Quality Control Management

For my business I’m going to set up a Quality Control Management program, that will ensure the high quality standards at the production of ‘Victorio Cakes’, by building up a quality in every department. Due to the fact that my business is very small and initially I’m going to be doing everything on my own, I will be the one who will always be checking my own work. I will be taking a responsibility for checking the quality of my own work. I can assume that the errors are avoidable and there are ways of preventing errors and getting things right first time. However, to face the truth there may be some situation in the baking process, when it might be too late to change something. E.g. if I bake the cake and after an hour I suddenly remember, that I’ve forgotten to put one or two ingredients, it might be too late to change something and the cake might be thrown away. This is going to be a waste of my time and raw materials which cost money, and which will increase my production costs. In order to prevent an increase in my production costs, I will have to check and keep up with the following procedures:

· Make sure, that the kitchen and all equipment is always clean and that I have an appropriate baking wear, in order to maintain hygienic standards.

· Check, that I have the right quantity of ingredients needed to make a particular cake, before I actually start making it.

· Check whether I put the right ingredients at the right time throughout the whole baking process as well as decorating.

· Continuously check whether or not I bake the cake at the right temperature, for the correct period of time, so that it doesn’t burn or changes its properties in any way.

· Make sure that I decorate the cake in accordance to particular needs and wants of the customer, and in accordance to the particular instructions of how to carry out the process of decoration of a particular cake.

· Make sure that after the cake is made, it is stored appropriately so that it doesn’t go off too quickly and remains fresh till the customer actually receives it.

Although it normally takes a long time to introduce a Total Quality Management program and some employees may even become demotivated, it is mainly due to the fact that there are usually many employees working in one company, who have to check theirs and somebody else’s work which can be demotivating. This is not the case for me, because I’m the one, who actually wants to set the high quality standards and, at the same time, the one who will try to maintain them. This makes the TQM a much easier process for my business and is likely to take much less time to introduce than with other businesses which will only advantage my business. I may also introduce a Japanese method of quality control called ‘Kaizen’, the approach of which basically means that employees should be improving their work slightly all the time throughout the whole process, generate and try to implement their own ideas of improving the quality standards. In this case it may be very useful to me, because I will much easier for me to make the adjustments and implement my ideas about the quality standards, because I won’t have to spend my own time explaining something to the other employees and trying to make them understand what I want them to do. I may also introduce a quality circle system, when there have to be some meeting over certain periods of time and some key issues or problems arising from quality control being discussed. Although there are not going to be anyone in my business who I will be able to discuss some issues with in the short term, I can just sit in the end of every week or month, look and analyse any mistakes that might have occurred over a certain period of time and think of the ways of maintaining and improving the quality standards in my business.