Effectiveness of Quality and Systems Management within ASDA

In this assignment I will look at the business performance and do an evaluation for my chose organisation. For this purpose I decide to choose the ASDA. ASDA is recognised as the private company and this company has owned by the American PLC organisation commonly known as the WAL-MART. The thing is that WAL-MART bought all the shares of ASDA and ASDA in now recognized as the ASDA WAL-MART PLC LTD.

ASDA is well known for its services of retailer and goods selling to the general community. There are the examples of some services and products given by my organisation are as follow.

Drinks

Clothing

Food

Home and leisure

Cutlery

DIY Equipment like paint, paint brush nails and others etc.

Identify and explain the role and importance of effective operations management.

IMPORTANCE OF OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

The area of ‘Operations management’ has focused mainly on the on the process to manage carefully to the distribution and sales of the product and to produce them. This is common that very small business do not involve in the process of operation management however for the medium size and large sized organisation this is very important and essential to run the organisation carefully and in an effective way. In any organisation the related activities are involved in the management of the purchasing power, quality control, inventory control, logistic, storage and evaluation. The main point to be considered here is the effectiveness and efficiency of the processes involved. A great deal of focus is on efficiency and effectiveness of processes. Due to this, the area of operations management is very important for an organisation.

ASDA is a popular name in the category of household retails in the UK. As this is renowned by the international market it is very successful in his business in the UK. This is recognised as the well-known chain in the supermarket.  This organisation has his branches all over the world as under the nationwide supermarkets. The ASDA is public ltd. organisation and is open for public and they (stakeholders) are allowed to buy the shares in the organisation.

This supermarket of ASDA is mainly aimed to provide the best and possible excellent service and food products to their customers. Even is organisation is successful in beating his competitors by sticking with their price strategy which is probably lower than that of the other organisation in the competition. ASDA is supermarket, which aims to provide its customers with the best possible goods and service with its permanently low prices.

Identify the strategic objectives of your chosen Organization and analyze them with the help of appropriate tools.

As I choose ASDA as my organisation of research, it has entry with his mission stamen as, “To be the world’s leading supermarket”.   This organisation has many strategic aims and objectives and by following that aims and objectives organisation can effectively turn their mission statement into practice, it has many aims and objective. The aims and objectives of the ASDA are followed as under in detailed explanation.

Aims of ASDA

As ASAD is the fastest growing supermarket in the UK retail and grocery business in relation to the other supermarket in the market. There are some main aims are here mentioned that are in continuous way to strive to achieve. These aims are listed as follow:

‘To maximise sales through competitive pricing and heavy advertising campaigns’

‘To make the supermarket a happy and an enjoyable place for the staff to work together in harmony’

‘To ensure complete customer satisfaction and minimise any complaints about their products or prices’.

‘To make shopping at Asda a completely new, unique experience which provides customers and their children with a convenient, warm, welcoming, happy and safe shopping environment’.

‘To keep the customers happy and satisfied by providing them with the best and latest products and services at the lowest prices, without having to compromise on quality’

‘To provide as much relevant information about products and services throughout the store, in a manner that is understandable to the customer’

‘Be as environmentally friendly as possible’

Objectives

Unquestionably and unescapably, the greatest noteworthy aim of Asda same as to any other organisation is to become profitable extremely. So for the achievement of above aims and to get the increase in the profit turnover of the organisation there are some strategic objectives of the ASDA which are intended to show that how it can achieve and accomplish the aims and targets of the company.  Following is the explanation of the main strategic objectives of the organisation given with their explanation:

 

 

As the organisation has its main aim to increase the profit like to increase its sale and maximization of the profit of the organisation, there is use of different kind of media devices like newspaper, radio, magazine and mainly television for the heavy advertisement of the organisation. This even aided and used for the promotion of their campaigns related to their latest promotions, cut in prices, services and line of new products. This kind of strategic objective has repent the ASDA a base for the loyal customers and even help to attract the new customers as well as this promotion envied the reputation for the products at their lower prices.

 

The organisation has its objective to make the area of supermarket enjoyable and happy visits for the staff of the company and to work with each other in a friendly way, Asda is well known about the fact that the attitude of the staff has direct influence over the customers and their performance, if the staff will be the happy they will work with more enthusiasm and power to gain the competitive advantages. As they aimed to provide pleasant and happy working environment to their workers also by providing various incentives, bonuses and benefits like staff discount, pension from the company, share packages and various opportunities for the promotions in the job as well as in the salary.

