Question

EcoWorld is a manufacturer of enclosed, decorative environments. They are composed of a hand-blown glass sphere filled with water, one fish, and some aquatic plants. The fish and plants work together so that the system will continue as long as it has light. The spheres have become a popular holiday gift so sales skew towards November/December. EcoWorld, located in Seattle, Washington, wants to globalize its process. This year, the European country of Latervia, renowned for its cheap and expert glass blowing, has lifted its export tariff. EcoWorld has also identified another European country, Rombia, as a new market because it has no import fees. Raw materials will be transported via aircraft and the final product will be delivered by aircraft and then truck. You are hired by EcoWorld to assist them in developing a global manufacturing and distribution plan. Create a report that includes the following elements:

1. Explain how expanding the global supply chain network might affect the total quality management of EcoWorld. Compare possible changes of costs of quality.

Answer 1

How expanding the supply chain may affect total quality management?

Price is one of the company's most significant factors in its partnership with vendors and customers. In reality, consistency is so important that today's managers doubt whether their firms should be involved in global procurement, as many foreign vendors can not fulfill quality standards. There are beneficial partnerships regarding controlling consistency and handling supply chains. As begin with, changes in quality management as reduce operation variability directly impact many performance measures in the supply chain. With continuous improvement in quality management, defects-and hence inconsistencies in method and output-are the. Besides, as continuity in the supply chain increases due to reduced variability, cycle times (the time between two consecutive replenishments) are shortened and on-time output improves.

Practices in quality management, such as manufacturability design, where product and process considerations are produced concurrently in new products, and successful model designs tailored towards the final customer needs lead in less variability in product and process. While the elimination of variances in procedures naturally contributes to changes in efficiency, understanding of the methods used during production helps managers to transition from one commodity to another more rapidly. Hence, manufacturability architecture contributes to faster configuration times between items. More fast set-up times allow companies to lower the size of the lots by less time (inventory required for two successive replenishments) and to require protection (the volume of inventory necessary to protect against irregularities during lead times from normal demand).

Value efforts to reduce variability have many positive outcomes, including the decline of pipeline inventories. Pipeline inventory (the quantity of inventory between supply chain participants and research in process inventories for manufacturing activities) is kept as a feature of production, procurement and distribution cycle times. As the amount of errors in the supply chain reduces and cycle times are decreased, the overall and pipeline inventories are lowered concurrently by quality management. As already noted, the capacity of pipelines is also increased by the elimination of variances.

As processing times are shortened, deadlines are achieved and consumer response times are increased, a quality improvement contributing to a decrease of faulty products, and therefore a decline in revision has a positive impact on the supply chain. Fewer defective devices in the network allow the other units to move more quickly across the supply chain, which is known to improve cycle times. Because companies can afford to move product further via the supply chain, deadlines and requirements of the consumers can be fulfilled more efficiently. This allows for better coordination and alignment throughout the entire supply chain.

Constantly changing vendors simply because of size, raises the variability in the supply chain's materials and time components. Variation of the commodity and accuracy of the information were negatively impacted. Certified vendors and long-term ties can have a beneficial effect on both the quality and supply chain. Suppliers and customers in these partnerships reap reciprocal progress guided by mutual interdependence, free and full exchange of information, and shared incentives for win-win. Thanks to enhanced and expanded information exchange, improvements in the product design of vendors are avoided in these partnerships, awareness of future purchase volume demands is increased, and exposure and visibility of new product specifications are strengthened. Suppliers benefit from a decrease in time for new product development, manufacturing lead time, ethical treatment and reliable, prompt invoice payments.