Deck 6: Managing Quality

Question 1

Benchmarking requires the comparison of your firm to other organizations; it is not appropriate to benchmark by comparing one of your divisions to another of your divisions.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

The definition of quality adopted by The American Society for Quality is a customer-oriented definition.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

ISO 9000 has evolved from a set of quality assurance standards toward a quality management system.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

Continuous improvement is based on the philosophy that every aspect of an operation can be improved.

Question 5

Internal failure costs are associated with scrap, rework, and downtime.

Question 6

One of the ways that just-in-time (JIT) influences quality is that by reducing inventory, bad quality is exposed.

Question 7

Conforming to standards is the focus of the product-based definition of quality.

Question 8

The Japanese use the term poka-yoke to refer to continuous improvement.

Question 9

Improved quality can increase profitability via flexible pricing.

Question 10

TQM is important because quality influences all of the 10 decisions made by operations managers.

Question 11

An improvement in quality must necessarily increase costs.

Question 12

Kaizen is similar to TQM in that both are focused on continuous improvement.

Question 13

Line employees need the knowledge of TQM tools.

Question 14

The phrase Six Sigma has two meanings. One is statistical, referring to an extremely high process capability; the other is a comprehensive system for achieving and sustaining business success.

Question 15

Quality is mostly the business of the quality control staff, not ordinary employees.

Question 16

Quality circles empower employees to improve productivity by finding solutions to work-related problems in their work area.

Question 17

Security is the determinant of service quality that means freedom from danger, risk, or doubt.

Question 18

Philip Crosby is credited with both of these quality catch-phrases: "quality is free" and "zero defects."

Question 19

Managers at Arnold Palmer Hospital take quality so seriously that the hospital is a national leader in several quality areas; therefore, continuous improvement is no longer necessary.

Question 20

Deming's writings on quality tend to focus on the customer and on fitness for use, unlike Juran's work that is oriented toward meeting specifications.

Question 21

Which of the four major categories of quality costs is particularly hard to quantify?

A) prevention costs
B) appraisal costs
C) internal failure costs
D) external failure costs
E) None are hard to quantify.

Question 22

A successful quality strategy features all of the following steps except

A) an organization environment that fosters quality.
B) understanding the principles of quality.
C) engaging employees in the necessary activities for quality implementation.
D) finding the lowest cost supplier.
E) empowering employees.

Question 23

Three broad categories of definitions of quality are

A) product quality, service quality, and organizational quality.
B) user-based, manufacturing-based, and product-based.
C) internal, external, and prevention.
D) low-cost, response, and differentiation.
E) Pareto, Shewhart, and Deming.

Question 24

Pareto charts are a graphical way of identifying the few critical items from the many less important ones.

Question 25

Which of the following statements is false?

A) Self-promotion is not a substitute for quality products.
B) Inferior products harm a firm's profitability and a nation's balance of payments.
C) Product liability transfers from the manufacturer to the retailer once the retailer accepts delivery of the product.
D) Quality-be it good or bad-will show up in perceptions about a firm's new products, employment practices, and supplier relations.
E) Legislation, such as the Consumer Product Safety Act, sets and enforces product standards by banning products that do not meet those standards.

Question 26

Which of the following statements regarding Arnold Palmer Hospital is false?

A) The hospital uses a wide range of quality management techniques.
B) The culture of quality at the hospital includes employees at all levels.
C) The hospital scores very highly in national studies of patient satisfaction.
D) The hospital's high quality is measured by low readmission rates, not patient satisfaction.
E) The design of patient rooms, even wall colours, reflects the hospital's culture of quality.

Question 27

High-quality products and services are the most profitable.

Question 28

A cause-and-effect diagram helps identify the source of a problem.

Question 29

Quality can improve profitability by reducing costs. Which of the following is not an aspect of reduced costs by quality improvements?

A) flexible pricing
B) increased productivity
C) lower rework
D) lower warranty costs
E) lower scrap costs

Question 30

"Making it right the first time" is

A) an unrealistic definition of quality.
B) a user-based definition of quality.
C) a manufacturing-based definition of quality.
D) a product-based definition of quality.
E) the definition proposed by the American Society for Quality.

