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Question: Discuss About The International Journal Production Economics? Answer: Introduction The report is prepared for demonstrating how quality is managed within the business organisation Woolworths in Australia. Woolworths is one of the leading retail brands that has been using the Metric Stream solutions for maintaining the quality, safety, and audit within the company. But here it is the concept of Quality Management system which is used to improve the business processes, practices of total quality management and enhance the profit level of Woolworths. For the company, QMS sets various policies, procedures and regulations to execute the strategic plans and create a positive impact on the core business area. ISO9001 is an example of the QMS that has integrated the internal operations of the organisation and find ways to improve the control and management of main business processes. This has lead to the enhanced productivity and maintenance of high quality to satisfy the needs of customers (Conti 2012). The QMS has been linked with the organisation strategy for making sur e that the roles and responsibilities of the organisational members are clarified. The TQM including the Six Sigma procedure, benchmarking and ISO 9000 has also facilitated the relationships with employees and customers and ensured proper corporate social responsibility as well. Quality Management Systems and Processes Woolworths being a retail company is more specialised in providing grocery items like vegetables, fruits, meat, packaged food items and other drinks though there are other products as well including health and beauty items, household products, etc. It is one of the largest company within the Australian supermarket and holds 80 percent of the supermarket in Australia. The quality management systems are managed by allowing the vendors to access the Quality assurance standards and other Codes of practices (Benavides-Velasco et al. 2014). They must have a system to obtain information about the food, healthcare and safety issues, rules and regulations along with the production level and sales of products and services. Being one of the most established organisation, the company must maintain quality standards always to keep the customers'' needs and requirements fulfilled and ensure that information is stored properly and secure for further improvements. QMS would include electronic system s that could manage backup of the data and information in case of system failure or data loss (Bon and Mustafa 2013). Link with organisation strategy The quality management policies and strategies must provide the organisational objectives and commitment for the supply of good quality and fresh products to satisfy the demands and preferences of customers. The policies would be linked with the organisational strategy to maintain food safety and prevent quality issues. The organisational strategy should be linked to the quality management policy by the Senior management of Woolworths who has the authority to do so. The Quality Management systems would be linked with the strategies to manage the safety of food items and even maintain the legality and quality of products with ease and effectiveness (Chang 2016). It could be understood that in the ISOP 9000 quality system, the strategies had been implemented to deliver the right quality products and services supported by documented information related to the policies, procedures, forms, rules, and regulations for work. By aligning the strategy with QMS, it would be easy for Woolworths to understand what the customers thactually wanted. The three-year strategic aspect was implemented to focus mostly on the customers' need by focusing on innovation of products, improve the internal processes by following the Lean retail model and finally improve the offers on products, though not compromising on the quality of those (De Mast, J. and Lokkerbol 2012). Another strategy was monitoring of employee performance to identify the areas of weaknesses and improve the level of customers' services, furthermore maintained a steady and loyal relationship with them and influenced their buying behaviors too. The open communication strategy was also lined with the QM systems to encourage new ideas and prevent issues faced by working in coordination. This would not only promote the views and responses of the farmers and manufacturers, but would also conduct the business operations properly to keep the customers satisfied and maintain a sustainable place in the market (Goetsch and Davi s 2014). Clarity roles and responsibilities As the documents and related information should be made accessible to the vendors and employees of the organisation, it is important to provide training to employees during the requirements of quality management system. This would make the staffs of the organisation to understand their roles and responsibilities and establish a good working environment to improve the business processes with ease. To clarify the roles and responsibilities, they must be accessible to the complete ISO 9000 and ISO 9001 Quality management system manual, forms and procedures and gain information about how to implement it step by step. The training would provide more scopes to gain strengths in the areas of internal processes and understand the requirements of ISO 9000 (Heras?Saizarbitoria and Boiral 2013). By following these documents, the individuals working within the organisation have learned the areas where change is needed such as the focus on customer relationship, management of foreign objects, con trol volume and weight, management pest prevention