NAFI 1st Midterm Exam Questions With Correct Answers

Describe the importance of quality for the success of a firm. Compare and contrast productivity, cost, and quality - Answer Quality leads to loyalty; it's way cheaper to retain customers than find new Productivity: how efficient your processes are; when managers delegated quality to quantity teams, they instead become occupied working to improve plant productivity (sometimes at quality's expense) Cost: directly related to productivity; each unit has a cost and benefit. Quality generally presents short-term costs for the sake of long-term benefit Quality: difficult to define. Generally relates to meeting a set of standards and indicates a product superior to products lacking 'quality' describe the various dimensions of quality - including formal definitions of quality: transcendent quality, product-, user- and value-based quality, fitness for use, - Answer Transcendent - a product that is 'above the competition' - you know quality when you see it Product - quantity of some attribute User - fitness for intended use -> different customers define differently Value-based - comparing cost and benefits available in the total package including pre- and post-purchase services Fitness for use - ^^^ same as user? Manufacturing - conformance to specifications Conformance to specifications - ^^^ same as manufacturing? Customer expectations - "meeting or exceeding customer expectations" Identify and define internal and external customers for a given business application - Answer External: suppliers and buyers further down the production line Internal: other departments within the business, including employees as well as stakeholders Consumers: the people who buy the final product Identify the four significant influences that influenced the U.S. quality movement in the 1980's [page 13 - Joe is stuck] - Answer Deming - "If Japan Can... Why Can't We?" Baldrige Award TQM - Total Quality Management Xerox CEO David Kearns - "Leadership Through Quality" initiative (NOTE: Six Sigma didn't appear until the late 90s) Explain the difference between Big Q and little q - Answer Big Q = managing for quality in all organizational processes. Little q = focusing solely on manufacturing quality Describe the disappointments and criticisms of TQM in the 1990's - Answer Some articles called TQM a passing fad or inherently flawed Many programs failed due to poor quality strategies or poor execution Describe how to apply the three levels of quality - organizational level, process level and job/performer level for improving any company - Answer Organizational level = meeting external customer requirements Process level = linking external and internal customer requirements Job/performer level = meeting internal customer requirements. List and describe the eight contemporary forces identified by ASQ that will influence the future of quality - Answer Global Responsibility, Consumer Awareness, Globalization, Increasing Rate of Change, Workforce of the future, Aging Population, Twenty-first Century Quality, Innovation Identify the differences between applications of performance excellence in manufacturing versus services - Answer In manufacturing, performance excellence relies a lot on the standards of the manufacturing process and if the product is meeting conformance expectations. In services, performance excellence relies on the actual service being done. Therefore, the people on the front line who are interacting with the customer are the major influences on service performance excellence explain the concept of sub-optimization as it relates to systems thinking. Explain the relationship of 'systems thinking' to total quality - Answer Sub-optimization = when improving one part of the process, makes other parts of the process worse-off, and the entire system/process as a whole does not improve. This is why systems thinking is so important to total quality, because in order to truly improve the quality of a system/something, the whole system needs to be addressed and improved, rather than just focusing on one small part of it. Cite the lessons learned from Quality in Practice: From Leadership Through Quality to Lean Six Sigma at Xerox - Answer Xerox lost focus on quality as a key business driver after their boom in the 1990's during the dot com era due to upper-management's short-sightedness. List Deming's 14 Management Obligations - Answer constancy of purpose, adopt a new philosophy, cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality, end the practice of awarding business on basis of price alone, improve constantly and forever, institute training, teach and institute leadership, drive out fear and create trust, break down barriers between dept's, Eliminate exhortations for the workforce, Eliminate numerical quotas for production, Remove barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship, Encourage education and self-improvement, Take action to accomplish the transformation Systems Thinking - Answer a set of functions or activities within an organization that work for the aim of the business. The aim of the system is to benefit all stakeholders To manage a system properly, managers must understand the interconnections among the system's components and among the stakeholders involved. Variation - Answer Variation at the product level is best when there is less. Mind variation in org. change as well. Many sources of uncontrollable variation exist in any process Excessive variation results in product failures, unhappy customers, and unnecessary costs Statistical methods can be used to identify and quantify variation to help understand it and lead to improvements Theory of Knowledge - Answer Knowledge is not possible without theory Experience alone does not establish a theory, it only describes Theory shows cause-and-effect relationships that can be used for prediction Psychology - Answer People are motivated intrinsically and extrinsically, intrinsic is the most powerful Fear is demotivating Managers should develop pride and joy in work Deming hated the Carrot-and-Stick management approach and vied motivation solely through compensation as short-sighted, external motivation Explain why Deming did not believe in accepting 'low bid' for selecting suppliers - Answer Because the lowest priced supplier is not always going to provide the best service for your organization. There are many other important aspects that play a part when selecting suppliers such as delivery schedule, on-time deliveries, flexibility, etc. 'willing worker' - Answer workers want to do a good job but are constrained by the inadequacies of the process