Background of the problem
The study is focused on the quality management issues on the manufacturing process of Samsung Galaxy Note 7. The subject of quality management is important in the field of management especially in terms of the Masters of Business Management. The aspects of the quality management are important in terms of maintaining higher customer satisfaction. It can be said that the study focuses on the concepts of total quality management with the instance of the issues faced by Samsung in their handset of Galaxy Note 7.
The aim of the project is to analyze the problems faced by the company in the manufacturing the handset. Solutions will also be provided in order to mitigate the issues so that it would gain customer’s satisfaction. The research methodology used in this study is secondary research so that the views of the researcher are used in order to conduct the data analysis regarding the problem identified in Samsung. The analysis will be done based on the literature review regarding the core aspects of Total Quality Management and, the core problems of the handsets of Samsung. The literature review will help the manager a reliable insight on different factors that will help them in monitoring the designing and manufacturing process that are aligned with the international standards of the quality.
The root problem that has been evident in the failure of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is the quality of the product. There had been much curiosity and contention over understanding the actual defect of the mobile phone. After lots of investigation, it has been found that Samsung Note 7 has been facing issues due to its faulty batteries. The problem that the Company faced as a result of the faulty batteries was that it started losing customers (Ewan, 2016). The situation not only leads to the situation that the existing users started complaining but at the same time it created a situation that questioned on the quality of the product. Accordingly, the rivals got the opportunity of criticizing the overall management impact of the organization and gained the opportunity of gaining more market share. Apple’s iPhone 6 is the product that has created greater dominance in the market with respect to the Samsung’s Note 7 (Charmary, 2016). All these situations arise as a result of lack of Total Quality Management undertaken by the Company. Therefore, there remains the utter need for considering the quality management in an organization in order to fight against the increasing competition in the market.
Project’s aim and objectives
The aim of this project is to analyze the quality management of Samsung. The recent issue related to the Samsung Note 7 has lead to the situation that created question on the quality of the product. The aim of this report is to analyze the major reasons and the drawbacks that have resulted in the degrading condition of the image of Samsung. The major objectives of the project are:
- To assess quality management problems in the design and production of smart phones at Samsung.
- To understand the concept of Total Quality Management and its importance in the current market situation amidst so many competitors.
- To develop evidence-based solutions for mitigating quality management problems that may contribute to future recalls of smart phone brands.
Quality Management aspects in the mobile manufacturing:
Malik et al., (2013) stated that the smartphone manufacturing companies are focused on the quality management of the mobile phones so that they can satisfy the expectations of the different types of customers in the market. In this article, the aspect of user is focused along with the different types of process of manufacturing of the smartphones. The application developers of the smartphones usually provide importance on the utility of the software so that it can maintain a proper value chain to the whole process of smartphone manufacturing.
According to Lee et al., (2015), Samsung Electronics Company has a generic value chain model so that it can value to their customers. It can be said that the value chain model of Samsung is focused on the creation of establishing a technology development, performance based personnel management system, cost control procedures, marketing and sales, etc. Samsung is successful in many aspects such as leadership, innovation, partnership, training, but in some cases the quality management in few handsets failed. The value chain of the Samsung in this perspective is different in terms of the quality management of the phone.
As stated by Jung (2014), companies are focused in maintaining sustainability in the process of manufacturing also. In the 20th century, the companies are facing with the issues of the different types of manufacturing processes. A circular economy model is the possible method of implementation in the manufacturing of the different aspects of manufacturing processes. It will definitely consider the sustainability issues of the industry of smartphone manufacturing industry. The aspect of the sustainability development of the different types of the electronic products also includes the maintaining sustainability in the materials used in the process of manufacturing of the smartphones (Page, 2015).
User interface is the most important aspect and a central issue in terms of the mobile phone service and mobile design. It is because the users of the mobile phones usually access the different aspects of functionalities of the device through using different types of applications that must be user friendly. Apart from that, it can be said that the element of usability aspect in the manufacturing process is strongly related to brand trust, brand loyalty and satisfaction of the customers. These are the factors that a company must have to focus in order to increase the sales of the handsets in the target market (Kolinjivadi, Adamowski & Kosoy, 2014).
