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Introduction

Task 6 To help sell products, businesses will try to add or show that their product is good quality. A good quality product will meet the customer's expectations, therefore it must be able to complete the task that the customer is purchasing it for, it must also do what it claims it can do, for example if a water proof jacket is not water proof, it is not very good quality because it doesn't do what it claims it can do. Quality is largely defined by the customer, a product that is good quality for one customer may not be good quality for another customer, for example a simple bike might be good for one customer because it gets them from one place to another but it might not be good for another customer because this customer wants to be able to reach high speeds on their bike which this bike cannot do therefore it is not good quality to this customer because it cannot meet their expectations. Adding quality also helps sell products because it gives a USP (unique selling point) which makes the product different or better than the competitors products. PEP includes in their mission statement "produce the best electrical appliances" this statement shows how important it is for PEP to produce high quality products, to do this PEP will need to add as much value and quality to their products as possible. To help sell products businesses will also add value to a product, they will do this by adding to stages to the production process. For example PEP could do this by selling a television instead of selling the parts separately, below are examples of how PEP would add ...read more.

Middle

what the quality of the products and production method is like because they work their. The advantages of the quality circles is that it allows the staff involved to give their opinions who have a good idea of the conditions and problems of the current system because they run it. It also helps to motivate the staff because they feel a part of the business. The members of the discussions can learn from each other therefore the staff will be more trained and the training didn't cost the business anything. The disadvantages of this is that arguments can develop between staff because one does not agree with another, this could ruin relations between staff which is not good because the staff would not like working with one another thus degrading their motivation. Another disadvantage is that humans make errors therefore the idea that is agreed could be the wrong one and would therefore would not benefit the business, instead it would make the business operate worse. Although the quality of PEP's products is good, the quality of their service is not good, Keith argues that he is sick of PEP's high quality products not getting the attention they deserve because of PEP's weak administration and customer service. The business can not always meet delivery deadlines because the members of staff sometimes quote a delivery date to a customer and then not notify anyone to speed up the production process therefore the product cannot be made to meet this deadline. Other methods to add quality To improve PEP's quality and possibly introduce a more effective production method, PEP could use the following: * Total quality management * Quality assurance * ISO 9000 * Bench marking These are explained below TQM TQM (total quality management) ...read more.

Conclusion

The advantages of this are that not much thought is required because most of the information taken is either from the market leaders or from the customers. The disadvantages of this are that research is needed to find out the market leader's production methods and the customer's idea of good a production method which requires money. Another disadvantage is that the best production method is always changes as suppliers continually do research through the benchmarking process and through other methods to try and get a advantage over competitors by using a better production method, therefore benchmarking has to be done regularly for suppliers to keep up which costs the business time and money. PEP would benefit from this because their production method is not good (claims Keith Parker) therefore they could look at the methods that the leading competitor uses. Powergen use this method, they claim that from it they enjoyed high profit increases from it when they looked at American power generators. From the benchmarking that they did, they were able to design a method that gave them the following benefits: a staff reduction from 1,100 which means that less money has to go out of the business on wages, better jobs for the employees that remained therefore the employees are more motivated to do their jobs, maintenance costs reduced by 66% which increase profits because less money is money is being spent on this area and finally the workforce ended up became skilled in more than one area which motivates them more. If PEP was to use benchmarking and use it effectively, they too could be enjoying these benefits. Rashed Khan Page 15 ...read more.

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