Measuring Quality

11 Key excerpts on "Measuring Quality"

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  Tourism Destination Quality

  Attributes and Dimensions

  • Arthur Seakhoa-King, Marcjanna M Augustyn, Peter Mason(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  A study conducted by Tamimi and Sebastianelli (1996) identified four groups of measures of quality used by US manufacturing and services firms. Apart from process-based measures aimed at improving processes using mainly SPC tools, other measures of quality included consumer-based measures aimed at monitoring customer satisfaction (e.g. focus groups, surveys), detection-based measures of conformance to specifications or requirements (e.g. number of defects, audits, inspection, scrap, rework) and financial-based measures (e.g. nonconformance costs and sales). Tamimi and Sebastienelli's study indicates that Measuring Quality requires developing comprehensive information systems capable of capturing the various aspects of quality performance.

  Interestingly, while researchers within the quality management field stress that quality starts and ends with the customer, they have as yet developed no tool for Measuring Quality directly from the customer's point of view.

  2.3 Conceptualising and Measuring Quality: The Services Marketing Perspective

  Initially, quality definitions developed in manufacturing industries dominated the study of quality in the services marketing field (Reeves & Bednar, 1994; William & Buswell, 2003). However, by the late 1970s and early 1980s, services marketing researchers (e.g. Lovelock, 1981; Sasser, Olsen, & Wyckoff, 1978; Shostack, 1977; Zeithaml, 1981) had started questioning the applicability of definition of quality developed in the quality management field for the services marketing field (Reeves & Bednar, 1994). These researchers argued that definitions of quality developed in manufacturing industries fail to consider the differences between physical goods and services (Section 2.3.1 for a detailed discussion of the differences). An academic debate ensued and by the early 1980s a new definition of quality specific to the services marketing field was developed (Reeves & Bednar, 1994).

  Gronroos (1983) noted that the term ‘quality’ in the services marketing field referred to service quality. Service quality was defined as the consumer's subjective judgement about an entity's overall superiority (Zeithaml, 1988), which resulted from a comparison of expectations with perceptions of performance (Duggal & Verma, 2013; Gronroos, 1983; Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, 1988).

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  Service Quality Management in Hospitality, Tourism, and Leisure

  • Connie Mok, Beverley Sparks, Jay Kadampully(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Interest in the measurement of service quality is thus understandably high, and measuring the quality of the service experience is now an integral part of most managers’ responsibilities. The challenge, however, is to identify and implement the most appropriate measurement tools for their operation. In stressing the importance of service quality to the hospitality sector, this chapter seeks to investigate the conceptualization and measurement of service quality and the relationships between service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer retention. In so doing, it shall identify and critically examine a number of the more popular techniques commonly employed within the hospitality industry.

  DEFINING QUALITY IN THE CONTEXT OF SERVICE

  Numerous attempts have been made to define service quality and the closely related concept of customer satisfaction (Oliver, 1980; Tse and Wilton, 1988). Unlike product quality, which in itself is particularly hard to define, the search for a working definition of service quality is further complicated by the highly transitory and intangible nature of most services. At its most basic, quality has been defined as “conforming to requirements” (Crosby, 1984). This implies that organizations must establish requirements and specifications. Once established, the quality goal of the various functions of an organization is to comply strictly with these specifications. However, the questions remain, whose requirements and whose specifications (Palmer, O'Neill, and Beggs, 1998)? Thus a second series of definitions state that quality is all about fitness for use, a definition based primarily on satisfying customers’ needs (Juran, 1982). These two definitions can be united in the concept of customer-perceived quality, where quality can be defined only by customers and occurs where an organization supplies goods or services to a specification that satisfies their needs.

  There have been numerous attempts to encapsulate the essential nature of the service quality construct in the form of theoretical models. One of the earliest models is that described by Gronroos (1983), which relates the level of experienced quality to both technical and functional dimensions of service provision (see Figure 10.1

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  Operational Performance Measurement