Question 31

Source inspection is inferior to inspection before costly operations.

Question 32

Quality "lies in the eyes of the beholder" is

A) an unrealistic definition of quality.
B) a user-based definition of quality.
C) a manufacturing-based definition of quality.
D) a product-based definition of quality.
E) the definition proposed by the American Society for Quality.

Question 33

All of the following costs are likely to decrease as a result of better quality except

A) customer dissatisfaction costs.
B) inspection costs.
C) scrap costs.
D) warranty and service costs.
E) maintenance costs.

Question 34

According to the manufacturing-based definition of quality

A) quality is the degree of excellence at an acceptable price and the control of variability at an acceptable cost.
B) quality depends on how well the product fits patterns of consumer preferences.
C) even though quality cannot be defined, you know what it is.
D) quality is the degree to which a specific product conforms to standards.
E) quality lies in the eyes of the beholder.

Question 35

Of the several determinants of service quality, access is the one that relates to keeping customers informed in language they can understand.

Question 36

Which of the following statements best describes the relationship between quality management and product strategy?

A) Product strategy is set by top management; quality management is an independent activity.
B) Quality management is important to the low-cost product strategy, but not to the response or differentiation strategies.
C) High quality is important to all three strategies, but it is not a critical success factor.
D) Managing quality helps build successful product strategies.
E) Companies with the highest measures of quality are no more productive than other firms.

Question 37

Arnold Palmer Hospital uses all of the following quality management techniques except

A) Pareto charts.
B) flowcharts.
C) benchmarking.
D) just-in-time.
E) Gantt charts.

Question 38

Which of the following is not one of the major categories of costs associated with quality?

A) prevention costs
B) appraisal costs
C) internal failures
D) external failures
E) environmental costs

Question 39

The role of quality in limiting a firm's product liability is illustrated by all of the following except

A) ensuring that contaminated products such as impure foods do not reach customers.
B) ensuring that products meet standards such as those of the Consumer Product Safety Act.
C) designing safe products to limit possible harm to consumers.
D) using processes that make products as safe or as durable as their design specifications call for.
E) making it easy for customers to complain about defective products.

Question 40

The quality loss function indicates that costs related to poor quality are low as long as the product is within acceptable specification limits.

Question 41

PDCA is most often applied in regard to which aspect of TQM?

A) Six Sigma
B) employee empowerment
C) continuous improvement
D) benchmarking
E) JIT

Question 42

The philosophy of zero defects is

A) the result of Deming's research.
B) unrealistic.
C) prohibitively costly.
D) an ultimate goal; in practice, 1 to 2% defects is acceptable.
E) consistent with the commitment to continuous improvement.

Question 43

Based on his 14 points, Deming is a strong proponent of

A) inspection at the end of the production process.
B) an increase in numerical quotas to boost productivity.
C) looking for the cheapest supplier.
D) training and knowledge.
E) short-term thinking.

Question 44

Quality Is Free, meaning that the costs of poor quality have been understated, is the work of

A) W. Edwards Deming.
B) Joseph M. Juran.
C) Philip B. Crosby.
D) Crosby, Stills, and Nash.
E) Armand Feigenbaum.

Question 45

If one million passengers pass through the St. Louis Airport with checked baggage each month, a successful Six Sigma program for baggage handling would result in how many passengers with misplaced luggage?

A) 3.4
B) 6.0
C) 34
D) 2700
E) 6 times the monthly standard deviation of passengers

Question 46

A Three Sigma program has how many defects per million?

A) 34
B) 3
C) 3 times the standard deviation
D) 2700
E) 1500

Question 47

Canada's military training centre in Goose Bay is an example of the application of

A) ISO 9000.
B) ISO 14001.
C) TQM.
D) ISO 24700.
E) SPC.

Question 48

"Employees cannot produce goods that on average exceed the quality of what the process is capable of producing" expresses a basic element in the writings of

A) Vilfredo Pareto.
B) Armand Feigenbaum.
C) Joseph M. Juran.
D) W. Edwards Deming.
E) Philip B. Crosby.

