Utilizing pandemic covid-19 issue to increase productivity, increase quality and

customer satisfaction

Vishvek A/L Pechimuthoo1, Narendran A/L V.Ravindran1, Muhammad Adli Bin Muhammad Nasir1,
Iyad Nabil Bin Yusoff1, Amirul Asyraf bin Mohd Rashid1
1
Universiti Tenaga Nasional (Uniten), College of Engineering, Putrajaya Campus, Jalan IKRAM-UNITEN, 43000
Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords:
Covid-19
The articles are based on the pandemic COVID-19’s issue to
Productivity increase productivity, improve quality and enhance customer
Quality satisfaction. Focuses on Six Sigma on how to improve quality and
Customer
Satisfaction
increase productivity.
Management

1. Introduction

A recent global pandemic has struck the world putting many jobs and lives in severe danger
and harm, the particular pandemic declared by WHO has infected millions and has brought about
many deaths. Due to the particular outbreak that has been bringing a lot of harm to the world, a
stay order known as the movement control order (MCO) was imposed in Malaysia as well as
worldwide by most of the countries in order to fight and break the chain of contact of the spread
of this lethal virus. The particular spread of virus dubbed as the corona virus or (COVID-19) has
brough about many downfalls to many manufacturing sectors and bringing in many affects the
manufacturing supply chains most significantly [1]. In order to fight this pandemic and the problem
faced in the supply chain, the usage of Six Sigma was brought in to increase productivity, quality
improvisation and enhance the overall customer satisfaction. At the same time, Digital sales was
introduced to achieve those particular 3 objectives.

2. Productivity

Productivity is generally defined as the ratio of output volume to input volume. In other words,
it calculates how effectively inputs from production, such as labor and capital, are used in the economy
to achieve a given amount of output. The recent issue Covid-19 pandemic has given out a lot of
different approaches towards various sectors such as production, food, education and etc. Since the
start of the pandemic, the robust prevention and containment efforts that were certainly needed to curb
the pandemic have seriously damaged the economy [1]. Therefore, following would be discussed about
the example of effects on productivity or how does the productivity increases, utilizing pandemic
Covid-19’s issues.
For instance, this pandemic affects the productivity on the workflow of Ambulatory Endoscopy
Centre’s (AECs), where the workflow of a small to medium community-based, 2-room, 5700 square-
foot, single-specialty certified AEC conducting approximately 6000 endoscopic procedures annually
was modeled using the Discrete Event Simulation (DES) program. DES is a computerized virtual
simulation technique in which encounters between patients and scanning environments with fixed and
human resources are modeled on the basis of various sequences of events that occur in chronological
order in actual practice [1]. The different input variables used in this model are shown in the table
below. The table below also shows the new production of Covid-19 screening and testing, rise in
endoscopy room from 3 to 10 in AEC

Table 1: Simulation model’s input variables at Pre- and Post- Covid 19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a significant economic downturn around the world as
consumer demand and business production and trust plummeted. The International Labor Organization
(2020) expects production to be one of the industry’s most seriously impacted by the adverse effects
on economic production. For starters, the aviation industry is now facing "possibly the most serious
crisis in its history," according to Guillaume Faury (Chief Executive Officer of the Airbus aircraft
manufacturer) (Hollinger & Woodhouse, 2020) and global car sales have plummeted. In the United
Kingdom, revenue declined by 97% in April 2020, the worst month since 1946 (Campbell, 2020) [2].
In the sense to overcome the current situation, Servitization process was applied, which is a shift from
a product-centric to a service-centric business model and logic. This is a traditional process which
could help the production firms to stabilize their business. Hence, manufacturers are still able to
increase to increase the productivity by providing high-margin field services alike maintenance,
overhaul and repair.
In addition, digital servitization would be a great solution to the current crisis caused by the
Covid-19 pandemic, interruption of production activities with unforeseen implications, where it is a
service strategy that exploits extensive digital breakthroughs such as smart connected products,
industrial internet platforms, predictive analytics, digital offerings, and advanced services. Combining
servitization and digitalization can make businesses less dependent on travel and interaction between
people. Faced with a crisis with high rates of environmental uncertainty and instability, firms will need
organizational frameworks and strategies that promote high levels of incremental, exploitative, and
revolutionary, exploratory changes. Exploitation refers to incremental changes to optimize the current
positions of firms (e.g., production), while innovation refers to radical changes to assume new ones.
Companies need to respond quickly not only to changing consumer needs but also to disruptive
(exogenous) environmental changes. Resilience is essential to survival under these chaotic and
unpredictable circumstances. Resilience is the ability to plan for unforeseen events, react to
disturbances and recover from them by preserving the continuity of operations at the desired level.
Research have shown that being close to consumers not only raises customer loyalty, but also improves
productivity and offers new service opportunities.

