Quality Management
Etihad Airways
Etihad Airways is an airline company based in Abu Dhabi. It is the second-largest airline in Dubai after Emirates. The company was founded in 2003 and has operations in several countries. Etihad Airlines has a fleet of Boeings and Airbus planes, which are the best in the industry (Vespermann and Gleich, 2008). Consequently, the company can offer unrivaled services to millions of travelers who use its planes to travel to different locations around the world. The company has been able to compete and outwit most airline companies that have been in operation for a longer time. Etihad Airlines is slightly over a decade old but its quality of services places it amongst the best airlines on the planet.
ISO 9001 Certification
ISO 9001 certification is a business model that focuses on the implementation and support of quality management. Top managers are involved in developing and implementing a quality management system aimed at improving the level of quality offered by an organization to meet international standards. The managers set up a quality policy, quality goals, and objectives. The management then reviews the data to determine the extent to which the organization is meeting the set quality goals. The managers then set up new goals to ensure that the organization is always striving to be better in terms of quality delivery. The quality management system provides the required data to work towards providing the best services to clients (Sampaio et al., 2009). It helps to direct the focus of an organization towards the quality of goals, which enables the management to keep improving the quality of services until clients are entirely satisfied.
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Advantages of ISO 9001 Certification
The process is well-defined and properly documented, which improves the consistency of the output. An organization can focus on its quality goals since there is documentation of results, which helps the management to review the progress it is making and set up new goals to keep the improvement process running. The latter appears possible as long as there is a documented process. The second advantage of the certification is that the quality is constantly measured. The set goals are measurable which makes it possible for the management to determine how successfully the goals have been achieved. Consequently, quality is constantly measured to keep track of the improvement process (Sampaio et al., 2009).
The third advantage is that the certification lays down procedures that ensure that a corrective action is taken whenever flaws are identified. This feature leads to the fourth advantage that is the defect rate decreases. Reviewing the quality progress and identifying the areas of improvement helps to pinpoint the defects that should be corrected. Consequently, the rate of defects reduces significantly. Additionally, it also means that the defects are identified and corrected earlier which minimizes the cost of correcting them (Sampaio et al., 2009). The mentioned is important to an organization since it helps to improve the quality and reduces the cost of removing defects.
The laid down procedures of measuring quality help to identify processes and practices that are inefficient and obsolete. Hence, the management obtains an opportunity to change the mentioned practices to implement better and modern ones to improve the quality. It becomes possible since ISO 9001 has laid down procedures that enable managers to improve the quality of service that their organizations offer. Consequently, the number of failures reduce as better systems and practices are implemented which further increases the business volume. Clients are comfortable to deal with organizations that assure the customers that they will provide the best quality (Sampaio et al., 2009).
Disadvantages
For the process to be successful, it is mandatory to involve the top-level managers since they need to entirely understand the project, formulate effective goals, set targets, etc. In addition, the management must appoint a supervisor to take control of the process and ensure it is implemented as expected. The latter implies the certification involving and requires the allocation of a significant amount of human resources. Time is one of the resources that the process requires in abundance, especially during the development of the quality management system. Furthermore, senior managers must be involved during the review of the progress so that they can set new goals within the implementation process. Such approach requires to involve certification. Besides, the process costs a significant amount of money. An organization must be audited every year to determine whether it is meeting the standards of ISO 9001. The audition is done to ensure that the companies in question deserve the ISO certification. The process costs money every year, and the implementation process requires allocation of a significant amount of money to finance the implementation process (Sampaio et al., 2009).
Etihad Airways have demonstrated a desire to grow and compete with the biggest airlines in the world. The company flies to various destinations competing with the established national and private carriers. In addition, the company has partnered with several companies such as Virgin Australia since it tries to forge deals that will increase its presence in the global arena. This circumstance makes the company a good case study as long as it is usually a huge challenge to most companies to expand aggressively the way the company has without compromising on quality. This fact represents the reason why I chose the Etihad Airwaves because I would like to know the quality of services the company is providing and if they meet the international standards set out by ISO 9001 certification.
In the past few years the airline has been ranked among the worlds leading airlines. It has been ranked at the tenth level since the year 2007. The mentioned data represents a testament about the growth of the company as long as in four years the company was already the top airline. The study tries to identify the factors that have contributed to the growth of the company while identifying its weaknesses as well. The data is collected from the sources available online where various articles have been written to analyze the company. The information obtained will shed light on the current state of the airline regarding its growth potential, weaknesses, and opportunities. Additionally, it will identify the factors that have led to the fast growth of the airline.
The company has been backed by the Abu Dhabi government. Consequently, the airline has a huge fleet of wide and medium-sized airbusses. It has always acquired the latest and best models which enable it to provide the best services to millions of travelers every year (Chang et al., 2014). The funding and sound management have enabled the company to report positive earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation, amortization, and rentals. Moreover, its net income has been on a growth trajectory since 2003, and currently has annual revenues in excess of $7 billion. The vast resources of the airline have enabled it to form partnerships with other airlines such as Virgin Australia. In addition, it has bought minority stakes in other airlines such as Air Berlin. The partnerships and investments are quite essential to the company since they enable the company to earn revenue even in routes where its planes are not flying. The above is necessary since the company does not have a fleet of planes that can fly into hundreds of destinations across the globe. The company provides great services to the customers, which include a full entertainment system that includes a USB plug and play. The cabins are divided into unusual shapes of diamond, pearl, and coral; each of them represents a zone that is first-class, business, and economy class.
The companies have faced issues regarding the quality of customer care services. There have been incidences where people have sought the services of the customer care agents but consequently received no help. Certain customer care agents seem to not have answers to the questions of the clients and transpire referring them to other agents. Eventually, particular clients are not assisted. Furthermore, there are instances where they have been accused of refusing to help. Such a condition offends the clients and tarnishes the brand name of Etihad. Besides, the company has had issues with the flights via destinations interval time increased more than stated. Such drawbacks inconvenience travelers who want to arrive on time to take care of their business and personal engagements. Moreover, there have been issues with delays and even failure to compensate clients and pay for liabilities (Vespermann and Gleich, 2008). The latter represents a huge concern, especially to clients who have used other airlines that compensate and pay for any liabilities promptly.
There are certain indications that the airline will continue to grow since it ventures into more destinations. An improvement in the quality of services it is providing will enable it to win over customers in western countries, who are rather strict in terms of the quality of services they receive. The company must focus on quality improvement as it continues to venture into more destinations and increases its fleet. The latter is the only way to overcome the competition posed by bigger airlines such as Emirates Airways, which have been in the industry for a longer time and have a bigger fleet.
Recommendations
The company should focus on quality improvement. Implementing ISO certifications are significant in the operated area since it is aimed at improving the quality of services to international standards. An audit will be conducted annually to ensure the company adheres to the set standards which will help the management to develop and review regularly the quality of service offered to people.
