Tonga International Academy introduces new couses on Quality Control ^Featured

In Tonga, as in the leading developed countries, service industries employ many more persons than manufacturing industries. Quality is closely related to and determined by human performance, thus quality is a difficult challenge to government employees. Quality of manufactured products is measured in degrees of conformance to standards or specifications. In service industries, the customer, in many cases, has no say on the quality as in monopolies such as electricity, telephone, water, and garbage collection.

Outline:

The 3 steps in quality control are: (1) specification of what is wanted (2) production of things or services to satisfy the specification and (3) inspection of things or services produced to see if they satisfy the specification. The parties that involve in service quality include the service provider and the client. Each party has a different interpretation of quality and different approach to quality thus a different specification of quality. Quality specifications of the client may include;

• acceptable quality services at an affordable price
• minimum delay time in arranging for and obtaining service
• service performed according to scheduled or promised times
• error-free performance

Example:

The following example is an audit control program for tax returns, a responsibility of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), presented here to demonstrate potential gains from application of quality control:

The first step towards improving quality is to identify the problem then collect quantitative data to define the size, extent, and location of the problem. Management needs to be sure it has the right problem before it takes corrective action or processes a solution. The IRS samples from individual income tax returns to identify areas of non-compliance, its extent, location, and magnitude so that audit resources could be allocated to correct the most tax error per man-hour of investigation. The

sample would also feedback information as a basis for actions that would reduce, if not prevent, errors from occurring in the first place. There would be error prevention as well as error correction. To increase its effectiveness the sample can be stratified by size of adjusted gross income, and by business and non-business types of returns. The following national estimates can be derived from the sample:

• percentage of individual income tax returns that has a tax error
• total amount of tax error
• of returns with tax error, percentage that favors the taxpayers and percentage that favors the government
• percentage of underpayment
• average tax error increases in amount as income increases
• frequency of tax error among business returns and that among non-business returns
• major sources of tax error
• frequency distribution of tax error

Other estimates, depending on the needs of the IRS, can be calculated from the sample. In fact, a good sample can provide answers to all IRS related queries on tax returns.

The following actions and more depending on the needs of the IRS, can be taken as a result of the feedback from the sample:

• audit planning can be revised in terms of the magnitude, extent and location of non-compliance and of tax error
• change allocation of audit resources to reflect error distribution in the income tax returns
• more detailed explanations of some items can be added to reduce confusion
• a new schedule can be added to the tax form to simplify the format of tax income return

Ko e course ko 'eni ‘oku kinikini atu ‘i ‘olunga koe 'uluaki course ia ki he ako’i ‘o e Tokanga’i ‘o e Kanolelei ‘oha ngāue ‘oku fai pe koha koloa ‘oku ngaohi ‘e ha kautaha fakatokolahi pe fakataautaha, ngāue’anga, Potungāue ‘ae Pule’anga, Siasi, ‘Apiako. Koe polokalama ‘e ma’u ai hoto A.S pe B.Sc pea 'e malava kete ngāue leva kihe tafa’aki ‘o e Quality.

'Oku 'ata pe ke tali atu ha’o fehu’i ke mahinoange taumu’a ‘o e polokalama mo e ‘u course.

Mālō