Quality in Customer Focused Operations of Singapore Company Ltd

Question: Describe about the Quality in Customer Focused Operations of Singapore Company Ltd. Answer: Quality in Customer Focused Operations of Singapore Company Ltd Singapore Company LTD is a food processing industry. It is categorized under snacks manufacturing companies. It also has spice production sector. The potatoes production sector produces potatoes products such as raw nuts, crisps, peas, dry fruits, crackers and fruit based snacks. On the spice section, the company produces teriyaki cashew, garlic, mocha almond, rosemary pistachio, cheddar cheese almond. The company is responsible for manufacturing and packing their products. Ones the products are ready for distributions, their sales marketing team distributes their products to local shops, supermarkets and major malls countrywide. They also have export orders that are sold to their customers overseas in America, Europe and in Africa. The company uses heavy machinery for production of their products. This fact provides a job opportunity for quality assurance team to ensure that products produced are best for human consumption and do not contain any foreign materials after packaging. Their products are popular worldwide and have been used since 1973. In this essay, we are going to study a quality assurance management system and how it works with the production team to ensure that products produced in the company are competitive enough to outshine products offered by other competitive potatoes industries manufacturing similar products. We are also going to discuss the strengths and weaknesses ITO (Input, transforming activities and output) and solutions to increase the productivity of the company. Duties and responsibilities of the Quality Assurance team The major role of the QA management team is to use their leadership skills to direct employees to follow food safety policies and to make observations to ensure daily activities runs through smoothly, Other duties that they excecute includes, team communications, resource scheduling and enforcing the use of SOP( Service of operation). The QA team at Singapore Company are responsible for receiving or rejecting raw products and fruits purchased by the finance department. They use their skills to analyze products (potatoes, spices and fruits) that are suitable for human consumption. They are also responsible for ensuring that the production department is clean. This process is done on a daily basis to ensure foreign substances do not contaminate products produced in the company. The quality management team are also responsible for taking samples of first products produced, analyze and approve them to be of recommended quality before giving the go-ahead to machine operators to manufactur e more products. The QA team also take samples of every product approved for manufacturing in the factory to the shelf life store. These products get arranged according to their batch number issued before being manufactured. This process helps to communicate with customers whenever a complaint might arise regarding a specific batch number. The team can always communicate to customers to return products of a specific batch number whenever a customer complaint is raised within the company or from the consumers. The quality assurance team plays the responsibilities of checking and confirming if good bought by a company or an industry meets food safety policies. They are also responsible for providing the management team with the test results. QAs are also expected to come up with innovations to help improve the quality of service offered by a specific company. Operational process needed to manufactured products Raw potatoes and other raw products are received by the QA department from supplies. Samples of every good received are taken to the laboratory to be analyzed. If the samples are good, the goods are accepted. If the samples are of poor quality, the QA department rejects them. Accepted goods are then taken to store for storage. In this case, we are going to study processing of crisps. Raw potatoes get washed in the bath tank conveyor where crisps production begins. At the peeler, the Quality Assurance team is expected to analyses and make sure that the potatoes are cleaned at the bath tank appropriately. Ones that process is complete, the washed potatoes get projected to the peeler conveyor. It is also the work of the quality management team to ensure that the casuals employed in the peeling area use the peeling machine appropriately to produce neatly peeled potatoes. After that, the peeled potatoes are then moved to the slicing area by an automated conveyor. On the slicing area, the QA department is expected to ensure that casuals employed in that department use the clean blades for slicing the potatoes. The slicing blades are adjustable depending on the product that is manufactured. It is the obligation of the QA department to ensure that worn out blades are replaced on a daily basis. The most appropriate size for blades has dimensions of 880x510x980 mm and 1130x660x1130 mm. This process is done to ensure that the slicing machine produces sliced potatoes chips of high quality. The sliced potatoes are then placed in clean perforated buckets to allow water to run out the product. The QA department works close with the casuals at the slicer department to ensure that they use clean perforated buckets in this stage. After that, the dry sliced potatoes are then dipped into the fryer manually by a casual stationed at the fryer. It is the obligation of the of the QA department to ensure that cooking oil used in the fryer is fresh. The QA is als o responsible for ensuring that the machine operator at the fryer used the right temperature to fry the sliced potatoes. The appropriate temperature for this process is 185- 365 degrees C. The fryer is programmed to fry the sliced potatoes for 20 minutes. After that processed, the machine automatically transports the sliced potatoes to the sorting conveyor. At the sorting conveyor, the QA team has a group of casuals assigned to sort out uncooked potatoes and brown crisp from good quality crisp. The uncooked potatoes are taken back to the fryers to be re-cooked, the brown crisp is packed separately in plastic bags and is sold to consumers as brown Crips at low cost. It is the responsibility of the quality assurance team to ensure that this process runs smoothly and for consumers to get high-quality crisps. The sorted good crisps are transported to the flavoring section by an automated machine. At the flavoring section, the QA closely monitor the flavoring process to ensure that the machine operator at the flavoring department uses the right flavor. Before that, the flavor is tested in the laboratory by the QA department to ensure that the flavor is of the best quality for human consumption. Samples of flavored crisps are taken at this point and also tested in the laboratory by the QA department. A go-ahead to continue flavoring the crisp s is then issued by the QA department for processing the crisps. One's flavoring is done, flavored crisps are then transported to packaging department using an automated conveyor. At