Key Terms

Question 1

What is Statistical Quality Control (SQC)?

Answer 1

The general category of statistical tools used to evaluate organizational quality.

Question 2

What are Descriptive Statistics?

Answer 2

Statistics used to describe quality characteristics and relationships.

Question 3

What is Statistical Process Control (SPC)?

Answer 3

A statistical tool that 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.

Question 4

What is Acceptance Sampling?

Answer 4

The process of randomly inspecting a sample of goods and deciding whether to accept the entire lot based on the results.

Question 5

What are Common Causes of Variation?

Answer 5

Random causes that cannot be identified.

Question 6

What are Assignable Causes of Variation?

Answer 6

Causes that can be identified and eliminated.

Question 7

What is the Mean (average)?

Answer 7

A statistic that measures the central tendency of a set of data.

Question 8

What is Range?

Answer 8

The difference between the largest and smallest observations in a set of data.

Question 9

What is Standard Deviation?

Answer 9

A statistic that measures the amount of data dispersion around the mean.

Question 10

What does Out-of-control mean?

Answer 10

The situation in which a plot of data falls outside preset control limits.

Question 11

What is a Variable?

Answer 11

A product characteristic that can be measured and has a continuum of values (e.g., height, weight, or volume).

Question 12

What is an Attribute?

Answer 12

A product characteristic that has a discrete value and can be counted.

Question 13

What is Process Capability?

Answer 13

The ability of a production process to meet or exceed preset specifications.

Question 14

What are Product Specifications?

Answer 14

Preset ranges of acceptable quality characteristics.

Question 15

What is the Process Capability Index?

Answer 15

An index used to measure process capability.

Question 16

What is Six Sigma Quality?

Answer 16

A high level of quality associated with approximately 3.4 defective parts per million.

Question 17

What is conformance to specifications?

Answer 17

How well a product or service meets the targets and tolerances determined by its designers.

Question 18

What is fitness for use?

Answer 18

A definition of quality that evaluates how well the product performs for its intended use.

Question 19

What does value for price paid mean?

Answer 19

Quality defined in terms of product or service usefulness for the price paid.

Question 20

How is support services defined in terms of quality?

Answer 20

Quality defined in terms of the support provided after the product or service is purchased.

Question 21

What are psychological criteria in quality assessment?

Answer 21

A subjective definition that focuses on the judgmental evaluation of what constitutes product or service quality.

Question 22

What are prevention costs?

Answer 22

Costs incurred in the process of preventing poor quality from occurring.

Question 23

What are appraisal costs?

Answer 23

Costs incurred in the process of uncovering defects.

Question 24

What are internal failure costs?

Answer 24

Costs associated with discovering poor product quality before the product reaches the customer.

Question 25

What are external failure costs?

Answer 25

Costs associated with quality problems that occur at the customer site.

Question 26

What is total quality management (TQM)?

Answer 26

Philosophy that seeks to improve quality by eliminating causes of product defects and by making quality the responsibility of everyone in the organization.

Question 27

What is robust design?

Answer 27

A design that results in a product that can perform over a wide range of conditions.

Question 28

What is the Taguchi loss function?

Answer 28

Costs of quality increase as a quadratic function as conformance values move away from the target.

Question 29

What is continuous improvement?

Answer 29

A philosophy of never-ending improvement.

Question 30

What does Kaizen mean?

Answer 30

A Japanese term that describes the notion of a company continually striving to be better through learning and problem solving.

Question 31

What is the plan–do–study–act (PDSA) cycle?

Answer 31

A diagram that describes the activities that need to be performed to incorporate continuous improvement into the operation.

Question 32

What is benchmarking?

Answer 32

The process of studying the practices of companies considered 'best-in-class' and comparing your company’s performance against theirs.

Question 33

What is a quality circle?

Answer 33

A team of volunteer production employees and their supervisors who meet regularly to solve quality problems.

Question 34

What is a cause-and-effect diagram?

Answer 34

A chart that identifies potential causes of particular quality problems.

Question 35

What is a flowchart?

Answer 35

A schematic of the sequence of steps involved in an operation or process.

Question 36

What is a checklist in quality management?

Answer 36

A list of common defects and the number of observed occurrences of these defects.

Question 37

What are control charts used for?

Answer 37

Charts used to evaluate whether a process is operating within set expectations.

Question 38

What are scatter diagrams?

Answer 38

Graphs that show how two variables are related to each other.

Question 39

What is Pareto analysis?

Answer 39

A technique used to identify quality problems based on their degree of importance.

Question 40

What is a histogram?

Answer 40

A chart that shows the frequency distribution of observed values of a variable.

Question 41

What is quality function deployment (QFD)?

Answer 41

A tool used to translate the preferences of the customer into specific technical requirements.

Question 42

What is reliability?

Answer 42

The probability that a product, service, or part will perform as intended.

Question 43

What does quality at the source mean?

Answer 43

The belief that it is best to uncover the source of quality problems and eliminate it.

Question 44

What is the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award?

Answer 44

An award given annually to companies that demonstrate quality excellence and establish best practice standards in industry.

Question 45

What is the Deming Prize?

Answer 45

A Japanese award given to companies to recognize efforts in quality improvement.

Question 46

What is ISO 9000?

Answer 46

A set of international quality standards and a certification demonstrating that companies have met all the standards specified.

Question 47

What is ISO 26000?

Answer 47

A set of international standards developed to help organizations evaluate and address their social responsibility.

Question 48

What is ISO 14000?

Answer 48

A set of international standards and a certification focusing on a company’s environmental responsibility.

Question 49

What is customer-defined quality?

Answer 49

The meaning of quality as defined by the customer.