 

for the purpose to achievement of the customer satisfaction and even for the minimisation of the complaints from the customers and consumers about the various services and products or staff there is endurance provided by the Asda to their customers through the customers service section at each supermarket stores of Asda and at that services customers can communicate about their problems and unsatisfied services and if they want they can register any comments in relation to the services and products provided to them in the book of comment log. The organisation has pride themselves for this commitment with their customers.

 For making the experience of shopping and buying products at Asda as safe, profitable warmth, welcoming, happy pleasurable and even easier as possible there is provision of all American style shopping mostly in all the stores of the Asda and at there the product and services provided to the customers usually by the help of local businesses. The service and product customers received through them under the suitability of one roof.   In the large branches of Asda now there is addition of in built house cafes, opticians, laundry, dry cleaner, fast food, bakeries and take away etc. and even their own petrol pumps and car washes centre there. Many of them are now furnished with the retail electrical, clothing, home wares with the services of branches have now diversified into the retail electrical, home ware and clothing market in addition to providing financial and insurance services.     

 

“To keep the customers happy and satisfied with the products, prices, services and staff.  In order to ensure a loyal customer base and continue to attract new customers, Asda ensures they take advantage of their massive buying power and leading position in the supermarket industry in order to purchase the best quality goods and latest products at the most competitive prices.  These savings and product promotions and price-cuts are heavily advertised both through the national media and throughout its branches nationwide.  Furthermore, as an additional precaution, Asda prides itself on the fact that customer satisfaction with its products and prices are always maintained as its staff continually checks prices locally on a weekly basis, in order to ensure the supermarket always provides the lowest prices around”

 

“Asda strives to provide as much relevant information about products and services throughout the store, in a manner, which is understandable to the customer.  It intends to achieve this by communicating various types of information such as public safety notices, new promotions and products and services, price reductions, charity fund-raising events through its regular customer magazines, leaflets, posters, customer information desk and staff”.

 

Where possible, Asda attempts to remain as globally welcoming friendly as possible as they can.  This contains lessening the packaging of the products and use of recycling papers for the making of their magazines, receipts and even for their leaflets and for the building up of new supermarkets as over the existing sites of the industry.

 

 

 

‘Identify the performance operations objectives of the same company and analyze how successful the operations are in meeting strategic objectives of a company. Your discussion need to be focused on Quality, Cost, Speed, Flexibility and/or Dependability’

Task 2:

Design and monitor appropriate systems to ensure quality of product and services

Define resources, tools and systems required to support business process to improve the quality of products and services

There are many resources, tools and systems are present that are used to ensure the quality of the services and products. For Asda there is constant evaluation of these standards of quality and there are regular checks that if they meet the conditions of good quality provide to the customers regarding the services and products offered to them. There are staff as well as the managerial procedures are taken for the monitoring of the high standards of quality in Asda.

The following procedure is followed for the quality assurance in Asda. As first when the goods reach at Asda there is product evaluation test at the first, for the evaluation of the services and products. Even there is monitoring and testing of the taste and quality of the product so that organisation come to know we there that particular product is acceptable for the consumption and can be used by the customer. This procedure is called assurance of quality i.e. ‘quality assurance’.  

 

For the next step they carried out the following tests during

 

·        Production of new products that are presently under progress

·        Test of products, when there is decision about the changing of the suppliers to Asda

·        Test of their own products and brand against their competitors.

·          Organisation also involved in the product evaluation test. These tests are used to

‘monitor quality and safety standards’

‘When they update information on the packaging’

 

The packaging information may need to be altered because of legislation that the government have implemented and that Asda have to abide by, or there maybe changes in the nutritional concepts or advances in cooking or food preservations method.  An example of when Asda may use quality assurance to add value to their products is when a product may have its packaging information changed to inform the consumers that it is acceptable to cook or use this product in the microwave. 

 

For the further procedure the products are taken to the laboratory for the testing of the quality and validation of the products. In laboratory there is fibre optic probe placed into them and to each the temperature of the cooking so that there can be assurance of product to reach at required temperature for the safe use of the products. 

 

These tests of quality control are applied to all new and existing products even if these are produce by Asda itself. These quality tests are conducted in the centre of customer advice, head office and in the laboratory of Asda.

 

 

The assurance of quality is implemented at all levels of the organisations and employees of the company are convinced to provide the best services to their customers and quality standards are set by the organisation for the better implementation of the quality products by the organisation. This set of high standards is taken as the SWOT i.e. strength, weakness, opportunity and threats to the organisation regarding the environment in which it works. The follow up of SWOT lets the organisation to check if the quality of the products and service meet the standard and are in the good competition with their rivals in the industry.

