CASE STUDY [30 Marks] Read the case study below and answer the questions that follow Quality Management at Van Schaik Bo

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CASE STUDY [30 Marks] Read the case study below and answer the
questions that follow Quality Management at Van Schaik Book
Publishing Van Schaik Book Publishing is growing its eBook
business, satisfying demand for customised eBooks for the Higher
Education sector and for a growing number of commercial customers.
These customers expect a high-quality product that works in each of
the environments that their users use – various operating systems,
eBook readers, and hardware (desktop computers, tablets/phablets,
and smartphones). As part of the standard development process, each
eBook goes through several quality checks. When the order is
received, a customer service representative checks the order and a
more senior customer service representative verifies the order.
During the Production Phase, a quality assistant will check the
eBook against the job order and customer order to make sure it is
ready for production, and once approved by quality, each of the
requested eBook formats are created. A second quality check is
performed by the customer service representative who is assigned to
the customer to make sure that each requested format is ready to be
release to the customer. Some customers (and their eBook users) are
complaining about quality problems in the eBooks they have received
from Van Schaik Book. Sometimes the eBooks do not work correctly in
the intended environment. Sometimes, content is fuzzy. Sometimes, a
quality check will find that not all parts of the requested order
have been included in the eBook. This causes rework before the
eBook can come back for a second quality check before being
released to the customer service representative for the final
quality check. In each of these cases, the "cost of quality" is the
cost of NOT creating a quality product. Every time the project has
to rework an eBook to correct a quality defect, the cost of quality
increases. Pumlani and her project managers met with a key group of
supervisors who are managing a critical number of the eBook
projects. They reviewed the lessons learned data and brainstormed
from their experiences with producing eBooks to identify some of
the quality some of the quality problems that they were seeing in
the eBook projects. They identified a number of issues: - The
customer’s quality requirements are never discussed within the
project team. They are dealt with by the customer service
representatives at the beginning and end of the eBook production
process. This means that team members do not know what the customer
expects and just do the tasks assigned without knowing what is
“good”. They may have a very different or no understanding of what
the customer’s quality needs are, unlike the customer service
representatives. - The standard job template doesn’t suggest that
project managers plan into their project any reviews or checkpoints
at which quality can be monitored and controlled. The only quality
checks come after the eBook is finished. This does quality checks
of the whole eBook, but doesn’t allow for checks on each component
–content formats, correct conversions or desk top publishing
checks. These two factors lead to a perception among team members
that quality is just simply some testing by some other groups
(quality and customer service), rather than a way of working and
assuring, monitoring and controlling work as they proceed. Further,
many team members don’t even see quality as their responsibility,
because it’s something done by someone else.
Based on the case study, with the aid of a relevant diagram,
critically discuss the cost of quality, with emphasis on
conformance and non-conformance.