Quality and Value are inextricably linked

Quality doesn’t cost money, it saves money. The cost to your reputation that a cheap, problem product can cause is going to be significantly greater than the modest saving you made by buying that product in the first place. If you consider how much it costs you to gain a regular customer, you have to ask yourself if you can really afford to lose that investment and the follow-on loss as that disillusioned customer tells their friends about the bad experience with your product? If the answer is “No”, then perhaps it is time to look at your buying habits.

It is common practice to request 2 or 3 quotes when searching for a supplier. If all 3 quotes are similar, it then gets down to which supplier you can best work with in terms of responsiveness, lead-time, communication, quality etc. If one quote is notably lower than the others, then that should be a Red Flag. The question that you need to ask yourself is “why is that quote so much less than the other 2”.
There can only really be 3 quality related reasons:

1. Shortcuts are being taken that you may well have to deal with later
2. The actual product and the specification are different. How can you tell in the finished product? Are the same standard of ingredients and quality being used as form the specification?
3. You are not getting what you think you are getting. In other words, you are paying for what you get, but what you get may not be what you expect or was specified! There is no such thing as a free lunch

Quality has a cost and that cost may be considered as part of your insurance that the product will meet its stated specification or performance criteria.

There is an old saying: “There are 2 types of oats – good oats and cheap oats. The cheap oats have usually been through the horse before you get them.”

The moral of this story: just because something is cheap doesn’t necessarily mean that it is any good. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it is bad either, but you must ask the question : WHY the notable difference?

The key point of this message is that your company name and reputation lies in the product that bears your brand. If you are prepared to demand ridiculously low prices from your suppliers, you must be prepared to take the risk that the price you achieved will actually deliver a product of the quality standard that you expect.

We all know that manufacturers are required to comply with strict regulatory requirements. I think we also know that the adherance to those requirements and philosophy can sometimes diverge.

If something is too cheap, there is always a reason.

Are you up for that risk?

Quality

According to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), quality management is thataspect of the overall management function, which directs and controls an organisation
with regard to quality. This should include every aspect of manufacture to ensure that the quality objectives will always be achieved.

The fundamental concepts of Quality Assurance, Good Manufacturing Practice and Quality Control are inter-related and are described in the Code to emphasize their interaction and their primary importance to the production and control of therapeutic products.

Quality is “built into” a product through quality processes. It is not assayed in to cover or correct deficiencies in those processes.

Value

The extent to which a good or service is perceived by its customer to meet his or her needs or wants, measured by customer’s willingness to pay for it. It commonly depends more on the customer’s perception of the worth of the product than on its intrinsic value.

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