Theme of the lecture №11. Ensuring competitiveness

1. Competitiveness of the product: the concept and the need to improve

2. The concept of product quality, quality

3. Providing quality products at different stages of their life cycle

4. Product quality control system

1. Competitiveness pertains to the ability and performance of a firm, sub-sector or country to sell and supply goods and services in a given market, in relation to the ability and performance of other firms, sub-sectors or countries in the same market.

The term may also be applied to markets, where it is used to refer to the extent to which the market structure may be regarded as perfectly competitive. This usage has nothing to do with the extent to which individual firms are "competitive'.

Empirical observation confirms that resources (capital, labour, technology) and talent tend to concentrate geographically. This result reflects the fact that firms are embedded in inter-firm relationships with networks of suppliers, buyers and even competitors that help them to gain competitive advantages in the sale of its products and services. While arms-length market relationships do provide these benefits, at times there are externalities that arise from linkages among firms in a geographic area or in a specific industry (textiles, leather goods, silicon chips) that cannot be captured or fostered by markets alone. The process of “clusterization,” the creation of “value chains,” or “industrial districts” are models that highlight the advantages of networks.

2.Quality in business, engineering and manufacturing has a pragmatic interpretation as the non-inferiority or superiority of something; it is also defined as fitness for purpose. Quality is a perceptual, conditional and somewhat subjective attribute and may be understood differently by different people. Consumers may focus on the specification quality of a product/service, or how it compares to competitors in the marketplace. Producers might measure the conformance quality, or degree to which the product/service was produced correctly. Support personnel may measure quality in the degree that a product is reliable, maintainable, or sustainable.

There are five aspects of quality in a business context:

1. Producing - providing something.

2. Checking - confirming that something has been done correctly.

3. Quality Control - controlling a process to ensure that the outcomes are predictable.

4. Quality Management – directing an organisation so that it optimises its performance through analysis and improvement.

5.Quality Assurance – obtaining confidence that a product or service will be satisfactory. (Normally performed by a purchaser)

3. Product life-cycle management (or PLCM) is the succession of strategies used by business management as a product goes through its life-cycle. The conditions in which a product is sold (advertising, saturation) changes over time and must be managed as it moves through its succession of stages.

The goals of PLC management are to reduce time to market, improve product quality, reduce prototyping costs, identify potential sales opportunities and revenue contributions, and reduce environmental impacts at end-of-life.

The concept of product life cycle (PLC) concerns the life of a product in the market with respect to business/commercial costs and sales measures. The product life cycle proceeds through multiple phases, involves many professional disciplines, and requires many skills, tools and processes. PLC management makes the following three assumptions:

• Products have a limited life and thus every product has life cycle.

• Product sales pass through distinct stages, each posing different challenges, opportunities, and problems to the seller.

• Products require different marketing, financing, manufacturing, purchasing, and human resource strategies in each life cycle stage.

4. A quality management system (QMS) can be expressed as the organizational structure, procedures, processes and resources needed to implement quality management. Early systems emphasized predictable outcomes of an industrial product production line, using simple statistics and random sampling. By the 20th century, labour inputs were typically the most costly inputs in most industrialized societies, so focus shifted to team cooperation and dynamics, especially the early signalling of problems via a continuous improvement cycle. In the 21st century, QMS has tended to converge with sustainability and transparency initiatives, as both investor and customer satisfaction and perceived quality is increasingly tied to these factors. Of all QMS regimes, the ISO 9000 family of standards is probably the most widely implemented worldwide - the ISO 19011 audit regime applies to both, and deals with quality and sustainability and their integration.

Basic literature: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9.

Additional literature: 10,11,12,13,14,15,16.

Periodicals: 17-60

Internet sources and the optional list of electronic sources: 1-6