The Integrated Products Corporation(IPC) manufacture resins. The company installed what is called TQM last year. The purpose of the new program was to involve everyone from the plant manager to the shop-floor workers in achieving excellent product quality. This program would feature quality at the source concepts and quality circles. A new resin has been developed and IPC's quality control department is now developing a quality plan for the new product. Of particular importance is an acceptance plan for the finished resin before it is shipped to IPC's customers. The key performance characteristic for the resin is its "pot life," the amount of time it takes for the resin to be converted to its finished form after it is mixed with plasticizers.
The "nominal pot life" of the resin is 2.5 minutes at room temperature with a standard deviation of 0.2 minutes. The customary shipping unit of the resin is a 10-pound bag, and the quality plan calls for random samples of 200 bags drawn from finished production lots of 10,000 bags. Questions: What acceptance criteria for production lots would you recommend for the means of samples at a two-tailed significance of 0.01? If a two-tailed significance level of 0.01 is used, what does this say about management's attitude toward accepting bad lots as opposed to rejecting good lots? Explain what total quality management means. What are the major elements of TQM? What are the major benefits if TQM? Explain the meaning of quality at the source. On what principles is it based? What are its major benefits? Describe quality circles. What are their major benefits? If TQM aims for perfect product quality, why should an acceptance plan be required for the new resin? Does not this violate a major principle of TQM - to produce products of high quality and not try to inspect quality into the products later? What is the appropriate role of acceptance sampling in a TQM environment?