Literature review
In the competitive landscape, the impact of the brand loyalty and the brand awareness while assessing the purchasing intentions of the consumer is important for the company. Quality management is used in the different types of the process of manufacturing of the mobile phones. The company’s focus on the different types of response of the customers who expects quality while buying a mobile phone. If the quality management aspects fail, then the different groups of customers will spread a negative word of mouth promotion for the mobile phones. It will definitely influence the customer purchase decision of the mobile (Wirtz et al., 2013).
According to Bhamu & Singh Sangwan (2014), the aspects of the quality management are essential for not only focusing on the development of the customer attention, loyalty and increased sales but also for the improved quality of the phones in terms of the different types of the user interface of the smartphones. It influences the brand orientation of the product to the customers. Brand equity is the important aspect that is influenced by the different consumer behaviour elements of the target market. Focus on the elements of costs and the customer orientation aspects are the vital elements of consideration of the companies.
According to Assarlind, Gremyr & Bäckman (2013), service quality management is a part of quality management that is based on the dynamic and complex service environments. The companies have used various types of theoretical frameworks, models and applications that are proven to be beneficial for the maintenance of a service ecosystem. In order to manage the service quality, the proposed ecosystem is focused on the value creation of the processes along with the increased innovability. Innovation helps in the development of the organizational strategy of building total quality management in the different types of manufacturing and operation procedures.
In terms of total quality management, lean manufacturing process is practiced by most of the organizations in order to reduce the cost of manufacturing while giving more priority to the demands of the customers. Lean manufacturing is used in terms of reducing the waste of the manufacturing process of the company (He & Lai, 2014). In the competitive business world, smartphone manufacturing, automotive manufacturing, etc. are focusing on reducing the wastes in manufacturing so that they can make a substantial profit from the target customers. The process will help in meeting the highly responsive demands of the customers in the target market (Alwi & Kitchen, 2014).
Elements of Total Quality Management
Managers of the organizations are constantly put emphasis on the different facets of quality management such as lean manufacturing, six-sigma, total quality management, etc. Along with these processes, the aspect of innovation is implemented in every step so that the processes of quality management can yield maximum results out of it (Sengupta, Balaji & Krishnan, 2015).
Research methodology is the systematic representation of the process of the research which is used to conduct a research using different processes. However, in this scenario, the research study uses secondary research over primary research methodologies. Secondary research is more reliable in terms of this topic of total quality management of the handsets of Samsung Galaxy Note 7. It can be said that data collection methods includes collection of data from various credible and reliable digital databases like EBSCOhost Research Databases or Business Source Complete. Apart from that, the databases those are included for the research usually incorporate trade publications, scholarly articles, peer reviewed journals, newspaper articles and company reports (Karlsson, 2016). The findings of the research will be based on the views of the authors that are mentioned in the literature review section. Google Scholar will be used in order to search the relevant articles regarding the topic. However, it can be said that the topic is an important issue in the manufacturing process of a company. Hence, it can be said that quality of the findings will be enriched as it contains various types of information regarding the issues of the total quality management. One thing that has to be kept in consideration is the timeline that has to be maintained in collecting the information from the secondary data (Marshall & Rossman, 2014). The timeline is five years ago from the year 2017. The databases that are published before 2012 must be excluded in order to meet the criteria of the relevance of the data. The secondary data that will be interpreted an analyzed will be using qualitative research methods such as tabulating, coding and categorizing into themes. Nevertheless, it can be illustrated that the while conducting the whole research processes the limitations of the research has to be maintained and followed properly so that it can improve the quality of the study (Berger, 2015).
Samsung Note 7 tragedy that occurred in January 2017 was a result of poor quality control and the supply chain analysis of the Company. Investigation ultimately resulted in providing evidences that the battery of the mobile phone was mal functional and that it was the ultimate reason behind the explosion of the mobile phones. As evident from reports that the problem occurred with the batteries from two different suppliers resulted in the explosion of the batteries (Telegraph.co.uk, 2017). There were two suppliers of batteries. One was Samsung’s own SDI division and the other from the Hong Kong based Amperex Technology. Investigations showed those batteries from the SDI division shot circuited as a result of the damage to the separator; a component within the lithium ion battery that prevents the negative and positive electrodes to come in contact with each other and resulted in generation of huge amount of heat. N the other hand, the batteries from Amperex Technology experienced failure because of the protrusions in the batteries and other quality issues (Chaudary, Zafar & Salman, 2015). Keeping these perspectives into consideration the Company has been taking certain preventive measures as well.