Following are the tools used in the organisation to check the quality of their products.

These tools are as follow:

 

Just in time (JIT): in just in time the Asda usually order the products and when they are in need of them. Even product are prepared when they are needed and after production these products are then delivered to the store and those product are produced which are needed. This mainly save the money and even save the time, place for the storage for keeping the raw material and results in the beneficial for the organisation. Even this adds good value to the company and deliver fresh and best of the products and services to the customers to make them happy. Products are then prepared and delivered to the store, which requires the products. This will help save money, storage space required and the number of raw materials kept in stock.

 

Machine utilisation control;

In Asda this system is usually put into consideration as the machinery is very important part of the production process. So there is a proper provision of engineer that used to check and maintain the machinery time it time so that the process will not stop in between the work and they might not get the problem in the production system of the organisation, this help to ensure them to complete their task to complete and be in time to provide their services to their stakeholders.

 

Stock control:

Stock control is very crucial and organisation put good efforts in maintaining the stock control. In this [procedure there in checking by the senior staff regarding the stock and they decide for the order to make for the organisation. The raw material needed is checked that how much is needed and how much they had in their stock. This help to avoiding the running of low stocks.

 

Quality control:

This is very important and in this there is use of a machine that is linked to the computer system. This machine tests the products at every stage during the production development. This adds to improve the quality and help to add the value to the product as there is checking of products at every stage of the production in the organisation.

 

Food additives:

There is provision of food additives also. These additives are those chemicals that are natural and made especially for the use Asda also uses food additives. These additive are used to keep the food save and to make them last for long time. This also makes the taste of food good and stops them to get poisoning. These additives used are first approved by government and health care bodies and are allotted with their E-numbers. Asda used to put the names of the labels over the packing to avoid the confusion to the customers.

 

There are some steps that are followed by the organisation for the improvement of the quality standards.

Define quality audit systems/practice to manage and monitor quality to standards specified by the organization and process operated. Also suggest ways as to how quality audit systems can be implemented in an organization.

Quality audit is defined as “the process of systematic examination of a quality system carried out by an internal or external quality auditor or an audit team. It is an important part of organization’s quality management system and is a key element in the ISO quality system standard, ISO 9001” (Wikipedia.com).

Quality audits are usually those time intervals that are performed in a typical way and are predefined. They are used to ensure about the working of organisation as internal systems which are clearly defined in order to monitor those procedure linked to the effective measures. This basically help in the organisation to compiles with the system of quality processes and tends to improve the procedural and assessment criteria based on results.

The audits are necessary tools for the management of the in order to verifying and used the objectives and evidences for the processes and even they used to assess the effectiveness and success of the processes and how they has to be implemented in the judgement of the achieving and defining the target s of the organisation. They provide evidences for the elimination and reduction of the problems and their areas. Audits are an essential management tool to be used for verifying objective evidence of processes, to assess how successfully processes have been implemented, for judging the effectiveness of achieving any defined target levels, to provide evidence concerning reduction and elimination of problem areas.

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Audit Committee of ASDA

For the ASDA the audit committee is maintained by the agency and this agency was appointed by the Agency maintained an Audit Committee that was appointed by the board of the ASDA. In this committee there are 2 non-executive members and chief executive executives.

There is invitation given to ANAO by the Audit for the observation that financial service to provide the meeting and strengthening of the company’s accountability and transparency.

Following helps are given to the ASDA by Audit committee

“improving the quality of accounting and financial control”;

“providing greater accountability and oversight of ASDA’s financial management”;

“independently overseeing probity within ASDA”;

“Providing a forum where ASDA Board, executive management, internal audit and ANAO issues could be discussed”.

Strategic and Operational Plans

There is organisation of new plans by the Asda that was endorsed by sports Minister and tourism.

The 2005-2009 Strategic Plan prescribes ASDA’s:

“future direction (vision)”;

“operating environment (mission)”;

“strategic breakthrough issues (goals)”;

“Strategies (objectives)”;

“Values (operating ethos); and”

“key performance indicators (measures)”

“Highlight the ways to introduce quality culture in your organization to ensure continuous monitoring and development of the process”.

The term of quality culture is that typical method used by the organisation, this approach is referred to the quality assessment and the implementation of strategic plans and operation for the organisation.  It follows the policies and procedures used to determine the shared beliefs and procedure for the development of the quality assurance in the business and for the solving of different problems and to minimise the risk.

