R & R Sports Review of Quality Management in Small Local Stores

R & R Sports:

Review of the Quality Management in Local Sporting Goods Store

Abe Arevalo

Jonathan Floyd

Philip Maryan

Erin Reed

Jeff Whitley

Introduction to Quality Management

March 11, 2008

R & R Sports

When training is taught on management they are mostly based on the idea of large corporations with many employees, but when doing this project we decided to focus on the smaller organization with fewer than ten employees. R & R Sports was opened on January 28, 2006 at its current location. During the early development of R & R it consisted of five employees including the General Manger, two embroidery specialists, one screen printing specialist and a floor salesman. The initial goal was to eliminate customers from having to drive into Corpus Christi for all their sporting good needs. Within six months of operation R & R’s primary owners made the decision to terminate the General Manager because of poor marketing, over spending and poor stoking skills. After a having to clean the messes made by previous management with inventory and supplies the store soon grew to be more popular and steadily began to make profits again.

Quality Management Strengths

Quality Management Weaknesses

When determining the weakness within the R & R Sports organization the uses of Deming’s categories for good quality control. The first category that R & R needed improvement upon was �Organization and Operations’. Since R & R is such a small number of employees there can be a blur between lines of management and non-management. Employees are treated fairly but they have a tendency to take advantage of this fairness which sometimes leads to underproduction and the possibility of overworking of the general manager and the owner. The other category is �Collecting and Using Information’. Since R & R is small they have the opportunity to stay closely in touch with their consumers. They are located within a small town which allows them to closely know most of their customers on a first name basis. A way of improving this relationship though is the idea of keeping electronic preference records. This would allow for customer appreciation opportunities. For example, if there is a reminder of when homecoming for a school is coming up it allows for them to prepare specialty items or that school; or if the birthday of a little league coach is coming up a birthday card could let him know that you care about him which will put your store on his mind for the upcoming season.

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