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David answered on
Dec 23 2021
Total Quality Management
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Background/overview of the organization
In 1946, Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita established their business in Japan as Sony
Corporation. Today, it is a $17.6 Billion company which operates in the Consumer Electronics
industry (Official website of Sony, n.d.). Sony has given its consumers variety of product in
Consumer Products and Devices, Networked Products and Services, B2B & Disc Manufacturing,
Music and also in Financial Services.
The quality management approach at Sony is not only developed to improve the products
and services, but also to ensure customer satisfaction. The quality value of the company is
„Quality First‟. The approach is to have a higher focus on quality than on profits (CSR – Quality
and services, n.d.). So continuous quality improvement is important and the company needs to
improve the management quality as well. The company strives to achieve high quality standards
through all its activities throughout the value chain. For increasing quality and making strategic
decisions, the top management at Sony holds Quality Strategy Meetings. Also Quality Officers
hold Quality Officers Meetings which is a forum to discuss quality issues and challenges. Such
meetings are also held with Customer Service Officers to discuss the best practices and
initiatives globally.
Sony takes up several efforts to improve quality of its products. The company has set up
quality standards based on the aspects like product safety, performance and services (CSR –
Quality and services, n.d.). The Quality Management System at Sony is based on the ISO 9000
Series. The company continually strives to improve quality of its products and services through
controlling the quality management system that aims to improve the effectiveness of its
processes through scientific approaches. The scientific approaches taken up by Sony are as
elow.
SSS (Sony Six Sigma)
The six sigma process of Sony focuses on improving the quality of all the functions at
Sony based on the concepts of concentrating on profits as well as processes, taking variances into
account, making strategic decisions based on actual data, and making all business functions
measurable in financial terms. The basis of the Six Sigma strategy is a DMAIC approach which
means Define - Measure - Analyze - Improve (Execute) - Control (Standardize) (Semiconductor
Quality and Reliability Handbook, n.d.). The DMAIC approach is made up of 14 steps.
Deployment of quality engineering
Quality engineering is the technical process that the company follows to evaluate and
improve its functionality (Semiconductor Quality and Reliability Handbook, n.d.). This helps in
improving efficiency of processes and technology by evaluating the advantages and
disadvantages of a technical process and increasing technical ability.
Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)
This is the risk evaluation process of the company for the purpose of achieving higher
quality. Evaluating and understanding the risks helps in systematically eliminating the problems
in processes and thus reduce chances of failure in quality (Semiconductor Quality and Reliability
Handbook, n.d.).
Customer feedback also plays an important role in quality management of the company.
The following diagram reflects on how the company uses customer feedback in its quality
improvement process.
Source: Official website of Sony. Retrieved from
http:
www.sony.net/SonyInfo/csr_report/issues/pdf/CSR_Report2012E_06.pdf
Sony Corporation had an undying reputation of providing the best quality. However, in
the recent past, it has been recorded that there had been quality issues regarding the end product
as well as in the manufacturing processes. The company also focuses on continuous
technological advancement to keep pace with the changing technology and market. But on this
aspect Sony has not been so successful in adapting to changing technology fast enough and other
competitors are catching up fast. All these are giving a serious setback to the company in the
tremendously competitive world. The following section identifies the problems that the company
is presently facing.
http:
www.sony.net/SonyInfo/csr_report/issues/pdf/CSR_Report2012E_06.pdf
Introduction to the Problem
Product quality and Lack of innovation:
Sony has been able to create a strong
and name. Consumers consider the
and to be
eliable and of high quality. Over the past few years, however the company has been questioned
about the different product quality. In a lot of incidents, the company products failed to perform
as it has claimed. The laptops, camera and even the play stations have been suffering from
different product quality issues. All these quality issues are giving rise to lawsuits which
eventually damaging the corporate image of the company. In this dynamic world, every customer
is looking for something new. They want to experience product which alters the traditional
things. However, Sony is no longer considered to be innovative. Hence it is losing out its
usiness to its competitors. The company focused more on manufacturing rather than developing
new technologies (Tang, et.al., 2012).
Slow pace of adoption of technology:
For Sony, technology influences the aspects of, product development and designing,
innovation, customer interaction and customer experience. The emerging and new technologies
are opening newer prospective options for the companies to develop new marketplaces. This
makes the existing technology obsolete and necessitates it to be replaced with the latest ones to
gain benefits. When compared to its competitors like Apple, the company has a slower pace of
adopting new technology.
Lack of Strategic focus:
With the change in technologies, there are other thing which had changed since the
World War II. These are consumer taste and preferences, consumer demand and the global
economy. The company was successful due to the expertise in the Industrial strategy during the
World War but with time there was a need to change with the changing landscape (Hartung,
2012).
Organisational Culture:
Sony‟s corporate culture is plagued with certain challenges that are inhibiting the growth
of the organization. There is no doubt that the human resource is a lifeline to an organization but
it is also true that an encouraging...