techniques and avoid risks while manufacturing and production of products and services at Woolworths (Woolworthsgroup.com.au 2017). Total Quality Management By implementing the Total Quality Management or TQM, has been able to integrate the management of documents, audits regarding quality of food, sustainability processes and finally reporting all these to the higher authorities in a structured and centralized framework. This allows the users to monitor the quality of food items, measure the safety and even the internal business processes' efficiency is improved. The TQM system has streamlined the business sustainability processes and automated those to derive the optimal level of output. Total Quality management focuses mostly on the business, culture and people working within the organisation, i.e., management of human resources (Nanda 2016). TQM has enabled the organisation to store data and important information in a Web-based repository so that any sort of unauthorized access is prevented and ensure that data is not lost anyhow. This information and data are used to prepare effective reports related to the management of quality and obtain valuable insights and knowledge to make an effective decision in the end. Thus, TQM is one of the most important concept of improving quality and manage sustainability at Woolworths (Oakland 2014). Six Sigma Six Sigma is effective when compared to other quality improvement methods like TQM, because it has allowed Woolworths to focus on managing improvements of quality consistently until all the business processes have been fully optimised. Six Sigma is used during the processes of manufacturing to production at Woolworths to eliminate any defects and reduce changes of quality variation for a product. Six Sigma describes the ways of implementing an effective measurement-based strategy to improving the effectiveness of procedures by following the step-by-step processes including define, measure, analyse, design and lastly verification (Priede 2012). These are the quality levels through which the process of manufacturing products go through by making a decision based on verified data and statistical methods and not by some lame assumptions and future predictions. Six Sigma follows the DMADV project methodology where the business objectives are developed according to the needs of customers a ligned with the organisational strategy, identify the main components for managing quality of products and production process, analyse the alternative approaches, design the most suitable alternative and finally, verify the design by running pilot tests (Pyzdek and Keller 2014). Lean manufacturing The lean manufacturing methods have allowed Woolworths to utilise fewer resources, though delivering the highest value to its customers. As it is a consumer centred company, it understands the value of customers well and thus has focused on the lean manufacturing processes to increase the value offered to the customers and create zero waste. Thus, the main objective of implementing the lean manufacturing methods is to eliminate wastes from the processes of manufacturing and production and improve the effectiveness of business operations, through delivery of more value to customers and gaining better profit in business. Woolworths has used the lean retail operating model to reduce the cost of products and saved an annual cost of $500 million (Rahani and Al-Ashraf 2012). The lean manufacturing aims to manage investments to enhance the experiences of customers by lowering down the products' prices and promoting better innovation and sustainability. This has increased the market share, e nabled the company to hold a good cost position and created satisfied and loyal customers (Woolworthsgroup.com.au 2017). ISO 9000 ISO 9000consists of several international standards related to the management and assurance of quality for the products of a company. It has allowed the organisation to document the quality management system and its components properly and ensure that the safety, health and quality standards are met to keep the customers safe. The quality standards that constitute the ISO 9000 have been designed properly by Woolworths to meet the statutory and regulatory requirements for maintaining the safety and quality requirements and meet the preferences of customers as a whole (Tai and Chuang 2014). Benchmarking Woolworths has benchmarked the Supplier Excellence program for promoting a best retailing practices and maintain the global product safety standards. The benchmarking is applied to all the individuals involved with the operations and supply chain management. The benchmarking has promoted accreditation, managed the checking of certifications of quality and ensured maintenance of quality standards. A currency certification regarding the product and public liability insurance has been accepted as a controlled record by Woolworths, which can be used afterwards to making any necessary changes to the requirements of international vendors (Terziovski and Guerrero 2014). The benchmarking also facilitated vendor's good business relationship with the company. Quality Improvement Process for the 21st Century Organisation Woolworths monitor the performances of employees and encourages them to perform to their potential for delivering excellence in terms of value to the customers. Good relationships with the employees are established by maintaining safety at workplace through mitigation of risks and losses faced due to job related incidents. The employees have been rewarded and have been provided with additional benefits for their performances, which has kept them motivated to work