Ryanair and GE Total Quality Management (TQM)

Ryan broadcast and GE Total tint Management (TQM) tincture Management History and PurposeAll feargons be concerned with lineament, commonly because they keep back come to understand that gamey superior crapper shed a meaning(a) agonistic advantage.2 Good shade products and run compact the hails of re piss, waste, complaints and returns and, around importantly, generate satisfied nodes. 1 It is noniced that tincture is considered as maven of the most important factor as a competitive tool.Total Quality Management (TQM) that became popular with every(prenominal) types of business in the late 1970s and 1980s has its roots in earlier work by several concern thinkers. Feigenbaum popularized the term total bore management in 1957. After that it was developed d oneness the work of several quality gurus including Deming, Juran, Ishikawa, Taguchi and Crosby. TQM scum bag be viewed as a logical extension of the centering in which quality-related practice has pro gressed. 2Originally quality was achieved by inspection coating reveal defects before clients noniced them. Then the quality control (QC) apprehension developed a much systematic climb to not provided detecting save also solving quality problems. Quality assertion (QA) widened the responsibility for quality to include functions early(a) than direct works, such as Human Resources, Accounting and Marketing2. Quality management has also made increase use of advanced statistical quality techniques since 1980s through sixer Sigma mathematical operation input- forbiddenput melioratement to stand quality. Some organisations such as Ryanair, Toyota etcetera suggests and favour TQM as an outstanding turn around dodging where as slightly organisations such as GE, GM, Honey salutary etc. has attained winner through laying down Six Sigma in all its functional chain and attendes and they firmly believe and live Six Sigma. administrator SummaryThis authorship assumes my conclusions and grounds from readings and abstract from various reliable sources mentioned in the headers, footers and the dedicated referencing intermit of the report. The report introduces us to the quality burn downes fol scurvyed by Ryanair and GE who atomic number 18 from opposite manufacturing having different orientations. The report also suggests why Ryanair has tag on TQM and how innovations, mixtures in business environment and competitiveness are affected and afterwards it is critically discussed that amelioration is necessary in Ryanairs quality management to compete. Since the raffish peak of TQM and Six Sigma, in general there has been some ebb in its status, yet, numerous of its ideas included in this report, concur hold up pass judgment quality practice. 2Reflection in the ReportMy perception before I started my studies and research into this subject matter, the Quality, was that the quality is found only in the pricy and branded products and that t he Quality Control is the out put strained ace method of quality management. My tutor, Mr. Sotunde, the guide to Operations and Process Management by Slack N. and co authors, various readings from Quality and Business magazines have minute me the concept of quality and how it can be managed effectively.Firstly, I learnt that the quality is a value in product and/or renovation and it can be puddleed by the customers expectations that are to be matched with the actual product and/or service. Secondly, quality cannot be measured with wrong alone as equipment casualty is the major factor of companies system to exploit or to compete in the market and it is the financial factor to affect the profitability. But, quality can be found in execrable price products or service as well such as in Value for Money graves and services or it is found as a value that a society can deliver in its product or services for a justifiable price.I learnt that the quality function is not limited to the out put but it can be practised through out the organisation in to all its processes to produce or provide goods and services of the unvarying quality as per the expectations of the customers. As it has to be practised universally it is the responsibility of all and the value of the quality should be understood andcommunicated at heart and outside the organisation for example to the suppliers and distributors.Additionally, there are varieties of feeleres to the Quality that are practised by different organisations. Though having similar functions, organisations in the corresponding industry or in direct competition, it is seen that two different organisations follow different quality management approach and both are lucky in terms of the quality goods and services it produce or provide.Establishing quality standards and following/meeting them sincerely is not enough for the organisations to stay long-life on the edge because they could be copied or imitated by our competi tors or crude entrants or customers quality expectation might change. So, it is very much necessary for organisations that they make any effort to improve their quality aspect. I have also learnt that the quality approach developed within the organisation such as TQM by Toyota and make believealised Six Sigma by Motorola are hard to be copied exactly overnight and if concepts pick out completely than too one cant beat them in their own game because they are endlessly improving their functions and process to excel the customers perceptions, keeping them al shipway a measuring rod ahead. It is also seen that quality standards are formalised by organisations such as ISO and ISI and organisations help each other by affiliations such as EFQM to improve the quality aspects in production or provision of goods and services.RYANAIR3Ryanair, currently, Europes original and up to now largest low-fare, no frills airline with workforce of over 5,000 employees, around fleet of 250 aircra fts including newly Boeing 737-800 aircrafts provide services to around 12m riders every year to over 1,100 low-fare routes across 26 European countries.According to the CEO, Michael O Leary, Our customer service is about(predicate) the most well defined in the world. We guarantee to give you the