research, training for evaluation, testing, cost of laboratory operation and supplier surveillance. These costs are incurred by conducting: inspections, tests, and other planned evaluations that are used to determine if the output, programs, or services meet the established requirements. Marketing and customer specifications are included, as well as engineering documents and information inherent in procedures and processes.
Finally, failure costs are also known as "non-quality costs". These can be divided into internal failures and external failures. Internal failures are those related to failures produced before the sale. An external failure is the failure that occurs once the product has already been delivered to the customer. They are associated with things that do not conform or do not perform as required, as well as those related to non-compliance with consumer offerings, including all materials and labor involved. It can go up to items related to the loss of customer confidence.
Amat, 1992 refers that failure costs, in general, are inversely proportional to the time that elapses since the organization has implemented a quality program and the amount invested in prevention and evaluation.
On the other hand, these costs can be divided into tangible and intangible. The first are those that can be calculated objectively and, normally, are accompanied by a cash disbursement by the organization that commits them. In other words, it refers to the cost of labor or raw material that must be incurred as a consequence of the failure. Intangible costs are those that have to be calculated with essentially subjective criteria. These are the ones that are a consequence of the loss of the image of the company as a result of the impact of customer failures or those that occur when the workforce becomes unmotivated due to accidents or customer complaints.
The cost of a failure must always be estimated marginally. That is, the cost will include the costs that the company has additionally due to the failure or the income that is not received for this reason. For this, the failure costs of each quality controllable cost level must be anticipated. Since the latter can increase to infinity, the level of failure costs that is accepted as being considered almost impossible to reduce has to be defined. There is always a level at which failure costs are perhaps so low that further prevention and evaluation is no longer worthwhile. This level must be very close to the "zero defects" situation. Normally, it is thought that the costs of prevention or evaluation no longer have to be increased when they exceed the costs of failures that are to be reduced.
The minimum total cost occurs at the time when reducing the cost of failures is difficult, because what can be saved in failures is less than the additional costs required for prevention and evaluation. It is logical that an organization that decides to implement a quality cost system has very high flaws. In the first months of effectiveness of the quality plan, the total costs of quality may continue to grow since prevention and evaluation require a time interval until the first important effects are noticed. Thereafter, failure costs begin to decrease considerably as well as total costs, failure costs decrease as prevention and evaluation costs increase, and as the quality program began longer,You can try to know at any time what possibilities there are to reduce quality costs.
Despite the great variety of methodologies, there are coinciding points for what is proposed, defining stages and in turn each one of them being made up of steps. Carry out a very deep characterization of the company and its objectives to be achieved with the implementation of the quality cost system. Create a working group where the first objective is to train and prepare workers on the Quality Management System that allows the implementation of the quality cost system. Analyze the diagram of key processes and their managers respectively. Identify and classify the cost elements by processes with the help of different research methods.Search the bases of the calculation of each of these costs to be able to determine them and manage to prepare the monthly report of the quality costs by elements; where some propose that they should be introduced into accounting, through automated systems, and others that simultaneous control can be carried out without having to affect accounting for analysis and discussion at monthly or quarterly meetings, as directed by entities by the highest authority.
Conclusions
Quality not only refers to the essential requirements of the product or service to satisfy customer needs, but it is currently a key strategic factor on which most organizations depend, not only to maintain their position in the market but even to ensure their survival. To ensure quality in organizations, it is necessary to have solid Quality Management Systems. The calculation of Quality Costs is not established as a requirement in ISO 9001, but is part of financial measurements, which are recommended in 9004 as a method to identify areas in which the performance of the company can be improved. SGC and raise the effectiveness and efficiency in the organization.The calculation of quality costs is considered to be a necessary tool to make viable the continuous improvement process in the Quality Management system in the business sector. With the calculation of quality costs, the importance of knowing the structure of these is demonstrated, to define the actions to be taken by senior management.
Bibliography
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