Jose’s Authentic Mexican Restaurant

1) How should quality be defined at this restaurant?

In this case, some of the customer-driven definitions of quality can be used in order to describe Jose’s Authentic Mexican Restaurant. These are:

• Conformance to Specifications – naturally, customers expect the quality of the foods and services in the said restaurant to meet or exceed certain advertised levels of performance in other restaurants.

• Psychological Impressions – customers might evaluate the quality of the foods and services in the restaurant base on some of their psychological impressions. On the field of services for instance, people will expect that the employees in the said restaurant are courteous, friendly and will exhibit other good mannerisms in front of them.

2) What are the restaurant’s costs of poor quality?

• Prevention costs – it can be applied if any of the staff or employees in the restaurant will send a complaint to their supplier with regards to the poor quality of some of the ingredients that have been delivered.

• Internal failure costs – divided into two major cost categories:

a) Yield losses – applicable for the poor quality ingredients that must be disposed.

b) Rework costs – applicable for other ingredients that can be reprocessed.

• External failure costs – if a problem has been discovered after the customer has received or consumed the foods and services in the restaurant. It can be in the form of refund.

3) Use some of the tools for improving quality to assess the situation at Jose’s.

• Cause-and-Effect diagram (fishbone diagram) – relates a key quality problem to its potential causes.