Name:___________________
True or False
1. The precise nature of leadership and its relationship to quality has evolved into a single leadership theory through an extensive body of research.
2. Pre-occupation with day-to-day entrepreneurial problems has led many small business managers to avoid quality initiatives.
3. Quality is best view as technical discipline focused on product lines and process.
4. ISO 9000 defines quality management as a system of generic characteristics that standardize management practices to achieve desired outcomes.
5. Providing quality in the service sector differs very little from providing manufacturing quality.
6. Strategy is the pattern or plan that integrates an organization's mission, goals, and values into cohesive actions.
7. Customer satisfaction and loyalty describe the same quality characteristic.
8. During the early 1950's a shortage of civilian goods in the United States directly lead management to give quality a top priority.
9. Consumers (end users) can provide all the information necessary for an organization to understand customer needs.
10. Six-sigma provides a business improvement approach that eliminates defects by focusing on specifications and manufacturing processes.
11. Taguchi advocated that quality based upon variation control is inherently flawed when compared with conformance to specification.
12. A process is a sequence of activities intended to achieve some desired outcome.
13. Performance in the public sectors will not respond if principles of quality are implemented into their operations.
14. Every manager is responsible for studying and improving the quality of the processes under their authority.
15. A system can be described as a set of relational elements (inputs) that through some manipulation (processing) provide a particular result (output).
Multiple-choice
1. Quality can be a confusing concept to define because:
a. People apply different quality theories and use specific theory based definitions to define quality.
b. People view quality in relation to differing criteria based on their individual roles and orientations.
c. People focus on quality as the sum of differing group orientations.
2. Total quality (TQ) is based upon three fundamental principles that include:
a. Quality infrastructure, quality procedures, and quality practices.
b. Strategic mission statement, quality goals and quality planning.
c. Customer/stake-holder focus, engagement/participation, and continuous improvement efforts.
3. Leadership is best defined as:
a. The control of an organization's day-to-day activities.
b. The ability to positively influence people and systems.
c. The effort to solve an organization's long term problems.
4. What are two major service system components of quality performance and process improvement:
a. Employees and information technology
b. Quality practices and quality control.
c. Compensation and job rewards.
5. An organization's strategy deployment will demand:
a. The firm to describe where it is headed (vision)
b. The firm define its reason for existing (mission)
c. Both (a) and (b).
6. Deming's concept of profound knowledge consists of what parts:
a. Systems appreciation, customer focus, teamwork, and processes improvement orientation.
b. Systems appreciation, understanding of variation, quality theory, and psychology.
c. Systems understanding, quality infrastructure, quality practices, and quality tools/measures.
7. Effective leadership will focus effort and attention on:
a. Creating and sharing the firm's visions among stakeholders.
b. Solving long term problems related to operational difficulties.
c. Organizing work groups and teams to effectively accomplish daily goals and tasks.
8. Which of the following statements best describes the cost of quality:
a. Gains in competitive advantage will always off-set any added cost associated to quality.
b. Quality does not cost, but rather, leads to higher profits.
c. Quality cost is justified by the need for social responsibility.
9. Continuous process improvement (CPI) of an organization's system requires:
a. Eliminating differences of opinions among stakeholders.
b. Analyzing relationships among inputs, processes, and outputs.
c. Inspecting products/services to ensure quality standards are met.
10. The ability to identify key stages of a team's life cycle is important to a team leaders because:
a. Team behavior is a dynamic, and unmanageable.
b. Team behavior is a static process, and follows a set pattern from start-to-finish when attempting to accomplish goals.
c. Team behavior is a dynamic process, and movement among the key stages can be either forward or backward when attempting to accomplish goals.
11. Process control is important for which of the following reasons:
a. Process control methods provide an effective way to manage a firm's daily operational activities.
b. Improvements can't be made to a process unless the process is known to be under control.
c. Both (a) and (b).
12. Companies committed to quality and high performance invest heavily in training because:
a. Highly educated and trained employees performer better than those with less education and training.
b. They recognize that such investments add value to the organization's capabilities.
c. Both (a) and (b).
13. Employee involvement (EI) refers to which of the following:
a. Processes by which employees work under minimal supervision by the use of well defined and established procedures.
b. Any activity in which employees participate in work-related decisions and improvement actions designed to tap the creative energies of all employees.
c. A system of work and job design that eliminates the need for employee decision making.
14. Traditional performance appraisal systems are generally:
a. Well received by both managers and employees since they provide effective feedback to motivate employees.
b. Exceedingly difficult to administer due to a number of pitfalls and problems.
c. Positive feedback based on observational accuracy and focused on the overall objectives of the system.
15. Which of the following statements best describes process improvement (PI):
a. Short-term control, and long term improvement.
b. Short-term improvement, and long-term control.
c. Continuous monitoring, since operational processes are too dynamic, and variation can neither be controlled nor improved.
Essay Questions:
1. Outline and describe the principles and scope of any Total Quality Management (TQM) system.
2. Discuss the importance of Systems Thinking in TQ, and explain how the interaction of a system's parts (inputs, processes, and outputs) can be used to implement an effective TQM system.
3. Discuss and explain the economic value of reducing variation in broad terms as advocated by Genichi Taguchi.