final air fare. You get a safe line of achievement. You get a normally on- time flight. Thats the package. We dont, and wont, give you anything more. Are we going to say sorry for our lack of customer service? Absolutely not. If a plane is cancelled, pass on we put you up in a hotel overnight? Absolutely not. If a plane is delayed, allow for we give you a voucher for a restaurant? Absolutely not.The other key information about Ryanair Ltd., please refer to vermiform appendix 1GE 9GE is a diversified infrastructure, finance and media company taking on the worlds toughest challenges. From aircraft engines and power generation to financial services, medical imaging, and television prog ramming, GE operates in more than 100 countries and employs more than 300,000 people worldwide. Their businesses fuel the global scrimping and improve peoples lives. Their global research team with more than 2,500 researchers working towards the contiguous breakthrough, GE is positioned to continually innovate, invent and reinvent.General Electric (GE) says that its commitment to quality is based on the ideas of globalization and instant access to information, and products and services that watch to change the way its customers conduct business.Their quality mission statement reads, in part, Todays competitive environment leaves no room for error. We must meet our customers take and relentlessly look for new ways to exceed their expectations.Ryanair v/s GEQuality Philosophy and approachFor both Ryanair and GE, quality delegacy the consistent conformance to customers expectations by laying down the concepts of service quality, process management, quality assertion and quality pe rfection, but, their approach to quality management is preferably different.Ryanair and TQMRyanair offers value for money, take aim-to-point air travel and aims nothing close to luxurious service. Quality provision at Ryanair is intended from their point of view giving up to(predicate) consideration to the expectations and perceptions of their targeted component for the fare it is offering and it is seen that Ryanair is delivering these expectations by its on time journeys, rider and baggage synthetic rubber, good appearance and attitude of conclaves, the way it meets the industry challenges and resolves the service failures. Since 1997, it has adopted and living the total quality management to deliver its quality physical objects through its Lowest Fares and Passenger Service Charter. 6 The up to control highlights (non-exhaustive, for complete list please follow Appendix 1) from this charter stating their significant commitments areTo offer the lowest fares at all time on all routes.To notify passengers of hold outn delays, cancellations and diversions.To allow reservation changes.To respond apace to passenger complaints and provide prompt refunds.To take measures to speed up check-in.The success and growth that Ryanair is currently enjoying is due to providing the best value for money service as right first time in all its functions from involvement the ticket to the baggage handling. It is universally understood within the organisation that runty extra effort volition bring big results and these efforts do not require a huge investment in training. The Ryanair control its functions and processes through its industry benchmarking and setting its own indwelling quality standards. It uses Servicemail and other execution of instrument statistics to evaluate their position in their highly competitive aviation industry.GE and Six SigmaMost of the GE business segments are involved in large scale manufacturing activities at a greater extent. In 1988 with a program called Work-Out, GE started counseling on quality issues that has helped them to open its incarnate culture to established ideas from any quarter regarding quality management that posterior created an environment that eventually led to Six Sigma. Work-Out was used to advert and give unneeded processes and tasks by study teams from multiple departments to find a firmness to a problem. nary(prenominal), Six Sigma is embedding quality thinking into every level of operation around the globe. These uses statistical tools and systems to monitor and control processes and functions to have outputs close to zilch defects.The three key elements that GE focuses to their quality initiatives are customers, processes and employees. Everything the company does in its quest for world-class quality focuses on these three essential elements. Customers are at the centre of GE universe and they define quality by their expectations of slaying, reliability and other factors. To attain the level of quality that their customers require, GE conducts what it calls Outside-In opinion.Outside-In Thinking calls on GE to look at its business from its customers perspective. By understanding the transaction lifecycle from the customers needs and processes, we can discover what they are seeing and feeling. With this knowledge, we can identify areas where we can add significant value or improvement from their perspective, GEs quality statement reads.The employees are a key to the quality approach and at GE, quality is embedded as the responsibility of every employee. guardianship this in mind, all GE employees are provided training in the strategy, statistical tools and techniques of Six Sigma Quality. Variety of training courses are offered at different levels including prefatory awareness to Six Sigma basic tool introduction to equip employees to figure on Six Sigma teams Master Black Belt, Black Belt and putting green Belt Training for leader managers and Desi gn for Six Sigma training.Summing-upBoth, Ryanair and GE are trying to deliver exceeding quality products and services to both their internal and external customers, clearly understanding that quality is a consistent diverse activity having both quantitative and non-quantitative attributes such as re-visiting customer? Yes/No. They have emphasised and communicated throughout the organisation that quality is the responsibility of every individual and through these responsibility they ensures that all processes, inputs and outputs, maintain and produce consistent confirmative level of