Levis is an American -based multinational with its headquarters in San Francisco. It was started by Levi Strauss in 1853, who was responsible for marketing and manufacturing the worlds first blue jeans. In 2005, Levis introduced the concept of the Levis retail store. By 2008, the company sold its products in more than 110 countries around the world, employing a staff of around 10 000 employees. In 1994, Levis reentered the South African market, establishing its head office in Cape Town and setting up a production plant in Epping. Project Spear was started as an effort to increase productivity at the Epping plant to competitive levels. Levis target for production world wide was set as the expected level of performance in jeans manufacture for the average global factory as standard, and the relative measure to that standard as a target of 100% for all Levis factories. During 2004, the Epping plant was running at roughly 87%, occasionally going above 90%, so the challenge facing the Project Spear team was to raise this above the companys average and beyond. It was felt that for the plant to be competitive it should reach production efficiencies of 103%, which meant that each employee had to reach levels of 109%. A further problem was that between 8% and 9% of the jeans produced at Epping were of inferior quality, and had to be relegated to seconds, rather than being sold as firsts. This was against a company average of 3%. An additional challenge for the Spear team, therefore, was to improve quality at the Epping plant. The layout of the plant was changed and this led to an immediate 4% increase in productivity, as it eliminated a lot of extra handling and improved the way work was managed through the production line. A further Spear initiative was a complete re-engineering of the existing incentive scheme. The incentive scheme created a significant portion of reward built in for quality achievements. The plants overall performance level jumped to 103% during 2006, as a direct result of the changes implemented by Project Spear. At the same time, quality control improved to under 4% of output classified as seconds, although it had still not reached the desired 3%.

Q1.Provide a detailed distinction between quality assurance and quality control in terms of the inputs, tools and techniques and outputs of these two processes in the context of the Spear project.