Page 608 - Introduction to Business

582 PART 6 Managing Business Operations, Management Information Systems, and the Digital Enterprise

Marcelo Vieria, a Brazilian coffee farmer, leads a new every six months and copy machine B breaks down on
generation of coffee farmers in controlling the quality of the average every nine months, then the second copy machine
coffee blends that his company markets worldwide.
is more reliable.
• Maintainability refers to the ease and the speed with
which the item can be repaired. For example, if all
repairs for copy machine A take a long time and require
the work of a company technician, while all repairs for
copy machine B can be done quickly by the user, then
the maintainability of copy machine B is better.
• Durability refers to the length of the item’s life. This
could apply to repairable items such as automobiles and
computers, and also could apply to items that are not
repairable such as light bulbs, tires, and car batteries.
When it comes to services, customers consider the fol-
lowing five factors to judge quality:
• Tangibles, which include the appearance of the service
facilities, equipment, and personnel
• Reliability, which measures the ability to perform the
service dependably and accurately
• Responsiveness, which measures the willingness to pro-
vide the service
• Assurance, which refers to the ability to convey trust and
confidence
• Empathy, which measures the flexibility in adapting the
service to meet individual needs 8
For example, on a visit to a doctor, patients would judge
service quality by asking, am I comfortable in the doctor’s
office (tangibles)? Is the doctor qualified to help me (relia-
bility)? Is the doctor happy to see me (responsiveness)? Can
I trust this doctor (assurance)? Is the doctor interested in me
individually or is the doctor helping me just as an average
patient (empathy)?
maintainability (of an item) The ease
and speed with which an item can be The quality of conformance is in the realm of the operations manager. The
repaired operations manager needs to decide the best way to control quality of confor-
durability (of an item) The length of an mance, which is commonly called quality control. Quality control is the set of
item’s life
activities aimed at ensuring that the production system is producing products that
tangibles (of service) The appearance conform to design specifications. One of the most widely used tools for quality con-
of the service facilities, equipment, and
personnel trol is the process control chart, or simply the control chart.
In order to understand the philosophy behind control charts, it is necessary to
reliability (of service) The ability to
perform the service dependably and first introduce the concepts of normal variation and abnormal variation. If we
accurately were, for example, to compare our signatures on the checks that we wrote in the
responsiveness (of service) The past six months, we would see that from check to check, there would be normal
willingness to provide the service
variations in the way we signed our name. Even though we are the ones signing the
assurance (of service) The ability to
convey trust and confidence checks and we should know how to sign our name, because we are not perfectly
consistent, our signatures will exhibit these normal variations. On the other hand,
empathy (of service) The flexibility in
adapting the service to meet individual if we saw a document where somebody had forged our signature and compared
needs that signature with our real signature, then we should see an abnormal variation
quality control A set of activities aimed between the forged signature and our real signature. Similarly, because the people
at ensuring that the production system and the processes in the production system are not perfectly consistent, products
is producing products that conform to
design specifications can exhibit normal variations but sill conform to specifications. At the same

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