Lecture 8

Question 1

Quality

Answer 1

the degree to which the customer’s needs are met
needs can take many forms
the customer determines the elements that define a quality experience

Question 2

Total Quality Management

Answer 2

comprehensive and structured approach to organizational management that seeks to improve the quality of products and services through ongoing refinements in response to continuous feedback

Question 3

Quality control

Answer 3

• one aspect of TQM
• implementation of process to check work/products to see if they meet quality standards
• looking for errors/problems after they have already occurred

Question 4

Benchmarking

Answer 4

• comparative process to assess business performance

- an organization can compare its current performance to itself or other similar organizations/businesses

Question 5

Internal Benchmarking

Answer 5

• comparing current day performance to past performance

- requires accurate records

Question 6

External Benchmarking

Answer 6

-comparison to a similar but external organizations performance

Question 7

Process Mapping

Answer 7

• basic quality or process improvement tools
• process mapping involves the creating of workflow diagrams to bring forth a clearer understanding of a process or series of parallel process
• drawing out a process allows the manager to see areas of duplication or inefficiency

Question 8

Pareto Charts

Answer 8

• used to identify the most important problem or contributor to a known problem
• a bar graph
• the lengths of the bars represent frequency or cost

Question 9

Cause and Effect Diagrams

Answer 9

• fishbone/ishikawa
• identifies many possible causes for an effect or problem
• can be used to facilitate structured brainstorming sessions

Question 10

Run Charts

Answer 10

• run charts are graphs of data plotted over time and are one of the most important tools for assessing the effectiveness of change
• benefits: help managers formulate goals by depicting how well/poorly performing
• help in determining when changes truly lead to improvements by displaying a pattern of data that you can observe overtime
• give direction as you work on improvement and info about the value of particular changes

Question 11

Control charts

Answer 11

• used to study how a process changes over time
• always has a central line for the average, an upper line for the upper control limit and a lower line for the lower control limit