Managing Quality
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Quality management is a method for ensuring that all the activities necessary to design, develop and produce a product are effective and efficient.
Quality has three main components:
- quality control
- quality assurance
- quality improvement
It is vital to ensure that you agree a quality specification for your product with your customer in the first place, though, to ensure that you produce the right quality product!
This was of real concern to Scottish Pig Producers, as they considered the management requirements of producing naturally tender pork. Scottish Pig Producers is working throughout the supply chain and with Quality Meat Scotland, to research factors affecting quality, develop systems to reduce variation and provide continuity and seek agreement with partners to make the necessary improvements.
Mackays recognises that to continue to develop and expand its high quality product range, it needs to ensure that it consistently gets the best ingredients. It works collaboratively with its local Farmer Suppliers, to ensure that everyone understands consumers' demands and what is critical in terms of berry preparation and delivery timing to maintain the high quality product standards.
Highland Grain, working with the Edrington Group and Tamdhu Maltings, found that it is possible to produce malt which provides additional spirit yield and improved processability. The quality improvement benefits are clear -barley from Highland Grain has consistently provided improvement in spirit yield of 1% - 2%.
Scampi has reached a mature phase in terms of its market position which can lead to price pressure competition in the market. Coldwater Shellfish sees an opportunity to grow the niche market for high quality scampi products, but this is dependent on ensuring quality standards are met by everyone in the chain. It views its drive to improve the quality of the catch, through high quality specifications and knowledge sharing, as one of the reasons that it has survived in an extremely competitive market.
Key points from this case study:
- By pooling resources and sharing information, a collaborative chain can ensure consistency of product
- Consistency of supply can ensure better returns for all those in the chain
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