Quality Management All Questions ESC4603
All else being equal, as the confidence level increases, the confidence interval becomes larger to provide higher levels of assurance that the interval contains the true population parameter.
True
As managers work with different individuals in different stages of careers and maturity, it is their responsibility to adapt the leadership style to the individual and the situation.
True
Both Six Sigma and lean approaches are driven by customer requirements, focus on real dollar savings, have the ability to make significant financial impacts on the organization, and can easily be used in non-manufacturing environments.
True
In the context of the characteristics of Baldrige Award recipients, organizations that have leadership and governance systems in place measure the performance of their leadership and governance teams—which is not common practice.
True
Matrix data analysis takes data and arranges them to display quantitative relationships among variables to make them more easily understood and analyzed.
True
Process control is the responsibility of those who directly accomplish the work.
True
_____ refers to an examination of facts and data to provide a basis for effective decisions.
Analysis
The Seven Management and Planning Tools had their roots in post—World War II operations research developments in Japan, but were combined and refined by several U.S. companies over the past several decades as part of their planning processes.
false
Which of the following is the most widely-known process improvement methodology used in Six Sigma?
DMAIC
The management team at Kyra Electronics is looking for ways to achieve higher levels of performance. It is trying to obtain higher yields and reduce cycle times. In the context of the three major activities involved in process management, the management team at Kyra is engaged in the _____ activity of process management.
Improvement
According to Deming, a product or service possesses quality if:
It enjoys a sustainable market.
A food manufacturing company motivates its employees to perform well by giving them more responsibilities and authority to make decisions. The company believes that giving more authority to employees makes them more dedicated and committed to their work. Which of the following terms best describes this approach to job design?
Job enrichment
Which of the following is true about the practical guidelines suggested by Mark Graham Brown for designing a performance measurement system?
Measures should be based around the needs of customers, shareholders, and other key stakeholders.
The concept of total quality is defined as a(n):
People-focused management system that aims at continual increase in customer satisfaction at continually lower real cost.
A consumer electronics company introduced a new music system into the market with multiple features like built in alarm, mobile and iPod charger, radio and many more. The company is trying to influence the _____ perspective of quality by providing multiple features in a single product.
Product
Which of the following types of teams in an organization is usually cross-functional?
Project team
Point 12 of Deming's 14 points emphasizes on:
Removing barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship.
The collection of all possible outcomes of an experiment is called the _____.
Sample space
Maple Products is a manufacturer of electronic goods that markets its products in several countries across the world. The company makes sure that the spare parts of the products are available in all their markets and also ensures that the technical personnel in their retail outlets are adequately trained to repair their products. In the context of the dimensions of quality, as suggested by David A. Garvin, the efforts taken by the company will enhance the _____ dimension of its product quality.
Serviceability
A process is said to be out of control when:
Special causes are present.
A measurement system may be precise but not necessarily accurate at the same time.
True
A process is a sequence of linked activities that is intended to achieve some result, such as producing a good or service for a customer within or outside the organization.
True
A confidence interval is a point estimate of a population parameter.
True
Which of the following personal leadership competencies refers to the ability to stay healthy in both work and play, demonstrating the importance of being ready to implement leadership competencies when needed?
Well-being
All of the following are key factors included in an environmental assessment EXCEPT:
the workforce profile and future requirements.
Japanese firms introduced a newer deployment process adapted by Japanese and American companies known as _____.
hoshin planning
A _____ might include a definition of products and services an organization provides, technologies used to provide these products and services, types of markets, important customer needs, and distinctive competencies or the expertise that sets the firm apart from others.
mission statement
In policy deployment, the _____ process is called catchball.
negotiation
Essentially, strategy deployment links the _____, who focus on "doing the right thing," with the _____, whose focus is on "doing things right."
planners; doers
If a normal random variable has a mean = _____ and a standard deviation = _____, it is called a standard normal distribution.
0;1
What is the Six Sigma quality level when the process standard deviation is 1σ and the tolerance range is 10 σ?
5
A typical group is selected from the population, and a random sample is taken from within the group. This is an example of _____ sampling.