  Increasing Total Productivity

  • Wilfred Kaydos(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  Copyright © 1999 CRC Press, LLC. 5 DETERMINING WHAT TO MEASURE Determining what variables to measure and how to measure them is not an exact science, but there are some general principles and practical methods that can be used. An overview of the general approach for determining the quality variables a company should measure is shown by Figure 5-1. The steps for determining the quality variables to measure in a company or other business unit are as follows. 1. Identify the customers of the process. For the company's customers, there could be different groups of customers (market segments) who receive different products or have different quality require- ments for the same or similar products. 2. Identify the key deliverables supplied to the customers. This assumes that all customer requirements are being addressed. 3. Determine the customers' quality requirements for each product. These are the output, or Level 1, quality measures. 4. Identify the processes providing each of the products. 5. Determine how each principal business process works and identify the variables that affect the quality of its products. These are the Level 2, or process control, measures for the principal processes. 6. Determine the appropriate measures for controlling sub-processes, to as many lower levels as necessary to provide sufficient detail for establishing accountability and to get as close as seems practical to the root cause of quality problems. 63 Copyright © 1999 CRC Press, LLC. 64 • Operational Performance Measurement: Increasing Total Productivity EXTERNAL CUSTOMERS • KEY DELIVERABLES + QUALITY FACTORS -------- , + ' PRINCIPAL PROCESSES + ' ' OUTPUT MEASURES .. - - - - - ' LEVEL 1 + INTERNAL PROCESS MEASURES LEVEL2 + DIAGNOSTIC MEASURES LEVEL 3+ ... N Figure 5-1 Sequence for Determining What to Measure Determining What Customers Want "The business process starts with the customer.

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  Managing Quality

  Integrating the Supply Chain

  • S. Thomas Foster, John W. Gardner(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Therefore, employee satisfaction measures, training expenditures, training hours per year, work system performance, employee effectiveness measures, turnover, safety statistics, absenteeism, and many other data might be important measures for benchmarking. Of course, quality measures are often compared between firms. They can include conformance-based quality information such as reject rates, capability analysis, performance Table 6-2 Benchmarking Data Financial ratios Productivity ratios Customer-related results Operating results Human resources measures Quality measures Market share data Structural measures 147 Commonly Benchmarked Performance Measures information, or other measures. These quality measures also can include scrap and rework meas- ures, percentage of defectives, field repairs, costs of quality, and many other metrics. The qual- ity measures also may include data concerning the performance of processes and time-related statistics. Where customer service quality is important, the types of data that are captured often include such things as percentage of customers whose phone calls are answered within seven seconds, average response time for phone inquiries, number of people a caller must contact to get a problem resolved, and many other metrics (or measures). Market share data are an essential indicator of business success, resulting from the change in competition because of increased global competition. However, market share does not encom- pass only a single measure. Because markets are segmented, market share includes shares in the different markets served by the firm. Market share comparisons also are made to determine where the initiator firm ranks in the market. Finally, with the advent of ISO standards and a move to formalized production systems, structural measures often are benchmarked. Structural measures include the objectives, policies, and procedures followed by a firm.

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  Transforming Corporate Performance

  Measuring and Managing the Drivers of Business Success

  • Michael Milgate(Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  With some, little appeared to change as a result, perhaps meaning perfection had been achieved! There are two important points here. It is still a widespread belief that perfect performance measures exist and, once deployed, that they will improve performance. Both assumptions are mistaken. Moreover, as this chapter finds, quality measurement, at whatever level it might be perceived, has become an integral part of Page 194 three business elements in leading companies, strategy, management, and operations. This is confirmed by a substantial study from the European Commission’s DirectorateGeneral III Industry. 9 Comprising case studies on how thirtyfive private and public sector organizations use quality management, the work drew seven conclusions about being best in class: • Quality management is defined as the quality of management. • A customer focus is key to an organization’s continued existence. • Organizations must be employeeoriented in recognizing that people make organizations work. • Each organization is unique and develops its own approaches. • While change is difficult to accomplish, it is not impossible • Learning principles must be converted into practice. • Organizations must be results focused. A central point of the study concerns the first conclusion, namely, that the organizations described have successfully searched for sound ways of management in order to improve the quality of goods and services they deliver. Foundations for this include management by fact, a process focus, variability analysis, developing organizational competencies, balanced stakeholder management, and the alignment of structures, systems, and procedures to quality approaches. The report also spelled out that quality professionals working with top management have a special role to play in making quality a first priority, in which approaches like IS0 9000, benchmarking, and quality circles are nothing more than useful elements.