 There is interrelationship between the structure of organisation, quality culture and management style and this interrelationship have shown in the following diagram below: 

 

Description: http://www.coursework.info/document/4/3/1/134806/134806_files/image002.jpg

 

Asda’s interconnected its organisational structure and quality culture which is based upon the hierarchical structure power of the company.

The diagram below shows quality standards from a consumer’s point of view.

 

Description: http://www.coursework.info/document/2/1/7/71293/71293_files/image002.gif Consumer                Description: http://www.coursework.info/document/2/1/7/71293/71293_files/image003.gif                       Creating

Standards involve                           customer satisfaction

 

 

Description: http://www.coursework.info/document/2/1/7/71293/71293_files/image004.gifExceeding                                                   Delighting

Consumer expectations                                the consumer

 

 

There are basically three stages of the quality development as follow:

 

QUALITY CONTROL (QC)

QUALITY ASSURANCE (QA)

TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT (TQM)

 

Quality Control (QC) “looks at the flow of production. They have to look and see what falls below standards. Quality Control is carried out by quality control inspectors. Inspection and testing are common ways of doing quality control”.

 

Quality Assurance (QA)” is concerned with making sure there are no faults before and after the production flow. Quality Assurance also has to make sure all products that are produced are up to standards and have “zero defects”. Quality Assurance is responsible for a workforce, working in teams rather than an inspector”.

 

Total Quality Management (TQM) “goes beyond Quality Assurance. TQM is designed to make every employee delight a customer. Customers are at the centre of the production process.” (Reference sources: ‘Heinemann AVCE Advanced Business’ 2000 edition – Dave Needham & Rob Grandfield). “TQM is a form of operations management. TQM is associated with every worker in a work place and tries to persuade them to consider quality in everything they do. All the employees aim to please customers, as the customers are one of the most important resources they have”.

Task 3:

Improve organizational performance

Monitor systems and work activities in your organization and identify problems and opportunities for improvement.

SWOT analysis of ASDA…

 

Here I’ follow up the “SWOT analysis of ASDA”. A SWOT analysis demonstrates the ‘strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats’ of ASDA.

 

Strengths…

 

Lots of shareholders Asda have

2nd largest supermarket chain in UK

Part of WAL MART

Best value for the retailer regarding the money

High profits

wall- mart ASDA have a lot of shareholders

 

Weaknesses…

 

Not as comparative to Tesco -” Britain’s 1st biggest supermarket chain”

More brand products of ASDA, no selling of high brand products.

Tend to sell more ASDA brand products rather than big named products e.g. Nestle, Cadbury etc.

Generally be contingent on “George clothing” sales for great profits

Less number of stores as Tesco and Sainsbury has.

 

Opportunities…

 

Offer ‘Gorge clothing stores as Leeds and Croydon’

Good job developments offer.

Equal chancer

 

Threats…

 

High competition in the market.

Decrease in the number of shareholders.

Selling fear by the WAL MART.

ASDA HQ might pick at any stretch to become free of the range of George clothing.

Develop an Implementation Plan for the evaluated recommendations and evaluated the possible changes within an organization.

Following is an implementation plan which has to be followed by ASDA so that it might get the competitive advantages by providing good quality standards. There are many quality control systems that should be followed as under:

 

There are numerous quality control and assurance systems which include:-

Quality circles

Total quality management

ISO 9000

Self-checking or inspection

Training and development

Bench marking

 

These systems of quality control and assurance are suitable for the different condition within the organisations. In this according to me the total quality management and benchmarking will be the best approach to be followed so to ensure the good quality assurance. The main objective of TQM is to make all the employee so trained that they ensure to make the every customer happy and satisfied with their services and products. Following is the graph for the total quality management for the ASDA.

As customers intend to pay high for the attainment of the high quality standards Asda could to be build up the ‘under-one-roof 24 hour shopping’ strategy by following the new stagey and convenience like store banks, travel agents, takeaways, cafes etc. experience by introducing new services and convenience such as in store banks, travel agents, take – away etc.; following is the graph

 

 Conclusion

From the above report it is concluded that ASDA has good strategic plan but no plan is perfect there must be need have improvement is all plans and strategies. So in the same way the ASDA has to do some improvements for the purpose to get the good competitive advantages by providing the better quality and services to their stakeholders. For this the organisation has to follow up the tools of total quality management and benchmarking in order to keep its position in the market and for the implementation of good plans regarding the development of the quality systems.

References