Cluster
Organizations can assess worker satisfaction by:
Conducting a formal survey that includes questions regarding quality of work alike, teamwork, opportunities and training provided, and leadership.
Which of the following dimensions of quality, as suggested by David A Garvin, refers to the degree to which physical and performance characteristics of a product match pre-established standards?
Conformance
Which of the following categories of quality problems is characterized by unsatisfactory performance that causes customer dissatisfaction, such as high levels of defects, service failures, or customer complaints?
Conformance problems
The quality team at Nigre, a cosmetics company, is continuously involved in monitoring the production process to ensure that the products are meeting specifications. They are also responsible for taking corrective measures when they identify variations in the products. In the context of the three major activities involved in process management, the quality team at Nigre is engaged in the _____ activity of process management.
Control
The _____ represent the underlying philosophy of the Baldrige Criteria.
Core Values and Concepts
An effective problem-solving process that can easily be adapted to quality improvement stems from _____ concepts pioneered by Alex Osborn.
Creative-problem solving
Which of the following personal leadership competencies refers to the ability to see possibilities, horizons, and futures that don't yet exist, enabling the leader to help build a shared vision?
Creativity
Which of the following perspectives of the balanced scorecard include service levels, satisfaction ratings, and repeat business?
Customer
Strategically placed tray-return stands and trash receptacles remind customers to return trays in fast-food facilities. This is an example of a poka-yoke technique designed to prevent:
Customer errors at the resolution stage of a service.
The first House of Quality relates:
Customer requirements to a product's overall technical requirements.
The term "customer engagement" refers to:
Customers' investment in or commitment to a brand and product offerings.
Compared to variable measurement, attributes measurement requires _____ to obtain the same amount of statistical information about the quality of the product.
A larger sample
The DMADV process incorporates the principal activities of the design for six sigma. Which of the following activities included in DMADV focuses on understanding and identifying the market need or opportunity?
Define
In the Baldrige assessment, _____ refers to the extent to which the approach is applied by a company in addressing item requirements relevant and important to the organization, the approach is applied consistently, and the approach is used by all appropriate work units.
Deployment
The component of statistical methodology that includes the collection, organization, and summarization of data is called:
Descriptive statistics.
According to the classification system proposed by Juran, customers who belong to the group of 'the vital few':
Deserve special attention on an individual basis.
Which of the following activities of the design for six sigma (DFSS) seeks to refine designs to achieve high reliability, identify and eliminate potential failures, and ensure that it can be easily assembled, manufactured, or delivered in an environmentally-responsible manner?
Design optimization
Which of the following activities of the design for six sigma (DFSS) ensures that the reliability and quality level requirements of the product are achieved?
Design verification
The _____ dimension of the quality, as suggested by David A. Garvin, refers to the amount of use one gets from a product before it physically deteriorates or until replacement is preferable.
Durability
In which of the following stages of the PDSA cycle, the improvements become standardized and the final plan is implemented as a "current best practice" and communicated throughout the organization?
Act
_____ represents the critical stage in planning when strategic objectives and goals are made specific so that effective, organization-wide understanding and deployment are possible.
Action plan development
In the Baldrige assessment, _____ refers to the methods a company uses to achieve the processes addressed in each category.
Approach
Internal customers of an organization are those people who:
Are a part of the organization who provide inputs and help to create outputs for customers.
Who among the following first developed the concept of a balanced scorecard?
Art Schneiderman
The design activity of process management focuses on:
Ensuring that the inputs to the process, such as materials, technology, and a trained workforce are adequate.
In service applications, the term _____ is generally used to describe a nonconformance.
Error
What is the last step in K&N's process management framework?
Evaluation and improvement
In which of the following stages of the FADE approach, the solution is implemented and a monitoring plan is established?
Execute
The _____ distribution models the time between randomly occurring events.
Exponential
Shenzen Electronics, a cell phone manufacturing company, buys microphones and bluetooth handsets from Atid Infotech which manufactures cell phones and cellular accessories. For Atid Infotech, Shenzen is a(n) _____.
External customer
A good balanced scorecard contains only leading measures and indicators.