the packaging departments, the QA team is responsible for ensuring that reels used for packing the crisps are of substantial standard. It is the obligation of the QA department to ensure that products manufactured are sealed appropriately following global rules for packaging. The weight of the packed products should weigh as per g/ kg indicated on the package sealed including compressed air in the packets. The packed products are then passed on a metal detector to ensure products dispatched to the market are safe for human consumption. It is the responsibility of the QA department to ensure that this process runs smoothly. Other than that, the QA department is also expected to ensure that appropriate bar codes are printed on the packages for future traceability of products in case customer complaints arise. Crisps/ Chips manufactured are packed using specific bar codes on day and night shift. Barcodes play a prominent role for future referencing whenever a product has a customer c omplain. This allows easy tractability of individuals who manufactured the product and also identifying products that might have an issue when one customer complaint is raised. The barcodes also have information on raw products used to manufactured product. (European snacks association 2014). The QA manager then inspects cartons as they pass through the metal detector. Cartons manufactured and have no quality issues are then dispatched to the stores for storage. At the stores, the QA team inspects to ensure that cartons are stored on pallets in the store. The logistics department then dispatches the stored products as they receive orders from customers. Quality Management as a reflection of customer expectations Customers determine if a business will be successful or not. Meeting their expectorations and needs require market research on their preferences, likes and dislikes of customers in the market. The quality Assurance team plays a prominent role to ensure that customers are satisfied with the quality of goods sold to them. The quality management team works with the management team to ensure goods produced in a factory are safe for dispatching to the market and are fit for human consumption. Good customer value is the key to running a successful business. Managing strict quality preference makes the suppliers to offer best products in the competitive market. When a company is in a position to offer the best comparative products, customer satisfaction is achieved. Customer satisfaction increases preface to buy a specific product which increases sales of products and services (Section D. 2008). According to (Wehmeier 2000), Customer expectation is to have the best quality of any product from its suppliers. The QA department is also expected to organize, prepare and interpreted information recorded when receiving and dispatching goods to enlighten the company about input and output of products manufactured. Due to all this logics, there is a need to employ Quality Assurance managers in an organization. By choosing the right quality Assurance managers professionals. The team is likely to research on customers expectations from products and services offered by a specific institution. If a company is successful in identifying and delivering the diverse customer expectation in the competitive world, products, and services sold to customers the company is likely to generate profits at a competitive level. Customer satisfaction is the act of meeting customer preference by offering high-quality products that meet their taste and preference. (Johnston and Clark 2005). Having a quality Assurance management team is beneficial in a company. This team ensures that products and services delivered to its customers are of the best quality. The quality assurance team also ensures that risks of customer complaints are reduced by monitoring every level of production and confirming that the services meets consumer requirements. Every company has a Service of operation procedure addressed to employees to use while they are on their shifts. The Sop (Service of operation) is created with the QA team to give instructions to employees on acceptable procedures to imply while working in the factory. Quality Management/ Control plays a crucial role to encourage quality consciousness and the satisfaction of customers. It also helps to reduce production cost, helps in the utilization of resources, reduce inspection cost, encourages goodwill, offers their moral for employees, supplements employee- employer relationship, enhances production techniques, offers substantia l advertisement, determine price factor of products, improves sales of products and services. Potential quality problems that might exist in a crisps production company On the receiving area, the QA are required to take samples of potatoes received to reduce instances of processing Crips using rotten potatoes. Other than that, when suppliers deliver potatoes of small size, the quality of crisps produced will be low. On the peeling conveyor, if the process is not monitored appropriately, dirty / poorly peeled potatoes might find their way to the slicing area and affect the final product of crisps. The QA department is needed to monitor that proper peeling is done and the peeled potatoes transported to the slicing section are clean and suitable for human consumption. On the fryer, possible problems that are likely to occur is the use of dirty oil that may affect the color of crisps produced. Its the work of the QA department to ensure that oil in the fryer is replaced after every shift to prevent such issues from occurring. On the sorting conveyor, the possible problem that is likely to occur is when the sorting team fails to sort out Brown and uncook ed potatoes. This factor may result to raise of customer complaints whenever customers get uncooked potatoes in the crisps they buy. On the flavoring department, an issue can occur when the machine attendant use expired flavored to process crisps. This fact may affect the quality of crisps packed to consumers. It is the responsibility of the QA department to ensure that the best flavor is used on this stage. On the packaging department, the possible problem that may occur is when the packaging machine operator prints wrong batch numbers and barcodes on the packaging reels. This factor might affect tractability when there is a customer complaint. It is the obligation of the QA team to monitor and ensure that correct batch number and barcodes are printed on the reels before packaging process begins. Conclusion The Quality Assurance/ Management team plays a prominent role in a manufacturing company. They help to ensure that activities runs smoothly in the company and also make sure that customer complaints issues are reduced. The QA ensures that there is a consistent production of products regarding the quality. We can, therefore, come to a conclusion that the QA team is the main success generator in a company. The QA department in different companies should be given up-to-date training to ensure that they are aware of possible risks that they should give attention when they are on duty. 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