Quality Control

Quality Control Methods:

Quality control is the stabilization and maintenance of a process to produce consistent output. Best Buy does not produce its own products so it does not exactly follow the same rules of quality control. With regards to the products it carries, we have mentioned earlier that BBY examines its inventory quite often and then determines the placement for certain products in certain stores, because BBY does not offer the same products in every single store. Best Buy does use quality control when it comes to their services which is mainly seen through employee to customer contact in the Process Quality Control method. In order to keep the employees reputable to their customers it is important for the employees to receive trainings on their products, services, and performance. On a monthly basis, employees participate in store meeting that discuss new changes to store policies, introductions to new products, and brush up on sales techniques. To further expand on this, weekly performance tests called 360's are given to test these techniques. Lastly, BBY employees maintain daily trainings through the use of ELearnings, which is an online training progarm designed to supply employees with in depth knowledge of new and existing products. Each of these quality control methods are overseen by supervisors and managers.

Quality Control Charts:
The use of Quality Control Charts is not really utilized at Best Buy. Although, BBY does test their employees, observe employees in action and survey customers, there is no particular chart that is used, instead managers are given disgretion to analyze and interpret employee performance.

Inspection Type:

As just mentioned, managers and supervisors operate as inspectors for inspection purposes. A supervisor works with general employees more closely and personably. These supervisors then report back to the manangers what they see. At the same time, managers walk around the store watching over employees and supervisors. Many times supervisors miss something, but guaranteed, a manager will most likely end up picking it up. For instance, the supervisor walk away to help a customer, but his subordinate sees this and decides to walk away and play with his phone, a manager who continuously scanning the departments, will come across this employee. The first time some managers will say something directly to the employee and some will say something to the supervisor. If it happens again the manager will formally write up the employee for their mistake. If it were to happen again the manager would terminate on site.

Continuous Improvement: Pareto Analysis v. Fishbone Diagrams
Best Buy does not use Continuous Improvement. BBY uses managers to inspect peformance and with their discretion they decide whether or not something is not peforming and does not necessarily follow any particular formula for determining defects in the process.

6 Sigma Practices:
Six Sigma is a systematic method for process improvement. Currently Best Buy had to resort to the six sigma practices. Because of a failing economy and threat of financial losses in the 2009 fiscal year, BBY needed to find ways to generate higher higher revenue and profit margins while cutting costs. Best Buy analyzed what they could do to generate more efficient practices by determining areas that they could improve, measuring the variable in that area, analyzing the areas in which they would need to change, implement the improvement and finally control the new change. BBY decided in order to cut cost and increase revenues and profit margins that they must do a better job in managing their sales teams. Employees went from recommending products that the employee felt were the best to recommending products that would also have the highest mark ups with a focus of attaching accessories and services to the sales. Best Buy has not been significantly injured by the economy yet, because they found a way to increase their revenues and profit margins, especially on a per sale basis. Next they decided to manage employee labor more efficiently. It wouldn't look good if BBY laid off thousands of employees, instead they lowered hours and changed the schedules. Recently, BBY offered a department of specialists that could assist customers in any department throughout the store, but in order to save on labor hours, they cut out the department and filtered those employees into specific departments like computers or home theatre. So instead of having a store with 30 employees on duty at once, they now had 25 or even less because now these transferred employees got rotated with the other guys in the department.

Recommendations:
Best Buy could do a few things that would correspond to their efforts that would make their process more efficient. BBY seeks to keep high customer contact and interaction, while also eliminating wasted labor. If BBY were to do better analysis of the store traffic, meaning the amount of customers shopping within the store at given time, day and department, it would keep labor down and decrease wasted standing around time or increase customer contact time.

http://workbench.cadenhead.org/news/1486/best-buy-worst-customer-service