False
According to Bass, compared to transformational leaders, transactional leaders have greater interest in continuous organizational change and improvement transcending or aligning self-interests for the longer-range greater good of the organization and its members
False
According to Bass, in comparison with the transactional leaders, the transformational leaders are more focused on the satisfaction of self-interests and the maintenance of the organization's status quo.
False
According to the situational leadership theory, the choice of leadership style applied by the leader must be driven by personal preference.
False
An interrelationship digraph shows that every idea can be logically linked with more than one other idea at a time, and allows for "linear thinking" rather than "lateral thinking."
False
An iterative process in which employees at the lower level in the organization ask what senior management can do, what they need, and what conflicts may arise can avoid many of the implementation problems that managers typically face.
False
As the sample size increases, the standard error of the mean increases, all else being held constant.
False
Assembly of products in a manufacturing plant is an example of a support process.
False
Common and special causes of variation must be eliminated before process capability can be determined.
False
Compared to lean tools, Six Sigma tools are more intuitive and easier to apply by anybody in the workplace
False
Compared to money, labor, and capital equipment, knowledge is always the easiest to manage.
False
Correlation is a measure of a linear or a non-linear relationship between two variables.
False
Data mining is the most effective method of establishing cause-and-effect relationship among variables.
False
Deming laid out a "quality improvement program" for companies such as Ford, GM, and Procter & Gamble, when invited to work with them to improve their quality.
False
Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa, a quality philosopher, is best known for coining the phrase—total quality control.
False
For a manufacturing company, legal services will be considered an example of a value-creation process.
False
For variable data, the two important quality measures are the proportion nonconforming and nonconformances per unit.
False
Fully empowered TQ organizations and those with strong self-directed teams typically use the coaching style of leadership.
False
Histograms allow you to distinguish between common and special causes of variation.
False
In general, an experiment with m factors at k levels would have km combinations.
False
In hypothesis testing, the null hypothesis, H0, is assumed to be false in the absence of contradictory data.
False
In the context of Australian Business Awards, organizations at the Gold Award level should meet Silver recognition plus be able to demonstrate superior performance in at least three of the categories in the framework and also have scored at least 50 percent in each item.
False
In the context of the Baldrige Award process, deployment refers to refining the approach through cycles of evaluation and improvement.
False
In the context of the criteria for performance excellence, the strategic planning category is positioned as the foundation for all other categories in the systems framework that underlies the Baldrige philosophy.
False
In the first stage of the Baldrige Award process, each application is thoroughly reviewed by approximately seven examiners chosen from among leading professionals in business, education, health care, and nonprofits (all of whom are non-volunteers).
False
In the policy deployment process, employees negotiate with management the performance measures that are used to indicate progress toward accomplishing the objectives.
False
Joseph Juran viewed the Baldrige Award as a competition, which was fundamentally at odds with his teachings.
False
Leading indicators of a balanced scorecard represent long-term results.
False
Mid-level strategic leaders are involved in vision and strategy formation.
False
Mission statements typically include details of resource commitments and time horizons for their accomplishment.
False
Narrow tolerances in product design tend to decrease the interchangeability of parts and reduce manufacturing costs within the plant and in the field, product performance, durability, and appearance.
False
Organizations that share quality, customer satisfaction, and financial performance results with its employees and customers often exhibit poor performance in comparison with organizations which do not share such information.
False
Process decision program charts are spreadsheets that graphically display relationships between ideas, activities, or other dimensions in such a way as to provide logical connecting points between each item.
False
Six Sigma is focused on improvement with little financial accountability whereas TQM requires a verifiable return on investment and focus on the bottom line.
False
Successful leaders avoid using newsletters and e-mails to continually promote their vision throughout the organization.
False
Supervisory leaders develop executable action plans and projects that best use an organization's resources.
False
The "do" stage in the PDSA cycle involves identifying problems.
False
The "plan" stage in the PDSA cycle involves determining whether the trial plan is working correctly by evaluating the results.
False
The Canadian Awards for Business Excellence quality criteria differ significantly in structure from the Baldrige Award Criteria.
