Assignment Chapter 12

Assignment Chapter 12

4. “Before you build quality in, you must think it in.” How do the implications of this statement differ from those in question 3?

Thinking quality is an innovative approach that is applicable in the long term as it adds quality to the working environment and the capacity of the workers to inherit the quality of quality management. On the other hand, building quality is a philosophy which deals with strategies that yield positive results only in the short run. These could include tuning the equipment to provide quality which might be a short term strategy. Thinking quality would look at the future challenges that could hinder the quality.

5. Business writer Tom Peters has suggested that in making process changes, we should “Try it, test it, and get on with it.” How does this square with the DMAIC/continuous improvement philosophy?

DMAIC stands for define, measure, analyze improve and control. Tom Peters process of try it, test it and get on with it is closely squares with DMAIC as both of them focus on quality from the inception to utilization stage. Both are concerned with ensuring quality at all levels of a product or service from being in the prototype phase to its usage by the consumers. Improvements are suggested by a small scale use and then a large scale production is decided for the consumer market.

8. A typical word processing package is loaded with poka-yokes. List three. Are there any others you wish the packages had?

Poka-yokes are useful set of tools that can be utilized to enhance a word processing package experience. Following are the three poka-yokes.

1. When a word processor is closed without saving data, a flash command window appears that has three options, save, don’t save and cancel. This command window helps in avoiding losing data without saving it.
2. Using poka-yokes, a word processor saves a copy on temporary basis after some period of time. This would help in data prevention due to unexpected errors and power loss.
3. Word processors are enable because of poka-yokes to perform automatic operations like grammatical and spelling mistake corrections.

I think that there should be a sentence correction as well that is done automatically so that the integrity of the document remains intact.

Objective Questions:

2. Match the quality “guru” with the specific aspects of their teachings.

Use C for Crosby, D for Deming, and J for Juran.

___ J ____ Defined quality as “fitness for use.”
___ C _____ Defined quality as “conformance to requirements.”
___ C _____ Set the performance standard as “zero defects.”
____ D ____ Defined 14 points for management to follow.
___ J _____ Emphasized a general management approach to quality, especially the human elements.
_____ C ___ Rejected the concept of statistically acceptable levels of quality.
____ J ____ Stated that less than 20 percent of quality problems are due to workers.
___ D ____ Recommended continuous improvement to reduce variations.

9. A common problem that many drivers encounter is a car that will not start. Create a fishbone diagram to assist in the diagnosis of the potential causes of this problem.

This exercise can be done with the help of a whiteboard or flashcards, markers and pencils. Following are the few steps that are carried out in this exercise for sorting out the car problem.

1. The problem i.e. car not starting is written at the center of the whiteboard/flashcard. It is boxed and a horizontal arrow pointing to this box is drawn.
2. The major categories that might have caused the problems that caused the car not to start are brainstormed and listed and listed just like in the bellow.
3. Mechanical faults
4. Environmental causes
5. Human errors
6. Processing errors
7. The above categories are written as branches from the arrow that runs into the problem box.
8. Sub branches are added to the main categories in the form of subcategories that might be the minor causes contributing to the cause category. These minor causes might relate to more than one major category.
9. Deeper levels of causes are generated by asking question like why has it happened, what has caused it etc.
10. When there are no more visible causes, focus on the area in the chart where there are few causes.