Deck 9: Managing Quality

Question 1

Quality can be defined in many ways, and specific quality dimensions appeal differently to different people.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Manufactured products and their users have defined quality as reliability and conformance to specifications.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

Factors such as product carbon footprint and organic growing conditions have also become indicators of quality.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

Sympathy and reliability are two dimensions of service quality.

Question 5

Studies have shown that tangibility and responsiveness are the two most valued service quality attributes.

Question 6

The famous Deming's PDCA cycle stands for plan, do, count, and act.

Question 7

Juran's quality trilogy consisted of quality planning, control, and improvement.

Question 8

According to Crosby, "quality meant conformance to well designed, well defined, and well communicated requirements."

Question 9

Businesses with standardized processes and low-skilled labor, such as service call centers, may be appropriate for Deming's use of statistical tools to monitor quality.

Question 10

Crosby's approach to quality management would be best suited to a product design firm such as Apple.

Question 11

A human-relations intensive, high-skill environment like a hospital would benefit greatly from Juran's engineering-based approach.

Question 12

Ishikawa introduced statistical process control charts as a tool to monitor quality in a production process.

Question 13

Any improvement in quality usually lowers cost and increases productivity.

Question 14

The tangible dimensions of service quality can be measured through a combination of metrics such as appearance, ease of use, and comfort.

Question 15

Standards such as ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 prescribe and certify quality management and environmental quality management, respectively.

Question 16

Internal failure costs are associated with product recalls, warranty claims, and returns.

Question 17

External failure costs are the easiest to estimate since customer returns and so forth can be counted and valued.

Question 18

Companies spend the most money on external failure costs as part of quality control because this is done to fix defective products and satisfy customers.

Question 19

Nonstatistical tools such brainstorming, process mapping, and cause-and-effect diagrams do not need any data to work.

Question 20

Check sheets, run diagrams, and Pareto charts are all nonstatistical data-driven means of doing quality analysis and monitoring.

Question 21

A run chart may be a natural follow-up tool to a checksheet.

Question 22

A Pareto chart identifies the numerous, most important defects or causes of defects based on Pareto's 80/20 rule.

Question 23

Statistical quality control applies statistical sampling to monitor the performance of a product or service made by a process and to look for normal variations.

Question 24

The two types of variations in any process are random and abnormal.

Question 25

A special or assignable cause is one that is identifiable and predictable, and thus, we should be able to control such causes.

Question 26

Common causes are natural factors that cause a natural range of variation.

Question 27

Data about any quality control problem is collected in two forms: variable and fixed.

Question 28

An X-bar chart tracks the average proportion of defectives.

Question 29

A p-chart tracks the proportion of defectives, and a c-chart tracks the number of defects in a piece.

Question 30

An SQC chart has a center line that represents an average and upper and lower control limits that fix the limits of normal variation caused by the common causes.

Question 31

The center line for the range chart is always greater than the center line for the X-bar chart because the ranges are always greater than the average.

Question 32

It is impossible for the X-bar chart to be out of control without the range chart also being out of control.

Question 33

A type I error is the chance of making a wrong call that the process has gone out of statistical control while it still is actually in statistical control.

Question 34

A process could be out of control when it exhibits an upward or downward trend pattern.

Question 35

A p-chart is used when we are sampling attribute-type data.

Question 36

SQC is most appropriate for operations that are low volume or have an extremely low proportion of defects.

Question 37

The process capability index (C_pk) measures the difference in the number of defectives from what the customer normally expects.

Question 38

The lower the C_pk, the better the fit of the process output to the customer's needs.

Question 39

Six Sigma refers to an extremely high process capability.

Question 40

Quality improvement initiatives are principally a management (not a worker) responsibility.

Question 41

Continuous improvement is pursued through many approaches, including process analysis, the use of quality tools, and benchmarking.

Question 42

Actual quality of services is experienced as soon as they are produced.

Question 43

The three levers for improving quality are customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and managerial satisfaction.

Question 44

What the customer considers important is usually apparent especially with service quality.

Question 45

Six Sigma programs can stress variance reduction at the cost of employee creativity and innovation.

Question 46

The use of electronic health records is helping to track quality and standardize treatments in the medical field.

Question 47

Ethics and morality are applicable only to service quality, not product quality.

Question 48

Service firms such as fast food restaurant are more concerned with the quality in their supply chain than how the raw materials are obtained.

Question 49

An iPhone being associated with the definition of a quality product is based on its

A) performance
B) features
C) aesthetics
D) all of the above

Question 50

All of the following can be used to describe product quality except

A) reliability
B) durability
C) empathy
D) conformance to specifications

Question 51

Which of the following statements best describes the manufacturing-based definition of quality?

A) Quality is the number of features that the product contains.
B) Quality is the extent to which the product fits and meets customer expectations regarding standards of use.
C) Quality is the degree to which a specific product conforms to consumer preferences.
D) Quality for products is difficult to measure or describe.

Question 52

Quality affects all of the following except

A) cost of raw materials
B) profits
C) productivity
D) costs

Question 53

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

A) appraisal costs
B) prevention costs
C) internal failures
D) These are all major categories of costs associated with quality.

Question 54

An improvement in quality can result in a decrease of all the following costs except

A) warranty costs
B) appraisal costs
C) customer dissatisfaction costs
D) maintenance costs

Question 55

Quality can improve profitability by reducing costs. Which of the following statements does not support this argument?