quality products and services.Is TQM really good for Ryanair?Ryanairs business strategy is based upon the product orientation for its air travel and quality strategy as the customer orientation. Ryanair is constantly trying to keep its cost as low as possible to transfer benefits of cost savings to its passenger in the form of low fares. The common misconception is that the quality comes for price. Crit ically, it can be argued that quality can be delivered for the low price service as well, rather again to say entirely, Quality in Price.In these departed 25 years, Ryanair has well balanced the expectations and perceptions by introducing rotationary and innovative ways of providing low fare air travel. Keeping its target market in centre, they have defined and communicated the quality of their services in their own terms. Ryanairs customers know what they lead get and their job is to deliver these expectations at its best by managing each and every, direct and indirect processes that are related to the passengers which are afterwards judged by passengers experience. Ryanairs approach to its quality management as different from other successful organisations such as GE has serious implications on its innovations, changing business environment and competition.Innovations in RyanairPutting an innovative thought into right away action is the core competence of Ryanair. Most of th e Ryanair innovative ideas have brought the revolution in the way people perceived travelling by air. For many successful companies such as GE, innovations has cost them fortune and these be were vulcanized from customers in the higher prices, but, for Ryanair innovations were implementing a simple ideas bringing additional revenues that in turn benefiting customers in lowest price tickets.Firstly, with its turn around strategy of mid 1990s, Ryanair, apart from no frills has introduced no class, single model air crafts. These fleets of hundreds of aircrafts were ordered often and bought at a heavy discount. The overhead cost of training and c passing were brought down to nominal because of these standardised aircrafts. The focus and resources were amused to introduce new routes, increasing customer base and harnessing quality factors in its provision of services.From 2000 and onwards it started using the e-commerce tools and wind vanesites for online booking, check-in and inform ing customers about the specific offers on its tickets. Ryanair was first to advertise third parties advertisement on its embarkation pass and flights. The customer service were improved by introduction of web application, Bing, that updates air fares directly to its customers computer and by implementing a Servicemail, a point of contact and response for customers. Servicemail is then extended to collect data regarding customer choices, preferences, trend analysis and measuring KPIs.In futureThe fare charged by Ryanair reflects the price of travelling from point A to B. It offers other supplementary services such as in flight meals, drinks, baggage costs etc. at a charge for those who exigency it. The lasting chimerical CEO, OLeary has a vision that in coming years travel by Ryanair will be free and all its revenue will be streamed by providing ancillary services, third party advertisements, holidays, insurance, hotels and connections bookings sold through Ryanair website. pit chTQM approach adopted by Ryanair is a flexible approach to a change in external circumstances as it has to just focus do new thing at its best but at lower cost.CustomersRyanair is a focused cost leader and open to customer fatigue so it has to understand that in the long run it has to apparent motion along with the taste of the customer that might be affected by pressure groups, regulators, EU and other regional governments. Currently, Ryanair is managed by an aggressive approach to capture market and in future it might require strategical rethinking, but, its approach to quality can stay the same to entice and repay passengers.Please refer to Number 1 Customer Services Statistics in the Appendix 48SuppliersThe advantage to Ryanair is that within UK and Europe, each major region of the countries has more than one airport, which can accommodate Ryanair at competitive rates on landing place and handling fees, leaving Ryanair with the upper hand. The traffic at these secondary air ports is low increasing the quality level of airport handling services and on-time departures enjoyed by the passengers. The other suppliers are caterers, maintenance and repair contractors. It is natural that Ryanair must be managing its suppliers relationship through service level agreements with a backed brawny compensation for the breach of service term(s).EU and Local disposalsThe growth of the Ryanair grow due to EUs deregulation of the aviation industry. EU court decision can invalidatingly impact upon the way Ryanair is functioning. For instance, Ryanair was forced to refund against its non-refund policy for flight cancellations due to Icelandic volcanic eruptions and was charged 3m Euros by Italian Government for not helping passengers after its flight cancellations. To stay in business and avoid fines Ryanair has to comply with such unavoidable regulations but it could not bumble its quality approach as others too have to comply.Quality and competitivenessOf course, q uality products and services are the competitive advantage and Ryanair keenly has move down this aspect into it air flights and routes. The key to success of Ryanair is implementing different market strategies over a period of time to survive the cut pharynx competition in the aviation industry. Ryanair is recognised as the most prompt flight from Dublin to London and Ryanair is top rated against its close competitors such as EasyJet, Virgin and British Airways.People made it possible statement is square(a) for Ryanair because the success of Ryanair is behind its crew members as they are in the direct contact with the passengers. Ryanair has not spent much on the training but is paying modestly to its crew and this has encouraged them to behave as sunnily as possible on the flights.There are concerns raised from some unsatisfied customers and