Question 49

Total quality management emphasizes

A) the responsibility of the quality control staff to identify and solve all quality-related problems.
B) a commitment to quality that goes beyond internal company issues to suppliers and customers.
C) a system where strong managers are the only decision makers.
D) a process where mostly statisticians get involved.
E) ISO 14000 certification.

Question 50

Stakeholders who are affected by the production and marketing of poor quality products include

A) stockholders, employees, and customers.
B) suppliers and creditors, but not distributors.
C) only stockholders, creditors, and owners.
D) suppliers and distributors, but not customers.
E) only stockholders and organizational executives and managers.

Question 51

One of Britain's largest children's hospitals working with Ferrari Racing is an example of

A) internal benchmarking.
B) external benchmarking.
C) Taguchi concepts.
D) employee empowerment.
E) corporate responsibility.

Question 52

Which of the following is not true about ISO 14000 certification?

A) It is not a prerequisite for ISO 9000 certification.
B) It deals with environmental management.
C) It offers a good systematic approach to pollution prevention.
D) One of its core elements is life-cycle assessment.
E) It eliminates the need for future audits.

Question 53

Suppose that a firm has historically been achieving "three-sigma" quality. If the firm later changes its quality management practices such that it begins to achieve "six-sigma" quality, which of the following phenomena will result?

A) The average number of defects will be cut in half.
B) The specification limits will be moved twice as far from the mean.
C) The average number of defects will be cut by 99.9997%.
D) The average number of defects will be cut by 99.87%.
E) The average number of defects will be cut by 99.73%.

Question 54

A successful TQM program incorporates all of the following except

A) continuous improvement.
B) employee involvement.
C) benchmarking.
D) centralized decision-making authority.
E) just-in-time.

Question 55

PDCA, developed by Shewhart, stands for which of the following?

A) Plan-Do-Check-Act
B) Plan-Develop-Check-Accept
C) Problem-Develop Solution-Check-Act
D) Problem-Do-Continue-Act
E) Prevent-Detect-Contain-Act

Question 56

To become ISO 9000 certified, organizations must

A) document quality procedures.
B) have an onsite assessment.
C) have an ongoing series of audits of their products or service.
D) do all of the above.
E) do none of the above.

Question 57

A Six Sigma program has how many defects per million?

A) 3.4
B) 34
C) 1000
D) 6 times the standard deviation
E) 2700

Question 58

Kaizen is a Japanese term meaning

A) a foolproof mechanism.
B) just-in-time (JIT).
C) a fishbone diagram.
D) setting standards.
E) continuous improvement.

Question 59

Regarding the quality of design, production, and distribution of products, an ethical requirement for management is to

A) determine whether any of the organization's stakeholders are violated by poor quality products.
B) gain ISO 14000 certification for the organization.
C) obtain a product safety certificate from the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
D) have the organization's legal staff write disclaimers in the product instruction booklets.
E) compare the cost of product liability to the external failure cost.

Question 60

A hospital benchmarked against Ferrari Racing in an effort to

A) improve patient handoff quality.
B) increase surgery prep time.
C) lengthen surgery duration.
D) reduce the number of doctors.
E) increase patient recovery time.

Question 61

If a sample of parts is measured and the mean of the measurements is outside the control limits, the process is

A) in control, but not capable of producing within the established control limits.
B) out of control and the process should be investigated for assignable variation.
C) within the established control limits with only natural causes of variation.
D) monitored closely to see if the next sample mean will also fall outside the control limits.
E) within the acceptable range.

Question 62

Which of the following is false regarding control charts?

A) Values above the upper control limits always imply that the product's quality is exceeding expectations.
B) Control charts are built so that new data can be quickly compared to past performance data.
C) Control charts graphically present data.
D) Control charts plot data over time.
E) None of the above are false.

Question 63

The process improvement technique that sorts the "vital few" from the "trivial many" is

A) Taguchi analysis.
B) Pareto analysis.
C) benchmarking.
D) Deming analysis.
E) Yamaguchi analysis.

Question 64

The "four Ms" of cause-and-effect diagrams are

A) material, machinery/equipment, manpower, and methods.
B) material, methods, men, and mental attitude.
C) named after four quality experts.
D) material, management, manpower, and motivation.
E) material, movement, motion, and methods.