There have been 2.5 million phones that have been reported faulty. As commented by Talk, (2016), cases related to faulty batteries are very rare. Batteries are made very dense that they can withstand great amount of heat and pressure. The batteries are very powerful that makes them vulnerable to intense heat. They can operate under great heat and can combat pressure in a particularly catastrophic way. When the faulty structure of the battery was identified, Samsung called it off and made instant decision on withdrawing the mobile phones from the market. However, when the number of complaints increased, it really affected the reputation of the company (Rothlauf, 2014). One of the major reasons found behind the degrading condition of the batteries was that when the batteries were kept on the other heating agents like a heated car, there remains the possibility that the batteries explode. In fact, it was found that if the battery continues to charge, it would become more unstable and that results in bursting of the battery. It has also been observed that the rectangular batteries are more prone towards damage than the cylindrical batteries. However, Samsung phones support the rectangular shaped that has increased the ill impact of the battery. The rectangular batteries have an internal support that helps to prevent the internal layer of the battery and reduce the risk of any kind of accident. However, this was not the situation and the Samsung phones could not operate in a better way and resulted in the demolition of the hand sets.
It has to be understood that phones are not equipped with any kind of cooling mechanism that it would cool down the device, instead the device also gets heated that automatically resulted in bursting out of the mobile phone. Therefore, there is clear evidence that the fault was related to quality management only and that Samsung failed to maintain a minimum level of quality in its product. The impact of the degrading condition of the battery resulted in a snowball effect and the news spread from one person to another. This is the reason that created a negative impact on the brand was found and many people were found to replace their Samsung phone with other brands. The heat and rage of the consumers spread more than the heat of the Note 7 and the trust on the brand and the brand loyalty seemed to get reduced from then on (Talib, Rahman & Akhtar, 2013).
The organization has come up with the approach that certain innovative approaches shall be undertaken by the organization that would help it to improve its safety. The failure of the battery life got huge media attention as well. The only reason that has been evident from analyzing the situation is that Samsung lacked the actual quality level that is important for surviving in the competitive world like today. It has to be understood that in case of mobile phones, people always prefer to have a good quality phone because it is not that commodity that people buy on a regular basis. Therefore, it shall be the primary look out of mobile phone companies like Samsung to think of better quality approach towards the manufacturing process of the handsets.
As it has been evident that one of the important criteria is to maintain a high level of quality in the product to create brand loyalty among the consumers, it is important that the Company considers the quality of the product. It has also been observed that Samsung is well recognized for its service and the quality of the product that it produces to serve the people. Therefore, it is important that Samsung focuses on the quality management in order to improve its product quality and serve people with the right products. Samsung has been able to establish a good market by undertaking the approach of cost effectiveness and competitive pricing. Samsung’s Note 7 has been able to compete with the technological giant Apple. In fact, iPhone 6 and the Samsung Note happened to be the major competitors in the market. From the literature review it has been found that brand equity and brand orientation are some of the important aspects that leads to the creation of large customer base. The consumer’s brand loyalty on Apple’s product cannot be denied. People also have been found to rely on the Samsung’s product as well.
Conclusion:
The detailed analysis of the case study has proved that the major dispute faced by Samsung is related to the quality management. The importance of quality management cannot be denied. It has to be understood that consumers get attracted to the quality of the product. In case of products like mobile phones, quality of the product matters a lot. Therefore, people are often found to look for those products that provide good services. From the finding of the various reports and evidences, it has been clear that there is lack of proper quality management in Samsung that has created the situation of creating distress and disloyalty against the brand. It is when one brand loses its market share, others brands take the opportunity of using the market opportunity. Similar situation has been evident in same of Samsung where Apple’s product dominated the market and the Company ultimately has to suffer.
It has to be recommended that price and design of the product are indeed important factors for creating dominance in the market but maintaining the quality of the product is equally important. Therefore, it is recommended that the company should focus on the quality of the product as well. It is expected that the Company should involve a quality assurance team who shall be responsible for undertaking the quality management of the product. In addition to this, it is highly recommended that several testing is done before the launch of the product. It is when proper precautionary actions are undertaken it becomes easier for the company to create a better image in the market.
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