False
The Histogram tool provides the basic statistical measures of location, dispersion, and shape.
False
The Organizational Profile provides the "finer picture" of the various organizational parts and thus sets the context for good strategic decisions.
False
The concept of strategic leadership has moved leadership perspectives away from the team- and system-based "great group" concept toward a solitary "great leader" paradigm.
False
The quality function deployment tool increases the time for new product development.
False
The quality of information can be improved by capturing data only once, and as close to the origin of the data as possible.
False
The second group of questions in the Baldrige Organizational Profile is listed under the heading "Organizational Environment."
False
Under quality function deployment, all operations of a company are driven by edicts of top management rather than by the voice of the customer.
False
When decisions about the serviceability, life, safety, and maintainability of products are dominated by customer requirements rather than by engineering considerations, poor designs that fail in the market are often the result.
False
Nathan, a sales manager at a consumer electronics company, motivated his sales executives by providing them regular inputs on their performance and also on what is expected of them from the company. The team had also developed a system through which the sales persons could analyze their performance based on customers' comments. According to the Hackman and Oldham work design model, which of the following core job characteristics is motivating the employees to perform better in the above scenario?
Feedback from the job
Which of the following perspectives of the balanced scorecard measures the ultimate results that the business provides to its shareholders?
Financial
Which of the following measures of the Baldrige criteria of performance measurement includes revenue, return on equity, return on investment, and operating profit?
Financial outcomes
Which of the following perspectives of the balanced scorecard includes profitability, revenue growth, return on investment, economic value added (EVA), and shareholder value?
Financial perspective
Supply chains help organizations to create a competitive advantage in _____.
Flexibility
In the context of the axiomatic design method, the information axiom states that:
Good design corresponds to minimum complexity.
Which of the following statements is true of the development of the Baldrige Criteria?
In 1999, the criteria were reworded in a question format.
If the variation in the process is due to common causes alone, the process is said to be:
In statistical control.
Which of the following perspectives of the balanced scorecard includes intellectual assets, employee satisfaction, market innovation, and skills development?
Innovation and learning
Which of the following perspectives of the balanced scorecard includes such measures as quality levels, productivity, cycle time, and cost?
Internal
Organizations can ensure that the quality is rooted in their culture by:
Internalizing quality at the personal level and encouraging employees to practice quality in all activities of life.
The output of a process is stable and normally distributed. If the process mean equals 23.5, the percentage of output expected to be less than or equal to the mean:
Is 50%.
Which of the following is a reason why process management is important for organizations?
It assists organizations in identifying opportunities for improving quality and operational performance.
Which of the following is true regarding the six-sigma approach to quality improvement?
It integrates many traditional quality improvement tools and techniques that have been tested and validated over the years, with a bottom-line and strategic orientation.
Which of the following is true of the American Customer Satisfaction Index?
It is based on customer evaluations of the quality of goods and services.
Which of the following is true of the transcendent or judgmental perspective of quality?
It is of little practical value to the managers, as standards of excellence vary considerably among individuals.
Which of the following is true of the job enlargement approach to work design?
It results in lower production costs and reduces fragmentation of jobs.
The Baldrige Award is a better fit to the national culture of _____ than it is to the United States.
Japan
_____ is an approach to work design that improves a worker's job by including several tasks rather than one single, low-level task.
Job enlargement
Which of the following is the difference between Deming's and Juran's quality philosophy?
Juran sought to improve quality by working within the system familiar to managers.
In the Baldrige assessment, _____ refers to how a company refines the approach through cycles of evaluation and improvement, encourages breakthrough change to the approach through innovation, and shares refinements with other relevant work units in the organization.
Learning
The criteria for the Canadian Awards for Business Excellence are similar in structure to the criteria for the:
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.
With respect to the six competencies summarized by the human development and leadership division of the American society for quality, which of the following competencies in a leader, includes the evaluation of people's actions to ensure they are performing consistently with the mission, goal, or end-result?
Motivator
Teams that are organized to perform entire jobs, rather than specialized, assembly line-type work are known as _____ teams.
