Quality improvement in product and customer service for swimming pool construction business

Abstract

The principal of this thesis was to improve upon the quality of product, where the term product in this thesis has been defined clearly as being both of the character tangible and intangible for instance the products in this case are swimming pool (primary product) and services (secondary product) respectively. Author had foreseen the importance of the term quality and customer satisfaction at time present and surely in the future yet still to come. There fore it is absolutely crucial for the case company to manufacture flawless product as well as to meet, better yet to exceed customers’ expectation. All of these needed to be accomplished in order to ensure that the case company stay competitive amongst other rivals. The main structure of this thesis is based on the work by Noriaki Kano, Kano model. Similar to Kano model, this thesis is tackled in three STAGES, where the property of each STAGE varies in accordance to customer requirements. STAGES I brought together several engineering techniques and tools in resolving problems and prevent them from future occurrence. Author introduced a few data collection methods such as interview, questionnaire, and collecting past data, in which data were then processed following Pareto’s 80:20 rule. Author then used problem solving tools as like relationship diagram, Cause and Effect diagram (Ishikawa), Decision Tree diagram and Why-Why analysis to analyse and identify the root cause, which can then be executed. As for STAGE 2 and 3 author will only propose solution that would satisfy and delight customers respectively. By using Relationship diagram author and the team could distinguish and group solutions in to two STAGES, 2 and 3, the solutions of former STAGE 2 aim to satisfy through value-added, where as the latter is to excite and delight by introducing new products and service. The proposed solutions were then checked against company’s capability in term of availability in resources and double checked with the customers to find out the level of response, which the final solutions were then presented in action plan. In STAGE I author reduced problems that occurred to the swimming pool and/or machines by producing and issuing a copy of Owner’s manual together with an Instruction poster to every customer in order to help them handle & operate. Problem solving team and author witness two improvements after the implementation: first improvement is that customers are more fluently capable to handle and care for the swimming pool, which consequence the second improvement, where customers’ complaints during the two months implementation period (October and November 2003) on Problem of Water in the swimming pool not clean or clear had fallen from 6, 7, and 5 cases in 2000, 2001, and 2002 respectively to 0 case in 2003, where as Problem of Water pump machine breakdown or faulty had fallen from 4. 5. and 6 cases in 2000, 2001, and 2002 respectively to 0 case in 2003. In STAGE 2 and 3, author recommended together 9 solutions for both STAGES, in which the 7 were approved by the board of management and the members. All 7 solutions did also received good response by customers. Majority of the customers have shown great response towards the approved 7 solutions.