harder. By evaluating the job, labour market conditions, lack of skilled workers and budget limitations, the HR managers have considered the compensations and benefits as effective to manage a motivated workforce and establish a [positive organisational culture too (Usichenko et al. 2012). Training is provided by the organisation to its workers for improving their abilities and enhance the retention of employees too. Therefore, it could be understood that good relationships had been established with the employees of Woolwort hs. Relationship with customers The Quality management systems at Woolworths have enhanced the efficiency of ways by which all the internal business processes are combined together to achieve a desired purpose of delivering products of highest quality. Though it incurs a huge amount of cost, still quality management system encompasses the most effective ways of fulfilling the expectations of customers, which is often considered as a major component of business success. The QMS has enabled the business organisation to focus on the consumer goods and services and furthermore deliver the best value to them through implementation of improvement programs (Crane, Matten and Spence 2013). Wastes have been reduced and resources have been maximised to facilitate clear understanding of the expectations of customers and suppliers. With the implementation of QMS, workers have managed to obtain data and information easily that has supported data-driven decision making and even ensured proper documentation of how the internal pr ocesses will be managed at the retail supermarket (Woolworthsgroup.com.au 2017). By providing good quality products and services to the customers, positive relationships would be built, which could improve the flow of customers and allow the company to achieve the expected level of profit with ease and effectiveness. At Woolworths, various approaches are undertaken for the suppliers to ensure the best quality and safety of food items. With the enforcement of the Consumer Protection Ac, the company has made sure that the quality of products is satisfactory and safe for consumption by the consumers. Any sort of complaints regarding the quality and safety of products could be done by the customers up to 3 years after the happening of any incident. The QM systems enable assessing the feedbacks and responses of customers and make sure that relevant changes are made to improve the quality and prevent any sort of harm that may be experienced due to the poor quality of product delivered by the company (Zhu, Cordeiro and Sarkis 2013). Corporate social responsibility The corporate social responsibility of Woolworths is focused on the achievement of sustainability objectives and commitment towards a better future. by incorporating the CSR strategy, Woolworths has encouraged diversity of people by striving for equality of gender and with that, 40 percent of the senior and executive managerial positions are held by women. The male and female workers are treated equally with no wage gaps while diversity is managed by involving more team members to remain committed to the initiative of Federal Government's Employment Parity (Bon and Mustafa 2013). Business has maintained good relationship with the suppliers and inspired consumers to consume the products in a finance and sustainable way. The palm oil found in food products have become certified palm oil and taxes have been paid properly as well. Sustainable human progress Landfills are managed for wastes by focusing on the development of zero wastes and the carbon emissions have been reduced, which is a good sustainability approach as well. One of the most effective sustainability strategy introduced by Woolworths is "Doing the Right Thing", which allowed the company to put a subsequent amount of time and effort to focus on corporate responsibilities and develop sustainability programs. This has created better ways for consumers to consume products sustainability, manage wastes disposal and create a much lesser harmful impact on the environment for making it a better and safe place for human beings to live in (Chang 2016). Conclusion The topic reported about the development of quality within the business organization named Woolworths in Australia. The Quality management system and Total Quality management were different and it showed that QMS had set various policies and procedures along with codes of practices to ensure maintenance of quality of food items delivered by the company. These were linked with the strategy of the organization to clarify roles and responsibilities and manage easy understanding between individuals within the workplace. ISO 9000, Six Sigma methods were considered as effective quality improvements methods considered as effective by the organization whereas lean manufacturing method helped to utilize fewer resources, though not compromising on the quality of products and services delivered. The ISO 9000 standard was set to ensure that the quality standards had been met and customers would remain safe and healthy. Corporate social responsibility of the organisation was maintained by encoura ging diversity of people and prevented discrimination as well while sustainability practices like waste disposal and less carbon emissions were also considered effective for the company. References Benavides-Velasco, C.A., Quintana-Garca, C. and Marchante-Lara, M., 2014. Total quality management, corporate social responsibility, and performance in the hotel industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management,41, pp.77-87. Bon, A.T. and Mustafa, E.M., 2013. 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