Managing Quality---4 dimensions of quality

Quality Design:

Pathmark stores make an easy path for one-stop shopping that focuses on providing a hassle-free shopping experience for their customers. You can find everything you need all under one roof. Pathmark ensures the aisles remain fully stocked with all the necessary items a customer may need. They provide signs at the beginning and end of the isles that show you what items are on the shelf. They also offer ways to save with their power prices and yellow tag savings.

Quality of Conformance:

All pathmark stores look the same when entering you will feel like you’re in the pathmark in your home town. Each pathmark store is looking out for the customer’s well being by offering their yellow tag savings, and their excellent customer service. Pathmark is predominantly noted for its past loyalty to opening stores along major highways and interstates, there warehouses are fully situated to feed the growing demand at all of Pathmark stores.

Availability:

Pathmark stores are open 24 hours 7 days a week. The store hours are perfect for these late night snacks, medication, videos, or appliances. Pathmark stores are located in a convenient location along major highways and interstates. Pathmark is reliable when it comes to saving money. They have their pathmark “advantage club” card which is free to sign-up and offers money-saving coupons. They have a weekly circular that also offers great savings. The catering department offers the finest quality, great service every time; ordering online or in person. On their website they also offer great recipes.

Field Service:

Pathmark offers a wide variety of services, ranging from their customer service counters located in the stores to their online website. The customer service located in the stores gives the customer a one on one experience, while the website offers the same service but with more resources. Pathmark stores are open 24 hours a day 7 days a week, which means that customer service is available all the time.

What quality systems do they currently have in place?

The type of quality systems Pathmark currently have in place is Availability. Pathmark was using one human resource department to handle records management, storage, and retrieval for 143 supermarkets throughout NY, NJ, PA and Delaware. However, they are now working with Archive Systems which has divided its HR workload among 30 individuals, instead of three, in three locations. Since this collaboration, questions are answered faster, problems are solved sooner, and operations managers can focus on maintaining and increasing operations efficiency and higher levels of service created for employees. In addition, with Archive Systems, “Pathmark can take advantage of the Scan-on-Demand services to quickly access documents before they are batch –scanned.” Also, with this integrated system Pathmark can have a level quality assurance that yields time and cost saving without occupying their staff. “Pathmark can gain significant business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities without investing in technology; and can also reduce storage cost by more easily tracking and eliminating unnecessary files.”

However, not only has the Archive System help Pathmark with their quality system but Unicru as well. With Unicru Pathmark is able to put managers on the floor to devote their time and better assist customer; and maintain best associates for the jobs while improving quality and productivity of their frontline.”

Three recommendations Pathmark should consider to improve their quality system is to: adapt and implement some of the quality guru’s theories, especially W. Edwards Deming theory’s and his 14 managing principles. Also, they should consider reviewing the ISO 9000 Standards (currently) to ensure quality product and high levels of customer satisfaction, which is what they are aiming for. Lastly, Pathmark should use the Baldrige criteria (Baldrige Award) as a guide for internal assessment of their management, quality and improvement systems by diagnosing the strengths and weaknesses.