Discussion Assignment 15-1: Reacting to a Process Gone Wrong Located in Ch. 15 of Quality Management for Organizational Excellence.

This paper looks at the main issues faced by decision makers, analyses them, presents alternatives and makes recommendations based on the analysis.

Quality can be greatly affected internally within an organization. Considering that internal factors can be monitored and controlled mainly from within, it is considerably easier to manage, though these factors have a much more direct and immediate effect on the organization where the management responsibility lies. Internal contributors that factor into quality outcomes include leadership styles, administrative policies, and organizational culture. These factors, if not performed to standard or with minimal empathy can cause stress among staff indirectly affecting the consumers. An unpleasant environment may lead to a low morale and dissatisfaction throughout the organization. (Suchman, A., 2001)

The quality inside the operation is also important. If someone makes a mistake within the operation, time and money must be spent correcting this mistake.

Concerning the quality of education offered and the employee’s needs to be an active participant in the quality improvement process, and thus they should feel that they are responsible for the quality provided. This implies that the employees should be encouraged to make suggestions that are geared towards improving the quality offered through airing their opinions without fearing the unknown circumstances that may arise such as reprisal. Moreover, there is the need for a systematic procedure that will help to will not only help to involve the workers but also will be keen towards soliciting their input. This is because the endeavor to improve the product quality is far much better compared to the cost of poor quality which exceeds the cost of attaining the best quality.

However, if the cost of “perfection” is so expensive that the company cannot be profitable, it is not realistic to spend too much on a zero defect mindset. Instead the company must first identify what an acceptable percentage of defects is and where the defect could have been prevented. Then the company can further quantify which cost of quality is presenting the greatest risk and put procedures and policies in place in an attempt to minimize defects. Since prevention costs many times are considered the least expensive and can have the biggest affect on non-conforming products most companies will focus its initial and largest efforts into prevention. The next initiative would be appraisal and last would be identifying

Question 6: In evaluating data on our process outputs, four characteristics we might investigate are: central tendency, variation, shape of distribution, and stability. Which of the following tools would be most helpful to determine the

Senior leadership must determine and direct the level of quality that is acceptable within the organization. Leadership should prioritize areas of quality and use data based on benchmarks from other facilities. (Dlugacz, 2006). In addition the author states there are some important areas that must be monitored for quality. Compliance must be followed by leaders and all

This week’s assignment is about evaluating the quality issues of three organizations. The three sectors I chose to evaluate are manufacturing, service and government. I will then discuss the importance of quality to each organization, the relationship of quality to customers, the leadership commitment to quality and the alignment of quality to the organization’s strategic goals and objectives.

The best alternative from the above is to adopt the strategy of focusing on the process (1st alternative). This can be achieved by the proposed care path. Most of the operational issues under Key issues

Question You are a project management consultant assigned to a small manufacturing firm that has been experiencing a myriad of problems. After conducting interviews and fact-finding with key managers, you have observed the following:

Within every company there is a customer, regardless of what your line of business is it is being done for the consumer albeit an external consumer or the internal consumer. The customer’s needs and expectations should be the driving force behind the decisions we make and the problems we solve…the customer, not our own personal or monetary gain. As quality improves we have to make sure that we are improving what matters to our customers not want we want to improve upon for own sake.

The system of quality is prevention: This is why management must take the concept of prevention very seriously because it reduces defects and it lowers cost. This absolute state that appraisal, checking and inspection is an expensive and unreliable way of getting quality. Prevention can be achieved if during production process opportunities for error are identified. Prevention can also be achieved using statistical quality control method. Crosby (1995).

Our company should make sure that manufacturers deliver products with the highest design specification, in order to be order-winner quality conformance, by delivering products with no defects (Hill and Hill, 2012). Furthermore, improvements in quality lead to a decrease in cost for the company. According to (Evans, 1997) higher quality products lead to a decrease in costs for the company through higher productivity: ‘improvements in quality leads to lower cost because of less re-work, fewer mistakes, fewer delays and snags’ (Evans 1997, P.55).

In small scale automobile part manufacturing company producing a large amount of products. A multiproduct manufacturing facility has the wide process which involves a large number of variables such as quality characteristics. Each and every product has been different quality characteristics which are measured on the manufacturing line. But when multiple products are produced or manufacturing trough a single processing line in multi product manufacturing facility, individual process monitoring strategies are used for monitoring the process of individual parts. So the challenge is that to develop a statistical process control charts for detection and implementation of faults using the quality characteristics.

Implementation of excellent quality comes with a cost. The company must decide if it is really worth compromising the quality for revenue. If the quality costs exceeds the expected revenue of the company then the company must abandon implementing quality control mechanism. If otherwise, the quality would contribute to the product value and hence the revenue.