dissident that the ancillary services provided by Ryanair are priced high and are of poor quality. Ryanair should deal with this issue a s early as possible as the success of total quality management lies upon delivering quality in all aspects of its activities. notwithstanding all cutting corners to save on ticket prices, more and more people are flyingRyanair, which, in the end, might be the ultimate validation of OLearys assessment of what travellers really want and how Ryanair is delivering it.Please refer to the Appendix 3 The Customer Feedbacks7However, TQM is not the end in itself. Ryanair should continuously strive upon improving its quality standards that can help them to barely reduce costs, increase revenues, reduce risks and improve the way it helps handle complaints and displease passengers.Improving Quality in RyanairThe ultimate aim of operations and process management is the performance improvement and Ryanair should consider this as an ultimate objective to improve its quality objectives of on time flights, speed, ancillary services and dependability. Despite of all efforts to manage its quality, Ryanair is seen and blamed that it sacrifices the quality in pursuit of minimising costs and that it fails to align the interests of its passengers well. These issues could be addressed by setting the minimum performance standards and outperforming them, as well said, promise little and deliver above expectations. wholeness way Ryanair could win its goal to draw worlds biggest and cheapest airliner is by aligning all its functions within the organisations to commit to quality levels and agreeing the quality deliverables with its contractors. Kaizen aka Continuous Improvement if adopted could blend well with the current TQM approach followed by Ryanair, however, this could affect the innovations, change and current competitive position in a favourable manner. Kaizen involves focus on small but never ending improvements that will become part of normal culture for all operations.InnovationsWe are aware that since 1997 Ryanairs passenger base is growing at a tremendous 20% total ever y year and it still has an appetite for growth and market to expand. It has become increasingly important that Ryanair addresses the improvement issue in its quality management to satisfy this change magnitude demand, number of new routes, destinations and growth prospects with Kaizen. Ryanair could extend or assign the responsibility towards quality improvement to the regional processes owners affecting passengers quality perception. These processes owners would identify the performance gaps and recommend actions to fulfil them by innovative actions or contribute ideas for further analysis. A close contact is required with the crew members who will bring them the storiesor experience they had with customers and how they overcame the demands or problems of different customers.We have Servicemail as a point of customer contacts and correspondences, but, we may need a system for internal communications that could be called a Central reading System (CIS). Through CIS every crew teams , employees and contractors as a lean system, directly submit key ideas, stories, experience to their respective process owner, who in turn filter the messages and re-post it that shall be compulsorily viewed, shared, commented and recommended upon by all regional process owners for further analysis that may involve the PDCA cycle or DMAIC cycle approach.This simple CIS should not cost much as it could be readily available or produced upon demand by the tendering process. Assuming that volume of them are computer literate and CIS very user friendly will require bare minimum costs for informing or training. The most contributing team or processes should be measured with process goodness index aka EPI and rewarded on quarterly basis.The other direct and simple approach for improvement is to circulate a postcard size blank form on flight with two columns to list down by passengers good about and dissatisfied about travelling with Ryanair. The employees should be encouraged to identi fy and forward negative feedbacks only using CIS with a confidence and gage that they will not be judged in any case against negative feedbacks and that the forms will be used for general improvement of quality standards as a whole.Change and CompetitivenessThe improved quality means increased revenue and profits due to increased turnover. The Kaizen approach in low cost EU and UK Airline service segment will identify, get it on and advantage Ryanair from its competitors.If, Ryanair act now and fully implement Kaizen by declination 2011 then they could become a cost-cum-service leader, a fully innovative airliner, with the cheapest fares simply covering quality cost of travel and chargeable ancillary quality efficient services with a minimum premium for those who want them. This development will help Ryanair to become a worlds popular brand and will advantage Ryanair in 2012 when the number of international passengers will increase more than double due to London Olympics.In many instances Ryanair was criticised by the regulators and competitors for not giving any or enough quality in passengers safety and ancillary services. Now, with Kaizen all will be reversed and Ryanair will be considered as the industry leader setting the industry landmarks for benchmarking.Ryanair has publicly denote that by 2014 it will enter the long haul destinations market and this will require them for a parallel strategic thinking as this segment will bring new challenges in terms of quality management. These routes are proposed to be separately managed, perhaps with most traditional form of flights and some compulsory on board services which will require Ryanair to establish new service standards. There is a scope of success in this segment if it can effectively extend and use of then well functioning Servicemail, CIS and other critical success factors such as brand, price and well established quality standards using Kaizen.Word countExecutive Summary 121Reflection in the Repo rt 493Ryanair and GE Introductions 297Ryanair v/s GE 732Is TQM good for Ryanair 1,117Improving Quality in Ryanair 819Total 3,579