Quality Management Flashcards
What is the process of quality management?
Plan quality management
Perform quality assurance
Control quality
What are the key outputs of the Plan Quality Management process?
Quality management plan Quality metrics Quality checklists Process improvement plan Updates to project documents
What are the key outputs of the Perform Quality Assurance process?
Change requests
Updates to standards, processes, and quality systems (organizational process assets)
Updates to project management plan and project documents
What are the key outputs of the Control Quality process?
Quality control measurements Validated changes Work performance information Updates to project management plan and documents Change requests Lessons learned Verified deliverables
What is the definition of quality?
The degree to which the project fulfills requirements
How does quality differ from grade?
Quality is the degree to which requirements are fulfilled
Grade refers to general category of classification for a deliverable or resource that indicates common function, but varying technical specifications
What does gold plating mean?
Adding extra items and services to customer deliverables that do not necessarily contribute added value or quality
What is marginal analysis?
An analysis to determine when optimal quality is reached - to determine the point where incremental benefits or revenue from improving quality equals the incremental cost to secure it
What is a process improvement plan?
A plan for analyzing the processes used on the project to improve them, looking for ways to decrease defects, save time and money, and increase customer satisfaction
What are quality metrics?
Specific measures of quality to be used on the project in the Perform Quality Assurance and Control Quality processes
What does continuous improvement mean?
The ongoing enhancement of a product of service through small, continuous improvements in quality
How much inventory is maintained in a just in time (JIT) environment?
How does this affect attention to quality?
Little inventory is maintained
It forces attention to quality
What does ISO 9000 stand for?
International Organization for Standards quality standards that help organizations ensure that they have quality procedures and are following them
What is the definition of total quality management, or TQM?
A comprehensive management philosophy that encourages companies to find ways to continuously improve the quality of business practices, products, and services at every level of the organization
Why is “prevention over inspection” important?
Because the cost of avoiding or preventing mistakes is much less than the cost of correcting them
What does mutual exclusivity mean?
Two events are said to be mutually exclusive if they cannot both occur in a single trial (for example, you can’t get both a 5 and a 6 on a single roll of a die)
What is statistical independence?
The probability of event “B” occurring does not depend on event “A” occurring (for example, the outcome of a second roll of a die is not dependent on the outcome of the first roll)
What is a normal distribution curve?
A symmetric bell-shaped frequency distribution curve used to measure variation; this is the most common probability distribution
What does sigma signify in a process?
What’s another name for sigma?
How much variance from the mean has been established as permissible in a process
Standard deviation
What do 3 sigma and 6 sigma refer to?
These are commonly used as quality standards:
+/- 3 standard deviations from the mean
+/- 6 standard deviations from the mean
6 sigma is a higher quality standard than 3 sigma
What is the difference between a population and a sample?
Population: The total number of individual members, items, or elements comprising a uniquely defined group (e.g. all women)
Sample: A statistically valid subset of population members (e.g. women randomly chosen to represent the population)
Who has the responsibility for quality on a project?
Although team members must inspect their own work, the project manager has the ultimate responsibility for quality
What are the impacts of poor quality?
Increased costs Decreased profits Low morale Low customer satisfaction Increased risk Rework Schedule delays
What are examples of costs of conformance and costs of nonconformance?
Conformance: Quality training, studies, surveys, efforts to ensure everyone knows the processes to use to complete their work
Nonconformance: rework, scrap, inventory costs, warranty costs, lost business
What are costs of nonconformance associated with?
Which should be greater, the costs of conformance or the costs of nonconformance
Costs of nonconformance are associated with poor quality
The costs of conformance should be ss
What are the seven basic quality tools? (7QC)
Cause and effect diagram, flowchart, checksheet, pareto diagram, histogram, control chart, scatter diagram
What is a quality checklist?
A list of items to inspect, a list of steps to perform, or a picture of an item to be inspected, with space to note any defects found
How does a checksheet differ from a quality checklist?
Although a checksheet is a type of checklist, its primary purpose is to gather data
The quality checklist is intended to help verify a required action has taken place or item has been included
What is a cause and effect diagram?
A graphical tool that helps determine the possible root causes of a problem
It is also called a fishbone or Ishikawa diagram
What does a flowchart show?
How a process or system flows from beginning to end, how the elements interrelate, alternative paths the process can take, and how the process translates inputs into outputs
What is a Pareto chart?
A histogram that arranges the results from most frequent to least frequent to help identify which root causes are resulting in the most problems
What does a scatter diagram show?
The relationship between two variables.
What is a control chart?
A specialized trend chart that documents whether a measured process is in or out of statistical control.
What are control limits?
The acceptable range of variation on a control chart
What are the specification limits on a control chart/
The customer’s definition of acceptable product/service characteristics and tolerances
How do we define a process as statistically out of control?
What does our of control mean?
A data point falls outside the upper or lower control limit, or there are nonrandom data points
There is a lack of consistency and predictability in the process
What is the rule of seven?
What does is signify?
Seven consecutive data points appearing on a control chart on one side of the mean
The process is out of statistical control
What is an assignable cause/special cause variation?
A data point (or set of data points) on a control chart indicates that the measured process is out of statistical control and that the cause(s) of the event must be investigated
Define benchmarking
Comparing your project to other projects to get ideas for improvement and to provide a benchmark for measuring quality performance
What is design of experiments?
A statistical method that allows you to experimentally change all of the important variables in a process to determine what combination will optimize overall quality
What is statistical sampling?
Inspecting by testing only part of a population (a statistically valid sample)
Define cost-benefit analysis
Comparing the costs of an effort to the benefits of that effort
What are quality audits?
Structured reviews of quality policies, practices, and procedures to ensure they are efficient and effective
These audits often result in lessons learned for the organization
