CASE STUDY [30 Marks] Read the case study below and answer the questions that follow Quality Management at Van Schaik Book Publishing Van Schaik Book Publishing is growing its eBook business, satisfying demand for customised eBooks for the Higher Education sector and for a growing number of commercial customers. These customers expect a high-quality product that works in each of the environments that their users use various operating systems, eBook readers, and hardware (desktop computers, tablets/phablets, and smartphones). As part of the standard development process, each eBook goes through several quality checks. When the order is received, a customer service representative checks the order and a more senior customer service representative verifies the order. During the Production Phase, a quality assistant will check the eBook against the job order and customer order to make sure it is ready for production, and once approved by quality, each of the requested eBook formats are created. A second quality check is performed by the customer service representative who is assigned to the customer to make sure that each requested format is ready to be release to the customer. Some customers (and their eBook users) are complaining about quality problems in the eBooks they have received from Van Schaik Book. Sometimes the eBooks do not work correctly in the intended environment. Sometimes, content is fuzzy. Sometimes, a quality check will find that not all parts of the requested order have been included in the eBook. This causes rework before the eBook can come back for a second quality check before being released to the customer service representative for the final quality check. In each of these cases, the "cost of quality" is the cost of NOT creating a quality product. Every time the project has to rework an eBook to correct a quality defect, the cost of quality increases. Pumlani and her project managers met with a key group of supervisors who are managing a critical number of the eBook projects. They reviewed the lessons learned data and brainstormed from their experiences with producing eBooks to identify some of the quality some of the quality problems that they were seeing in the eBook projects. They identified a number of issues: - The customers quality requirements are never discussed within the project team. They are dealt with by the customer service representatives at the beginning and end of the eBook production process. This means that team members do not know what the customer expects and just do the tasks assigned without knowing what is good. They may have a very different or no understanding of what the customers quality needs are, unlike the customer service representatives. - The standard job template doesnt suggest that project managers plan into their project any reviews or checkpoints at which quality can be monitored and controlled. The only quality checks come after the eBook is finished. This does quality checks of the whole eBook, but doesnt allow for checks on each component content formats, correct conversions or desk top publishing checks. These two factors lead to a perception among team members that quality is just simply some testing by some other groups (quality and customer service), rather than a way of working and assuring, monitoring and controlling work as they proceed. Further, many team members dont even see quality as their responsibility, because its something done by someone else.

Based on the case study, with the aid of a relevant diagram, critically discuss the cost of quality, with emphasis on conformance and non-conformance.