Carefully review the simulation’s introductory information and instructions, as well as the information in the OM Simulation Descriptions and Implementation Tips. After completing th

Operations Quality Management

Holly Crosley

Colorado State University Global

OPS510: Operations Management

Dr. Parimal Kopardekar

December 5, 2021

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Operations Quality Management

Quality is a differentiator of a successful business (Heizer, et al., 2020). A company’s

ability to apply a total quality system effectively is how they sustain product and service quality

at a nominal cost (Nugroho & Nurcahyo, 2018). Quality practices begin with organizational

practices, quality principles, employee fulfillment, and customer satisfaction (Heizer, et al.,

2020). Corporate leadership sets the expectations for quality through their mission statement,

operating procedures, and staff training. To maintain and determine how to apply the Total

Quality Management (TQM) is the next step in the process. This involves looking at the different

options for tracking what the company has determined are its quality metrics. Ensuring the

employees are content is the next part of the quality cascade. Ensuring employees see the bigger

picture regarding quality and buy in to supporting the vision of the company is crucial to success.

Employee retention is also important as training employees is an additional cost to a company.

Finally, customer satisfaction is the end of the process, as defined by Heizer, et al. (2020). The

Quality Management simulation in the Pearson MyOMLab provides a real-life scenario with

TQM decisions which need to be made when specific quality concerns arise. This paper will look

at the simulation in depth, the methodologies, the results, and the lessons I learned after

completing the simulation.

Quality Management Simulation

The quality management simulation was a 12-month restaurant operations simulation.

The premise of the simulation was:

You are the manager of Cibare, one of the hottest Italian restaurants in town. You

manage a full service staff and work closely with the Chef and the restaurant owner to

ensure Cibare is providing a high-quality experience for customers. It is your job to make

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sure daily operations are running smoothly and that the investments you make to improve

or maintain quality provides a return that exceeds the cost.

The simulation began with emails, texts, and reviews and ratings from customers. The

owner and staff messages set the scenario and gave a brief look at the current status of the

restaurant. The goal of the simulation was to earn $360,000 in net profits from food and beverage

sales and to not get fired when the year ended.

The simulation required decisions to be made about regarding issues that arose, both

internal and external. For example, an internal problem could be the staff was embarrassed by the

quality of the desserts being offered as documented through emails and texts from staff. External

issues were based on customer complaints as seen in the reviews of the restaurant. Every so often

a new email or text would come in which would detail the current issue. This was usually

accompanied by a change in the number of customer reviews as well as the specifics of the

customer reviews. Choices would then be offered as potential solutions to the problems with

associated costs.

Like the forecasting simulation, I looked at the communications from the staff and looked

at the customer reviews and the current restaurant income and expenditures. The messages varied

major capital outlay issues to minor cleaning issues.

Operational Quality Management

Operational quality management includes TQM, Lean, and Six Sigma methodologies.

These methodologies can stand alone or work together to implement quality processes. Total

Quality Management (TQM) includes the PDCA (Plan, Do, Control, Act) technique to enact

change or make decisions. Quantifying the costs of poor quality is a way to evaluate the benefit

of utilizing TQM methodology. Lean aims to reduce waste within a system or process. Typically,

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reducing defined waste can reduce overall costs. As part of TQM, many choices exist within the

lean methodology techniques, such as value stream processing, which lists every step in a

process to identify where waste can be reduced or eliminated. Six Sigma is another methodology

identified when implementing TQM processes. Six Sigma is more statistical in nature and relies

upon data to determine defect reduction. The DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve,

Control) technique is commonly used to systematically look at process improvement. (Saxena &

Rao, 2019). It is important to note, defects can be an obvious product flaw or mistake, but can

also refer to any deviation from a standard operating procedure.

When approaching the issues that were presented in the QM simulation, I utilized a mix

of the different techniques to make my decisions. Looking at the cost benefit analysis, but also

using a more empathetic view to see what the decision would do to the people involved. This,

like forecasting, enacts an art and science approach to TQM.

Simulation Results

My Quality Management simulation results were a 112.93% profit increase over the

profit goal ($360,000) set by the owner of the restaurant ($406,559 total profit). Customer rating

goal was 3.5 stars and I was able to achieve a 4.5 star rating (see Appendix A). The total cost

breakdowns are shown on Appendix C.

