Question

(a) How could TQM (total quality management) tools be used for improving the service quality of an airline (provide specific examples illustrating the use of specific tools)? (b) Provide examples of internal and external failure costs relevant to an airline. (c) There are four categories of costs of quality. Which categories are captured in the quality loss function? Which category is relatively difficult to measure? Why?

(questions can be answered in bullet points)

Answer 1

a) This is a new model of enterprise culture known as TQM. Most of the industries are following the same. Its optimizing for long-term benefits’ is purely based on Professional ideology that focusing on consumer contentment. It also helps in management system . It definitely helps in improvising quality of an airline with the below principle.

Ø Customer Focus

Ø Employees Involvement.

Ø Activities Oriented.

Ø System Integrated.

Ø Analytic Approach.

Ø Schematic Approach.

Ø Recruitment Enhancement.

Ø Resolution based on Reality.

Ø Communication.

b) Provide examples of internal and external failure costs relevant to an airline.

If we talk about Go Air, there are huge gap not only internally but also externally too. There are certain operation center getting shut down by DGCA. And it hampers directly to the employees and the management but also the passenger who are choosing Go Air for the specific location. Though they were running well but still there are some reason but the communication goes to customer as due to technical failure they are not operating the flight for particular location. Here the communication is not as per real time issue. No doubt for this there are many customer face challenging problems. But in future Airlines company may lose their credibility. No Doubt TQP must be helping in this case. The announcement must be consumer centric. So that no customer has to go through difficult situation. Further to this DGCA must allow to airline to book the customer ticket to other airlines if they are failure operate it for some reason.

C) External Failure cost badly impact here. Because here multiple aspects need to be considered for evaluation and sometime very difficult the evaluate it. There are so many things are involved on this like product recalls, warranty claims, field services, good will lose etc. So here difficult to measure all of these factors. There are huge number of customers align to the particular airline company. And it takes very long time to own a loyalty. It includes multiple offers, good services, less cancellation from airline company. I believe Indigo is doing much better that any other domestic airlines in India.