Marieta Stefanova

By Marieta Stefanova

For organizations providing logistics services, dynamic changes in the external environment impact process performance risk and threaten effective integration of resources, coordinated management of operations and consequently, negatively impact customer satisfaction and loyalty. These processes call for an improvement of logistics service management and an integrated management concept combining the integration of satisfaction analysis processes and the risks that can negatively impact the delivery of a satisfying logistics service. The study focuses on the integration of quality and risk management in the supply chain to examine the theoretical and practical guidelines and address the main risks of non-compliance with the customer and legislative requirements that arise in a constantly changing external environment. The research approach is to look for the synergistic effect of quality and risk management by applying appropriate tools for their integration based on the definition of the applicable conditional variables in the specific existing situation. The analysis conducted to give us reason to believe that the development of a systematic approach, including both satisfaction analysis and risk factor analysis, may be sufficient grounds for initiating improvements in customer service.

Part of the book: Integrating Quality and Risk Management in Logistics

By Marieta Stefanova

This chapter sees an appropriate approach to build a quality management model by managing the risk of nonconforming logistics activities that result from dynamic environmental changes and contingencies. Logistics management has the misconception that reducing complaints would increase satisfaction to the same extent. Models for positively influencing satisfaction should contain much more than one variable. The customer satisfaction model used in this chapter contains six latent variables: Logistics satisfaction survey; analysis of data from the survey to measure satisfaction with logistics services; chapter to analyze the risk of noncompliant processes in logistics services; survey data analysis to measure the risk of noncompliant processes in logistics services. FMEA analysis was used as a method to investigate the consequences of emerging risks by quantifying the severity, likelihood of occurrence, and detection of nonconforming logistics services that further generated the RPN. The main objective of this chapter is to define the research design and the methods of data collection and analysis.

Part of the book: Integrating Quality and Risk Management in Logistics

By Marieta Stefanova

The chapter of the study presents the performed analysis of the logistics services satisfaction survey. It has been found that later the non-conformities in the logistics quality management system are identified and corrected, the more serious they are. The analysis is performed using the PLS-PM model captures the causal relationships of the study sample through arrows that start at a latent variable (factor) and point to the measured indicator variables. Results show that expected quality is the most important and effective latent variable. Customers were positive about the satisfaction of their requirements and the ability of logistics service providers to assess their expectations.

Part of the book: Integrating Quality and Risk Management in Logistics

By Marieta Stefanova

After the analyses were performed using the SERVQUA model, the results were used for risk analysis (FMEA) to identify the causes, assessment, and consequences of logistics services that do not meet customer expectations. FMEA analysis was used as a method to investigate the consequences of emerging risks by quantifying the severity, likelihood of occurrence, and detection of non-conforming logistics services that further generated the RPN. Suggestions for specific actions to manage risks and opportunities that can be used for optimisation or improvement are also provided. From the analyses, it can be concluded that the main reasons for the decline in customer satisfaction are poorly managed logistics processes caused by the lack of sufficiently competent employees ready to deal with emerging risks and human errors.

Part of the book: Integrating Quality and Risk Management in Logistics

By Marieta Stefanova

The minimization and elimination of deviations from quality that could cause a failure in the logistics system should be identified at an early stage in order to reduce the costs for recovering the system to its normal operation. The objective of this study is to analyze the contribution of prevention costs related to quality management to the total costs by focusing on the need to undertake priority preventive actions to ensure logistics services that meet the customer’s quality requirements. The methodology of the study includes the integrated application of conventional scientific methods for comparative analysis and Taguchi’s design for accounting regarding the primary costs for quality management with the predominant use of qualitative analysis. By applying these methods, the following groups of costs have been analyzed: prevention and avoidance of nonconforming quality; quality evaluation and control; and covering the costs for nonconforming quality of the logistics services. The contribution of the three groups of costs has been studied. Based on the analyses, this paper comes to the conclusion that the management of those costs by groups of factors for incurring them has the potential to contribute to the improvement of the quality of logistics.

Part of the book: Quality Control