Figure 1: Elements of crisis resilience

There are about 4 elements in the crisis resilience as shown in the figure above:
• Agility - The capacity of an enterprise to adjust or respond rapidly to a changing climate, both
in terms of volume and variety, which is especially important when markets are characterized
by unpredictable and volatile supply and demand.
• Preparedness - Ability of decision-makers whose companies are under continuous threat to
reflect on the need to restore their companies in order to identify new opportunities and
generate new ideas for growth after the crisis.
• Elasticity - Increase the exchangeability and versatility of relationships between people and
objects within the company and the broader ecosystem.
• Redundancy - Lack of modular resources (production facilities, stock of materials, etc.) that
can be quickly activated to reconfigure the value of the network.
Furthermore, the data from the survey below clearly indicate that the exploration of the potential
for digital servitization will be accelerated by the challenges posed by the pandemic. Following this
line of reasoning, we can assume that digitalization and servitization can be seen as a proactive means
of accelerating and implementing crisis response.
 Figure 2: Digitalization programs, pre-Covid-19 and accelerated because of Covid-19

A hands-on-four-stage model as shown in the figure below, corresponds with the element of
resilience at each stage of the model. In this regard, the model can be a useful tool to support the
management of any business emergency or disruption, irrespective of its cause.

Figure 3: Four-step Covid-19 crisis management model

3. A New Approach in Managing Quality

Manufacturing output at the most basic level is in compliance with requirements. Model
consistency and compliance with requirements provide the basic basis for conducting operations
for manufacturing quality goods. As consumer demands have increased over time, manufacturing
quality has become an absolute necessity, regardless of where goods are produced, shipped, and
sold. A top-notch quality management system (QMS) is an efficient, essential tool. The most
effective quality assurance managers take advantage of their QMSs to boost product consistency,
automate manufacturing processes and meet market expectations
Recent quality problems with COVID-19 diagnostic tests illustrate the challenges in health
sciences with quality control and regulatory enforcement. It is further complicated by volunteer
and compulsory remote work and social distancing affecting conventional teamwork and regular
business operations. The global spread impacting both importers and suppliers, the intermittent
closure and reopening of factories would increase supply chain pressure. In these times,
consistency and enforcement procedures can be quickly ignored to reach the deadlines.
What we can do is harness the power of automation. The old adage, "work smarter, not
harder" certainly applies here. Modern QMSs based on paper or spreadsheet are hard work to
manage and require a great deal of manual maintenance. It is much more of a time suck to try to
interpret all of the data obtained in these systems. For this reason, leading producers invest in
automated QMSs. Automated QMSs capture and analyse data in real time, making the quality
control process more streamlined. Additionally, modern QMSs provide automated version control
and a central repository of data. That way, you never have to wonder what the revised document
is, and you never have to go looking for a specific piece of information in different locations.
Next, we can integrate the quality control (QC) with the management processes.
Alternatively, QC will harmonize with other aspects of the company strategy — from procurement
and design to production, distribution, and operation. QMS technologies of the next generation,
such as TrackVia, combine key data sources and frameworks to establish processes of closed-loop
consistency, or feedback loops, between functional areas. Such closed-loop systems promote faster
changes in the supply chain, helping to continuously fix and avoid quality issues while bringing
down costs. Figure xx is an illustration for the process.