Question 65

Members of quality circles are

A) paid according to their contribution to quality.
B) external consultants designed to provide training in the use of quality tools.
C) always machine operators.
D) management only.
E) trained in group planning, problem solving, and statistical process control.

Question 66

A production manager at a pottery factory has noticed that about 70% of defects result from impurities in raw materials, 15% result from human error, 10% from machine malfunctions, and 5% from a variety of other causes. This manager is most likely using a

A) Pareto chart.
B) scatter diagram.
C) Taguchi loss function.
D) cause-and-effect diagram.
E) flowchart.

Question 67

Pareto charts are used to

A) identify inspection points in a process.
B) outline production schedules.
C) organize errors, problems, or defects.
D) show material flow.
E) do all of the above.

Question 68

Which of the following statements regarding Six Sigma is true?

A) The term has two distinct meanings-one is statistical; the other is a comprehensive quality system.
B) Six Sigma means that about 94% of a firm's output is free of defects.
C) The Six Sigma program was developed by Toyota in the 1970s.
D) The Six Sigma program is for manufacturing firms, and is not applicable to services.
E) Six Sigma certification is granted by the International Standards Organization (ISO).

Question 69

A manager tells her production employees, "It's no longer good enough that your work fall anywhere within the specification limits. I need your work to be as close to the target value as possible." Her thinking is reflective of

A) internal benchmarking.
B) Six Sigma.
C) ISO 9000.
D) Taguchi concepts.
E) process control charts.

Question 70

A quality loss function includes all of the following costs except

A) the cost of scrap and repair.
B) the cost of customer dissatisfaction.
C) inspection, warranty, and service costs.
D) sales costs.
E) costs to society.

Question 71

A customer service manager at a retail clothing store has collected numerous customer complaints from the forms they fill out on merchandise returns. To analyze trends or patterns in these returns, she has organized these complaints into a small number of sources or factors. This is most closely related to the ________ tool of TQM.

A) Taguchi loss function
B) cause-and-effect diagram
C) scatter diagram
D) histogram
E) process control chart

Question 72

The process of identifying other organizations that are best at some facet of your operations and then modelling your organization after them is known as

A) continuous improvement.
B) employee empowerment.
C) benchmarking.
D) copycatting.
E) patent infringement.

Question 73

A fishbone diagram is also known as a

A) cause-and-effect diagram.
B) poka-yoke diagram.
C) Kaizen diagram.
D) Kanban diagram.
E) Taguchi diagram.

Question 74

Costs of dissatisfaction, repair costs, and warranty costs are elements of cost in the

A) Taguchi Loss Function.
B) Pareto chart.
C) ISO 9000 Quality Cost Calculator.
D) process chart.
E) prevention costs.

Question 75

Techniques for building employee empowerment include

A) building communication networks that include employees.
B) developing open, supportive supervisors.
C) moving responsibility from both managers and staff to production employees.
D) building high-morale organizations.
E) all of the above.

Question 76

When a sample measurement falls inside the control limits, it means that

A) each unit manufactured is good enough to sell.
B) the process limits cannot be determined statistically.
C) the process output exceeds the requirements.
D) if there is no other pattern in the samples, the process is in control.
E) the process output does not fulfil the requirements.

Question 77

ISO 9000 seeks standardization in terms of

A) products.
B) production procedures.
C) suppliers' specifications.
D) procedures to manage quality.
E) all of the above.

Question 78

A quality circle holds a brainstorming session and attempts to identify the factors responsible for flaws in a product. Which tool do you suggest they use to organize their findings?

A) Ishikawa diagram
B) Pareto chart
C) process chart
D) control charts
E) activity chart

Question 79

Among the tools of TQM, the tool ordinarily used to aid in understanding the sequence of events through which a product travels is a

A) Pareto chart.
B) flowchart.
C) check sheet.
D) Taguchi map.
E) poka-yoke.

Question 80

Building high-morale organizations and building communication networks that include employees are both elements of

A) ISO 9000 certification.
B) Six Sigma certification.
C) employee empowerment.
D) Taguchi methods.
E) the tools of TQM.