Supply Chain Quality Management

Abstract

IntroductionIn today's economy, it is no longer business versus business, but rather supply chain versus supply chain.To compete, supply chain members must learn to seamlessly integrate, grow, and develop business functions.Traditional quality management practices have been and will continue to be used to address many of these supply chain integration issues.With this in mind, current managerial thinking is advancing the notion of supply chain quality management.Supply chain quality management is a systems-based approach to performance improvement that integrates supply chain partners and leverages opportunities created by upstream and downstream linkages with a focus on creating value and achieving satisfaction of intermediate and final customers (Foster, 2008;Robinson & Malhotra, 2005).The intent of the chapter is to (1) review the positive impact of quality management on supply chain management, (2) present cases of supply chain improvements through quality management with a focus on the processes of design, production, delivery, support, and supplier-customer relationships, and (3) discuss the best practice recommendations, relationship between total quality management factors and transition to supply chain quality management that follow from these results. Positive relationship between quality management and supply chain managementAlthough there are several definitions of quality, simply put, quality can be defined as meeting or exceeding customer expectations (Evans & Lindsay, 2002).According to the American Society for Quality, the definition of quality is "A subjective term for which each person or sector has its own definition.In technical usage, quality can have two meanings: 1. the characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs; 2. a product or service free of deficiencies.According to Joseph Juran, quality means "fitness for use;" according to Philip Crosby, it means "conformance to requirements."(American Society for Quality Online Glossary, 2011) Quality tools exist and include, but are not limited to: cause analysis (cause-and-effect diagrams, pareto charts, and scatter diagram), evaluation and decision-making tools (decision matrix and multi-voting), process analysis (flowchart, failure modes and effects analysis, mistake-proofing, and spaghetti diagrams), data collection and analysis (box and whisker plot, check sheet, control chart, design of experiments, histogram, scatter diagram, stratification, and surveys), idea creation (affinity diagram, benchmarking, brainstorming, and nominal group technique), an improvement project (Gantt chart and Plan-Do-Study-Act continuous improvement model), www.intechopen.com

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