Quality Management

Question 1

What is ‘quality’ and why it is important?

Answer 1

Quality is consistent conformance to customer expectations.

Question 2

What are ‘specifications’?

Answer 2

Something that can be measured or evaluated.

Question 3

What is the difference for quality between manufacturer and customer?

Answer 3

Customer - Perception meets expectation

Manufacturer - product meets specification

Question 4

What are the steps for achieving conformance to specification?

Answer 4

1. define quality characteristics
2. Decide how to measure characteristics
3. Set quality standards for each characteristic
4. Control quality against standards
5. Find causes of poor quality
6. make improvements

Question 5

What is a process control chart?

Answer 5

Chart that plots quality characteristic of a samples to observe quality of production and indicate when quality drifting out of control. e.g. whether a part meets a tolerance.

Question 6

What is a fishbone (Ishikawa) diagram?

Answer 6

Method of searching for a root cause of a problem i.e. why quality is drifting. Consecutive causes of an effect are listed.

Question 7

What is ‘Five Whys’

Answer 7

Keep asking ‘why’ to find root cause of problem.

Question 8

What is a Pareto diagram?

Answer 8

Cumulative diagram that identifies where resources should be directed to increase quality. There can be multiple causes and resources may not be able to span all resources.

Question 9

What is a type 1 error?

Answer 9

Rejecting a good product.

Consequence is scrappage costs

Question 10

What is a type 2 error?

Answer 10

Accepting a bad product.

Consequence is unhappy customers

Question 11

What are the advantages of good quality control?

Answer 11

Enhanced brand image
Increased revenue
reduced scrap and inspection costs
increased productivity