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  Handbook of Industrial and Systems Engineering

  • Adedeji B. Badiru(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  Without multiple per-spectives, one may get an incomplete view of a product’s quality. As Garvin points out, “a product can be ranked high on one dimension while being low on another” (p. 30). Once one or more definitions of quality have been chosen, the industrial engineer must decide where to measure quality before finalizing the indicators to be used. Sink and Tuttle (1989) describe quality as being measured and managed at five (later six) check-points. The five checkpoints correspond to key milestones in the value stream, with check-points 2 and 4 representing traditional incoming quality measurement (before or just as inputs enter the organization) and outgoing quality measurement (just before outputs leave the organization), respectively. Quality checkpoint 3 is in-process quality measurement, a near-discipline in its own right, including statistical process control methods, metrology, 85 Chapter five: Strategic performance measurement © 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC certified quality technicians, and certified quality engineers. At checkpoint 3, we are mea-suring the key variables and attributes of processes, products, and services that predict or directly lead to the desired characteristics at outgoing quality measurement (quality checkpoint 4) as well as those that contribute to success on the quality dimensions that are important further downstream (see checkpoint 5). Tracking such variables and attributes lends itself to statistical analysis. See Chapters 3 and 36 for a discussion of statistical pro-cess control. For an excellent introduction to applying statistical thinking and basic meth-ods to management data, see Donald Wheeler’s Understanding Variation (1993). The novice industrial engineer can benefit by taking heed of the late W. Edwards Deming’s (1993) often stated admonition to begin by “plotting points” and utilizing the “most under-used tools” in management, a pencil and piece of grid paper.

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  Service Management Strategies that Work

  • Adam Grummitt, Troy DuMoulin(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Van Haren Publishing

    (Publisher)

  1. Value: reports or surveys to measure the effectiveness and perceived value of the process to the stakeholders and users 2. Quality: process quality indicators are typically activity-based and are established to measure the quality of individual or key activities as they relate to the objective of the end-to-end process 3. Performance: metrics established under this quadrant measure the average process throughput or cycle time (eg metrics to capture the speed and performance of the stated process objective and output) 4. Compliance: process compliance seeks to measure the percentage of process deployment across the IT organization; a process may have a good perceived value, good quality and speedy throughput, but only be adhered to by a fraction of the IT organization 7.4.5 Building A Measurement Grid 1. Define the measure. 2. Determine the KPI category. 3. Establish the policy and target (target will change with process maturity). 4. Determine the tool or medium to realize the report. Financial Reduce Cost Balanced Score Card Approach Goals Example Employ New Technology Improve Management Control • Value • Quality • Throughput • Compliance In order to understand something you must look at it more then one way Process Measures Improve Quality Of Service Customer Innovation Internal figure .: measure ment framework Copyright protected. Use is for Single Users only via a VHP Approved License. For information and printed versions please see www.vanharen.net d eveLoPing a QuaLity driven measurement framework 1 5. Define the output format (graph, data, etc.). 6. Define distribution list and report frequency. n 7.5 Implementation Strategy Implementation Steps: 1. Translating the vision (building consensus around the organizations vision and strategy). The strategic mission statements must be translated into tactical and operational objectives. 2. Inventory your performance reporting and assess the relevance of these reports to the business.

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  Operations Management for Service Industries

  Competing in the Service Era

  • Glenn Bassett(Author)
  • 1992(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  Encounter with this line of reasoning is, perhaps, the surest measure of poor service quality in its own right. Overcoming it to improve service quality will not be easy. The great variety of specifications and measures that are possible represents a central barrier to clear setting and measurement of service specifications. At best, a broad smorgasbord of specifications and options can be offered, many specific to a service or industry. Confronted with confusion and uncertainty, however, a little brainstorming can go a long way toward defining viable options. By category of service industry, here are some ideas. Financial Institutions Numerous opportunities exist to set service specifications in advance as standards of performance and as a competitive strategy in tough financial service markets. Banks, for instance, could set standards for customer waiting time in line for teller service or audience with an officer. Standards for consistency of use of the customer's name in personal or phone contacts, cheerful, smiling greetings and partings or full explana- tions for delays are often lacking. Banks spend many hours and dollars Measuring Service Quality 179 training personnel to cross-sell services but put very little investment in customer contact skills. Customer surveys or, simpler yet, sampling ob- servations using the already-in-place video-cam security system would be simple, viable methods for measuring customer relations standards. Insurance companies might measure customer perception of premium rate and claims handling fairness. Few claims departments use any sys- tematic approach to measuring the skill and fairness with which third-party claims are adjusted, yet quality here often determines whether the claimant seeks out legal counsel or not and can color the public image of company fairness for better or worse.

