WGU - C215 Operations Management Study Guide Overview

Total Quality Management (TQM) - A philosophy that focuses on the root causes of quality issues and correcting them before they become issues, expecting to deliver products that meet customer expectations and continuously improve on them. Conformance to specifications - How well a product or service meets the targets and tolerances determined by its designers. Fitness for use - A definition of quality that evaluates how well the product performs for its intended use. Value for price paid - Quality defined in terms of product or service usefulness for the price paid. Support services - Quality defined in terms of the support provided after the product or service is purchased. Psychological criteria - A way of defining quality that focuses on judgmental evaluations of what constitutes product or service excellence. Manufacturing Organizations - Organizations that focus on conformance to specifications, performance, features, durability, and serviceability. Service Organizations - Organizations that focus on intangible factors, consistency, reliability, responsiveness to customer needs, courtesy/friendliness, timeliness/promptness, and atmosphere. Leadership (Quality Standards) - Examiners consider commitment by top management, their effort to create an organizational climate devoted to quality, and their active involvement in promoting quality. Strategic Planning (Quality Standards) - The examiners look for a strategic plan that has high-quality goals and specific methods for implementation. Customer & Market Focus (Quality Standards) - Addresses how the company collects market and customer information and demonstrates how it acts on this information. Information & Analysis (Quality Standards) - Examines how the company obtains data and how it acts on the information, including sharing it within the company and with other parties. Human Resources Focus (Quality Standards) - Addresses issues of employee involvement, continuous improvement programs, employee training, and functioning of teams. Process Management (Quality Standards) - Involves documentation of processes, use of tools for quality improvement, and the degree of process integration within the organization. Business Results (Quality Standards) - Numerous measures of performance are considered, requiring companies to demonstrate progressive improvement over time. Walter A. Shewhart - Contributed to understanding of process variability and developed the concept of statistical control charts. W. Edwards Deming - Stressed management's responsibility for quality and developed '14 Points' to guide companies in quality improvement. Joseph M. Juran - Defined quality as 'fitness for use' and developed the concept of cost of quality. Armand V. Feigenbaum - Introduced the concept of total quality control. Philip B. Crosby - Coined phrase 'quality is free.' Introduced concept of zero defects. Kaoru Ishikawa - Developed cause-and-effect diagrams. Identified concept of 'internal customer.' Genichi Taguchi - Focused on product design quality. Developed Taguchi loss function. Cause-and-effect diagram - A chart that identifies potential causes of particular quality problems. Flowchart - A schematic of the sequence of steps involved in an operation or process. Checklist - A list of common defects and the number of observed occurrences of these defects. Control charts - Charts used to evaluate whether a process is operating within set expectations. Scatter diagrams - Graphs that show how two variables are related to each other. Pareto analysis - A technique used to identify quality problems based on their degree of importance. Histogram - A chart that shows the frequency distribution of observed values of a variable. Prevention costs - Costs incurred in the process of preventing poor quality from occurring. Appraisal costs - Costs incurred in the process of uncovering defects. Internal failure costs - Costs associated with discovering poor product quality before the product reaches the customer. External failure costs - Costs associated with quality problems that occur at the customer site. Plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycle - A diagram that describes the activities that need to be performed to incorporate continuous improvement into the operation. Plan - The first step in the PDSA cycle is to plan. Managers must evaluate the current process and make plans based on any problems they find. Do - The next step in the cycle is implementing the plan (do). During the implementation process managers should document all changes made and collect data for evaluation. Study - The third step is to study the data collected in the previous phase. The data are evaluated to see whether the plan is achieving the goals established in the plan phase. Act - The last phase of the cycle is to act on the basis of the results of the first three phases. Total Quality Management (TQM) - Implementing total quality management requires broad and sweeping changes throughout a company. Statistical Quality Control (SQC) - The set of statistical tools used by quality professionals. Descriptive Statistics - Statistics used to describe quality characteristics and relationships, including the mean, standard deviation, range, and a measure of the distribution of data. Statistical Process Control (SPC) - Involves inspecting a random sample of the output from a process and deciding whether the process is producing products with characteristics that fall within a predetermined range. Acceptance Sampling - The process of randomly inspecting a sample of goods and deciding whether to accept the entire lot based on the results. Common Causes of Variation - Random causes that can't be identified. Assignable Causes of Variation - Causes that can be identified and eliminated. Process Capability - The ability of a production process to meet or exceed preset specifications. Product Specifications - Often called tolerances, these are preset ranges of acceptable quality characteristics, such as product dimensions. Cpk - A process capability index used to assess capability by evaluating process variability relative to preset product or service specifications. Six Sigma Concept - A high level of quality associated with approximately 3.4 defects per million. Five-Step Plan of Six Sigma - 1. Define the quality problem of the process 2. Measure the current performance of the process 3. Analyze the process to identify the root causes of the quality problem 4. Improve the process by eliminating the root cause of the problem 5. Control the process to ensure the improvements continue. Repetitive Operations - Used to produce one or a few standardized products in high volume. Intermittent Operations - Processes used to produce a variety of products with different processing requirements in lower volumes. Batch Process - Used to make small quantities based on product specifications, such as in bakeries, education, and printing shops. Project Process - Used to make one-of-a-kind products exactly to customer specifications, such as in construction, shipbuilding, medical procedures, creation of artwork, custom tailoring, and interior design. Line Process - A process used to produce a continuous flow of products, typically in high volume. Continuous Process - A process that operates continuously to produce a product, often used in industries like oil refining or chemical production. Line Process - Produces a large volume of standardized products for mass production. They are known as flow shops, flow lines, or assembly lines. Products can be made in high volume with little or no customization.