Lessons Learned

Lessons learned are captured when the positive and the negative experiences are

documented (Project Management Institute, 2017). I learned many lessons during this Quality

Management simulation. Some involved major cost choices, some were minor, some were

related to customer comfort, and some were to keep staff content.

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There were two major maintenance choices during the simulation. One was when the

plumbing failed and there was no water and one was when the AC failed. In both cases, I chose

to spend the higher breakdown maintenance cost. In both cases, I agree with Heizer, et al. (2020)

the consequences of the failures need to be considered. Sometimes the cost of the repair, while

more expensive than the preventative maintenance cost of stop gap repairs, is the right choice

from a quality standpoint. Living in Arizona probably caused me to spend the much greater

amount to fix the AC, as our summer temperatures make it so no AC can be catastrophic to

health and well being of staff and customers. Perhaps a business owner residing in San Diego

(more temperate climate) would make the preventative maintenance choices, like setting up fans

or misters, for a while until it became a necessity to repair the HVAC system.

When the plumbing failed, it was a breakdown maintenance cost in my opinion that far

outweighed having the staff plunge toilets regularly. There is health and hygiene issues which

would need to be considered. Even though the plunging was the much cheaper option, hiring the

plumber to completely repair the plumbing system in the restaurant seemed the smarter and

better option for the future.

However, when the restaurant needed to be cleaned, I chose to hire a cleaning crew, when

the better choice was to rotate the staff into a sweeping/mopping schedule. The cleaning crew

cost was a little over 3x the cost of just having current staff clean. The staff would not have been

thrilled, but it would not have likely caused a mass exodus or major discontent.

My decisions about how much to spend on which option was determined by reading the

texts from the staff and the comments from the customers. I did tend toward the choices to keep

the staff happy. I also looked at what my current income was and how close I was to the target

goal of $360.000. I also looked at what percentage of my profit the improvement would take. On

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smaller improvement decisions, if the percentage was relatively small (see Appendix B), I would

opt for the improvement which would make the staff happy. With the more expensive

improvement choices, I made the decision to go with the breakdown fix rather than the

preventative fix. My thought was the breakdown fix would mean the problem would not return

quickly nor would it cause the staff extra work. I assessed the problem and looked at the 8 wastes

of lean where I decided if the improvement would increase any of the wastes with staff

(under/over utilizing talent, over processing).

Conclusion

Total Quality Management follows a quality cascade which starts with the company,

moving to the management methodologies and techniques, then the employees, which ultimately

drives customer satisfaction (Heizer, et al., 2020). This is the part of TQM I focused on when

performing this simulation. Customer satisfaction comes organically if the company and its

employees are diligent about focusing on the TQM processes which follow the vision of the

company (Nugroho & Nurcahyo, 2018). It can be inferred profits will also show the same path.

The QM simulation results showed, at least in this one simulation, the total quality management

approach of mathematics and the human factors demonstrated a successful result.

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References

Heizer, J., Render, B., & Munson, C. (2020). Operations management: Sustainability and supply

chain management (13th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc.

Nugroho, T. W., & Nurcahyo, R. (2018, January). Analysis of Total Quality Management (TQM)

implementation in small medium industries. In Proceedings of the International

Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management (Vol. 2018, No. JUL,

pp. 607-618).

Project Management Institute. (2017). A guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge

(PMBOK guide) (6th ed.). Project Management Institute.

Quality Management Simulation, Heizer, J., Render, B., & Munson, C. (2020). Operations

management: Sustainability and supply chain management (13th ed.). Pearson Education,

Inc.

Saxena, M. M., & Rao, K. S. (2019). TQM, Six sigma and Lean. International Journal of

Applied Engineering Research, 14(15), 3442-3447.

Skhmot, N. (2017, August 5). The 8 Wastes of Lean. The Lean Way. https://theleanway.net/The-

8-Wastes-of-Lean

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Appendix A

Screen capture from the Pearson OMLab Quality Management Simulation which shows

the overall results from the Quality Management Simulation.

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Appendix B

Worked out example from Pearson OMLab Quality Management Simulation.

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Appendix C

Overall Cost Analysis from MyOMLab Quality Management Simulation.