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  Baldrige Award Winning Quality

  How to Interpret the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence

  • Mark Graham Brown(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Productivity Press

    (Publisher)

  • Degree to which some macro measures have been derived from strategic objectives/goals or analysis of future success factors for the company. • Extent to which measures have been developed for all strategic objectives or goals. • Consistency of performance measures with mission, vision, and values. • Consistency of measures across business units and/or locations. • Evidence that the organization has a well-balanced set of metrics, with approximately equal amounts of data in each of the following categories: financial performance, operational/ process measures, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, product/service quality, supplier performance, and safety/environmental performance. • Inclusion of both hard (customer buying behavior) and soft (customer opinions) measures of customer satisfaction in overall measures. • Use of multiple measures of workforce engagement/satisfaction. • Selection of 3 to 6 key financial metrics that are a good mix of short- and long-term indicators of success. • Operational/process measures are related to customer or stakeholder requirements. • Company database includes measures of cycle time and productivity or efficiency, as appropriate. • Several overall measures of safety and environmental performance are included in the overall database. • Metrics include a good mix of measures of past, present, and future performance. 202 BALDRIGE AWARD WINNING QUALITY (2) Comparative Data How do you select and ensure the effective use of key comparative data and information to support operational and strategic decision making and innovation? NOTE 4.1a(2). Comparative data and information are obtained by benchmarking and by seeking competitive comparisons. Benchmarking is identifying processes and results that rep- resent best practices and performance for similar activities, inside or outside your industry. Competitive comparisons relate your performance to that of competitors and other organizations providing similar products and services.

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  Advanced Quality Function Deployment

  • Fiorenzo Franceschini(Author)
  • 2001(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  Because many of the quality characteristics evaluated by the customer may be measured quantitatively by the service company, the procedures ensuring service quality must foresee the definition of a system of indicators able to verify them, by monitoring the numerical values inherent in the selected reference measurements [ISO 9004/2, 1991]. Q f Q p f p Fr i n j q m r j j i = ( ) = ( ) = … = … , , , , , , 1 1 Q Q Fp w Fa i n p p i i i = ( ) = … , , , , 1 Designing and Measuring Quality in the Service Sector 143 11.4.2 PZB M ODEL As confirmed unequivocally during interviews conducted on various focus groups, the basic idea underlying the PZB model is that the key to guaranteeing a good quality service consists depends on satisfying or exceeding customer expectations. The service quality the customer notices depends on the entity and the direction of the difference between expected and perceived quality. This difference or gap ( ∆ total) in turn depends on the nature of four other gaps (Figure 11.1) that emerge in the planning–production–presentation–delivering processes of a service: 11.4.2.1 Gap 1 — Discrepancy between Expected and Hypothesized Quality Many of the perceptions expressed by executives about what consumers expect from a quality service correspond to the expectations expressed by customers in focus groups, even if some differences do occur between executives’ perceptions and customers’ expectations. Substantially, managers in service companies do not always identify ahead of time the characteristics denoting what a customer maintains to be a good quality level, which prerogatives a service must present to answer customer exigencies, and which levels of performance are necessary in these characteristics for them to deliver service quality [Langeard et al., 1981; Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry, 1985].

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  Operations Management in the Hospitality Industry

  • Peter Szende, Alec N. Dalton, Michelle (Myongjee) Yoo, Peter Szende, Alec N. Dalton, Michelle (Myongjee) Yoo(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  1. Understanding Service Quality

  1.1. Dimensions of Service Quality

  Service quality refers to the degree of excellence of the service. Hospitality operations constantly strive to achieve higher service quality as it ultimately leads to competitive advantage and business success. While there are various attributes that affect quality appraisal, the following breakdown represents the five dimensions against which service quality can be defined (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, 1988 ):

  • 1) Assurance: Assurance refers to the knowledge and courtesy of the service personnel and their ability to inspire trust and confidence. For example, a general manager at a fine dining restaurant should be competent in performing service and communicate effectively while being polite and respectful.
  • 2) Empathy: Empathy refers to caring and individualized attention toward the customers. For example, a hotel front desk agent might regard a customer’s urgent situation as their own problem and find a solution in an effort to support the customer’s needs.
  • 3) Reliability: Reliability refers to the ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately and consistently. For example, customers expect their personal information is accurately recorded when they book their flights, and they expect flight departures and arrivals to be on time when they travel on airlines.
  • 4) Responsiveness: Responsiveness refers to the willingness of the service personnel to help customers and provide prompt, timely service. For example, serving complimentary desserts at a restaurant for a table that had to wait for an exceptionally long time for their meal can turn a poor customer experience into a favorable one.
  • 5) Tangibles:

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