Lean Operations Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Lean Operations - Essay Example This is because if quality was indeed free, it would be offered freely and be presented to customers and consumers at no extra cost. Indeed, there is no doubt that one reason why most companies and businesses have failed in their quest to deliver quality is due to the approaches they use in ensuring and delivering these quality assurance. Because of the use of wrong approaches also, several companies, businesses and institutional operatives have not been able to give the true account of the cost of quality they are supposed to deliver. Due to this, they have continued to live on the good old notion that the more quality manufacturing and service would become, the more costly production and labor could be. The present paper is therefore being written as a critical analysis of the topic of cost of quality by using the phenomenon of lean production or lean manufacturing to proof that quality does not always have to lead to increased cost of production and labor. The analysis shall be un dertaken from the perspective from quality costing in regards to Philip B. Crosby. The essence of cost of quality When Crosby (1979) speaks of the cost of quality, he is referring to something more technical than what could easily come to mind for the literal meaning of ‘cost of quality’. ... This is why these costs are also known as the "hidden factory" (Dahlgaard et al., 1999 as cited in Krishnan, 2006). This view is in direct relation to what is put forth by Crosby as the refusal to adhere to quality would actually take away from the company or business the percentage that quality is expected to add up to the overall turnover. As this cost is deducted from the general turnover, what happens is that the company records lowered rates of income and that difference becomes the actual cost of quality. The essence and cost of quality actually has to do with the cost that business operatives pay for refusing to stick to quality standards. Achieving quality with lean operation Quality could be costly in a number of ways. For example refusing to adhere to quality at the initial stages would demand that work is redone and this will certainly increase cost of quality. All the following instances are known to bring about increases in cost of quality and they include â€Å"the rew orking of a manufactured item, the retesting of an assembly, the rebuilding of a tool, the correction of a bank statement, the reworking of a service, such as the reprocessing of a loan operation or the replacement of a food order in a restaurant† (ASQ, 2012). Invariably, it is always a good idea to reduce the cost of quality. But how should this take place done successfully? The use of lean production has been said to be an effective means of achieving quality and thus reducing the cost of quality (COQ). Plant Services (2013) notes that â€Å"'lean' is defined as the elimination of waste and things that do not add value as defined by the customer.† This means that lean operation â€Å"is based on finding efficiencies and removing