A) Firms can use flexible pricing to charge lower prices because products cost less to produce, which means greater profits.
B) Firms with lower rework and scrap costs can charge higher prices for greater profits.
C) Firms with better quality have increased productivity, which means greater profits and lower costs.
D) Firms have lower warranty costs because of fewer returns, which means greater profits.

Question 56

A quality circle at Whole Foods supermarket holds a brainstorming session and attempts to identify the factors responsible for flaws in their checkout line processing. Which tool can be used to organize their findings?

A) An affinity diagram
B) A process map
C) A Deming chart
D) A parallel diagram

Question 57

A cause-and-effect diagram is also known as a(n)

A) Pareto diagram
B) Ishikawa diagram
C) wishbone diagram
D) affinity diagram

Question 58

Pareto charts are used to

A) engage in an in-depth root cause analysis using a structured approach
B) organize brainstorming ideas for statistical analysis
C) identify the few, most important defects or causes of defects in a process
D) none of the above

Question 59

Georgetown Hospital might use which of the following nonstatistical data-based quality tools to keep track of patient complaints?

A) Pareto charts
B) cause-and-effect diagrams
C) run charts
D) checksheets

Question 60

The operations manager of the university cafeteria has noticed that about 65 percent of the mistakes made occur during the last 2 hours of employees' shifts, 20 percent occur during the midday time slot, 10 percent occur during the morning time slot, and 5 percent of the errors occur during the other time periods of the day. Which SPC tool would the manager most likely obtain this information from?

A) a Pareto chart
B) an Ishikawa diagram
C) a run chart
D) a flowchart

Question 61

What type of data needs to be collected to determine the effectiveness of a bottling plant process?

A) binomial
B) variable
C) attribute
D) none of the above

Question 62

Which of the following statements regarding control charts is false?

A) Control charts have a center line that represents an average of the process.
B) Control charts have upper and lower limits that indicate the range of acceptable values.
C) Data points above the upper control limits mean that the product's quality is beyond expectations.
D) All of the above statements are true.

Question 63

If data are obtained from samples and some of the sample means of the measurements are outside the control limits, the process is said to be

A) in control and the control limits need to be recalculated
B) in control with only natural causes of variation
C) out of control but with random variation
D) out of control and it should be investigated for assignable variation

Question 64

A firm using a 3-sigma statistical quality control program would expect to find an average of how many defects per million samples?

A) 3 times the standard deviation of the number of defects
B) 6 times the mean number of defects
C) 3
D) 2,700

Question 65

Which statistical quality control chart would be used to determine if a DVD manufacturing plant is performing according to specifications?

A) X-bar chart
B) r-chart
C) p-chart
D) c-chart

Question 66

Which of the following statements is true about the p-chart?

A) It can use only variable type data.
B) It can use only attribute type data.
C) It can use both variable and attribute type data.
D) None of the above statements are correct.

Question 67

After numerous complaints, the operations manager at the production line says it's not sufficient for the process to be within the control limits but it should be much closer to the sample mean. The operations manager is practicing which quality control technique?

A) Six Sigma
B) ISO 14000
C) brainstorming
D) cause-and-effect analysis

Question 68

Approximately 1 billion passengers have passed through the Atlanta International Airport in the last 10 years. If each passenger was allowed a single piece of checked baggage, a successful Six Sigma program for baggage handling would result in how many passengers with misdirected luggage?

A) 3,400
B) 6 times the average yearly number of passengers
C) 34
D) 3.4

Question 69

Which of the following statements is/are true regarding the process capability index (C_pk)?

A) The C_pk considers how small the process standard deviation is compared to what the customer normally expects.
B) The C_pk considers how far away the process mean is from what the customer normally expects.
C) The smaller the C_pk, the more accurate the process would be in meeting specifications.
D) All of the above are true.

Question 70

If the C_pk index is greater than 1, then

A) The process is capable of 3-sigma quality.
B) The process is not capable of achieving quality control.
C) There is a better fit of the process output to the customer's needs.
D) The R-bar chart would indicate that the process is in control.

Question 71

Quality can be improved by

A) improving customer satisfaction
B) improving employee satisfaction
C) practicing continuous improvement
D) all of the above

Question 72

Continuous improvement can be implemented in which of the following ways?

A) benchmarking against internal and external best-in-class processes and companies
B) statistical and nonstatistical tools
C) product redesign with fewer parts
D) all of the above

Question 73

The process of comparing your organization to other best-in-class performers is known as

A) copyrighting
B) quality control
C) benchmarking
D) continuous improvement

Question 74

Quality improvement outcomes do not always meet expectations because

A) It is a difficult statistical process to understand.
B) It requires a visible and consistent commitment of resources by management.
C) The quality attributes that the customer actually prizes are usually obvious.
D) Workers and managers do not have adjoining office spaces.

Question 75

Due to recent innovations in technology, quality initiatives can be now found in a wide cross-section of industries such as

A) health care
B) automobile manufacturing
C) computer manufacturing
D) all of the above

Question 76

_________ is defined in many ways and appeals differently to different people.

Question 77

For _________, quality dimensions may frequently be much more intangible.

Question 78

_________ and _________ are two dimensions of product quality.

Question 79

_________ and _________ are two dimensions of service quality.

Question 80

_________ was considered the father of the quality movement in the U.S. and Japan, and _________ introduced statistical process control charts as a tool to monitor quality in a production process.