Figure 4
 Reflecting to Covid-19, the reduced number of workers is very critical to some production
manufacturing management. Most manufacturer depends on number to maximize their
productivity. This global pandemic has really impacted most of the manufacturers. By
implementing automations, the manufacturers will not have to worry about the number of working
forces as the artificial intelligence had already been placed. This will help to maintain or maybe
improve the quality management.
In addition, factories can raise overtime to meet deadlines or run overnight shifts / double
shifts which can lead to issues of social enforcement. In-line monitoring and during production
inspection would allow a third-party quality assurance company the ability to first verify that the
factory has the requisite permission to resume. However, it may not be easy for the inspector to
obtain a thorough understanding of the operating potential of the plant, because they do not usually
have the privacy to see the whole activity when visiting. Often, factories are unlikely to allow a
daily customer's factory audit, because it could be seen as a sign of mistrust and may place an
administrative strain on the factory in preparation.
Although the full extent of COVID-19's effect on global supply chains remains to be seen
as the virus continues to spread, consumers may be more flexible in their perceptions of product
quality in the market. However, the quality of the products they buy is unlikely to challenge
consumers ' expectations.

4. Building a Customer-Focused Company

Customer satisfaction evaluates how well a customer has been satisfied with a product,
experience or service. Measure customer satisfaction is important because it allows businesses to
understand what they need to do in order to attract customers for long-term business growth. 57 % of
consumers avoided buying from a company because a competitor offered them a better experience.
This statistic suggests that consumers do not hang around if a company fails to ensure that its brand
experience is consistently positive across both online and offline platforms.
Since COVID-19 began, US e-Commerce sales grew by 49%. While various brands have
reacted to this trend by shifting their focus online, they will still face supply chain and inventory issues.
This figure is worrying as 40.55% of consumers have said that they would turn to less familiar brands
as options if products are unavailable. B2B Companies like MSC Industrial Supply Co. have
prioritized the orders of existing customers over new customers to resolve fulfilment issues. At the
same time, Amazon had to delay nonessential items in the US by up to a month
Various efforts have been made by the companies to win customer satisfaction in the long-
term. The first one is stay connected with customers online. Based to Global Web Index, 68% of
individuals feel that companies on social media during this time should focus on helping people during
the outbreak while 81% believe that they should run promotions, offers or loyalty perks for customers.
As an example, Michelin-star chef Massimo Bottura and bands like Coldplay have started treating
followers to free cooking classes and concerts. Other businesses such as Kroger have demonstrated
their appreciation for staff by providing a greater number of them to access free corona virus testing.
Next is build customer loyalty. We need to consider what consumers find valuable when
creating customer loyalty. Value is not just about pricing. Consumers also want to buy from businesses
that they like and think share their values. For an example, the company named The North Face gives
a point-based app that allows participants to monitor their account and check the status of points and
give reward to their loyal customers.
The last one is to improve the supply chain. As is happening now, COVID-19 had put more
pressure on retailers, suppliers and the wider supply chain to provide consumers with faster and less
costly delivery experience. In order to meet these customer expectations, brands can repurpose their
nearby e-commerce stores. Stores like Target use the store closest to the customer as the main
fulfilment centre that allows same-day services such as pick-up and drive-up. Brands that have no
shops or need to temporarily increase their ability should work together with a fulfilment partner.
Businesses should also keep into contact with manufacturers so that if certain products go out of stock,
you can update your product pages.
I would conclude that brands are able to please clients in a COVID-19 environment by giving
them a comprehensive user experience on every stage of their journey. As more customers go online,
companies need to be innovative as they link to consumers on the internet and create loyalty, as well
as provide outstanding customer support and an on-site experience to stand out.

Figure 5: Shows the experience impacts the bottom line, for better or worse

Figure 6: Shows the increasing of electronics prices after COVID-19

 Figure 7: Shows how consumers are planning to deal
with shortages

Figure 8: Shows the factors influencing individual brand support

 Figure 9: Shows the percentage levels of approval for brand activities

5. Summary

Covid-19 has its negative impact such as millions of lives lost, financially unstable, most of
the people have been retrenched. This pandemic has made most of the suppliers had millions of
losses in terms of financial. Therefore, they have to work quickly to recover the losses so that they
wouldn't go bankrupt and thus prepare them for an upcoming pandemic which is unpredictable. To
sum up productivity site during this Covid-19 pandemic, obviously most of the production have
gone really down due to the Movement Control Order (MCO). As we change the productivity from
product-centric to service-centric, it will be really helpful to regain or increase the company
productivity. Moreover, for the processes like Covid-19 screening and testing, each and every
companies are responsible to do that to increase their productivity from a safe site. It will be very
helpful to increase the productivity in this crisis, if the companies follow certain factors like
resilience and four-stage model which could support the productivity of the business. These factors
would give an understanding on what/when/where/how to take certain actions to rebuild a
company’s productivity.
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