Production and Quality Management
By the nature of their work, production managers and quality managers are the most harassed people as, among other things they are concerned with the improvement of productivity and quality which entails their attention to be diverted to a large number of fields simultaneously such as production, techniques involving statistical and technical methods, standards and regulations, industrial engineering, computer integration, industrial relations, automation control, facility control, production planning, measurement control, material utilization, operations research, vender evaluation and negotiations, customer complaints, payments of bills, market research, production review meetings, etc. Even though they are fully committed to improve productivity and quality and reduce wastage, owing to lack of time they are unable to devote adequate attention for such activities. Whatever they do in this area, are done by them in an informal manner. At the same time, being intimately associated with all aspects of production and quality only they are ideally suited to study the existing system and suggest modifications to improve the same. The realization of these aspects has given rise to a new discipline called Productivity and Quality Management. Productivity and quality managers are relieved in their routine production and quality management functions and are inducted formally to improve productivity and quality.
Productivity management is defined in the following manner:
“Productivity management is a formal management process involving all levels of management and employees with the ultimate objective of reducing the cost of manufacturing, distributing and selling of a product or service through and integration of the ...