Natural work
Statistical methods help managers make sense of data and gain insight about the:
Nature of variation in the processes they manage
One of the reasons for poor deployment of action plans is insufficient operational measures. Which of the following is a feature of this aspect?
New legislative mandates
In a team's life cycle, the stage of _____ takes place when the issues of the previous stage have been worked out, and team members agree on roles, ground rules, and acceptable behavior when doing the work of the team.
Norming
Which of the following organizations is one of the most prominent vendors of ERP software?
Oracle
In the context of the criteria for performance excellence, the _____ category provides "real-time" information (measures of progress) for evaluation and improvement of processes and products, in alignment with overall organizational strategy.
Results
Which of the following practices will lead to effective recognition and rewarding of employees?
Rewarding behavior, not just results
Which of the following constitutes an approach to reducing sampling error?
Taking a larger sample from the population
Point 14 of Deming's 14 points emphasizes on:
Taking action to accomplish the transformation in organizational culture.
Point 7 of Deming's 14 points emphasizes on:
Teaching and instituting leadership in an organization.
Which of the following is true of consumers of an organization?
The consumers of an organization are the ultimate purchasers and users of the organization's products.
In the context of manufacturing specifications, the term "tolerance" refers to:
The permissible variation, recognizing the difficulty of meeting a target consistently.
Which of the following is true regarding internal customers of an organization?
They receive goods or services from suppliers within the organization.
According to Peter Scholtes, a noted consultant, when people don't understand systems:
They see the symptoms but not the deep causes of problems.
According to Peter Scholtes, a noted consultant, when people don't understand variation:
They see trends where there are none.
According to the policy deployment process diagram, a catchball situation occurs between the _____ stage and the _____ stage.
short-term objectives; policy deployment plan
In the context of the Weber's classification of the way leaders exercise authority, which of the following leadership styles extends from customs, habits, and social structures, and often involves the passing of position and power from one generation to the next?
Traditional leadership
A key role of strategic planning is to align work processes and learning initiatives with an organization's strategic directions.
True
A knowledge-enabled culture is created when an organization employs a system of aligned human resource policies, tactics, processes, and practices that ensure knowledge is created, captured, used, and reused to achieve superior organizational results as a sustainable advantage.
True
A tolerance reserve or factor of safety in product design is needed to account for engineering uncertainty regarding the compatibility and maximum variation allowable with satisfactory product performance.
True
According to Crosby, quality is judged solely on whether requirements have been met and nonconformance is the absence of quality.
True
An effective knowledge management system should include a common framework for managing knowledge and some way of validating and synthesizing new knowledge as it is acquired.
True
An organization must align its performance measurement system to its vision and strategy and select meaningful measurements.
True
Attribute measurement requires a much larger sample size than variable measurement to obtain the same amount of statistical information.
True
Confidentiality and security are critical in managing data, particularly with the increasing use of electronic data transfer.
True
Financial measures of performance measurement in the Baldrige criteria are generally tracked by senior leadership to gauge overall organizational performance and are often used to determine incentive compensation for senior executives.
True
Flowcharts enable management to study and analyze processes prior to implementation.
True
Identifying potential defects and errors and stopping a process before they occur is the best approach to avoid mistakes in a process.
True
Improvements in operations are achieved by reducing the causes and impacts of variation.
True
In the context of the criteria for performance excellence, the results category provides "real-time" information for evaluation and improvement of processes and products, in alignment with overall organizational strategy.
True
In the context of transactional leadership theory, contingent reward behavior includes clarification of the work required to obtain rewards to influence motivation.
True
Juran advocated the use of quality cost accounting and analysis to focus attention on quality problems.
True
Lean production approaches focus on the elimination of waste in all forms, including defects requiring rework.
True
One of the major disadvantages of the Histogram tool is that the results are not dynamically linked to the data.
True
Processes must be measurable and repeatable in order to apply the techniques of process management.
True
Services that emphasize on professional judgement of the employees often succeed in providing good solutions to customer problems.
True
Six Sigma is based on understanding and improving processes on a project-by-project basis.
True
Six Sigma is not a substitute for continuous improvement.
True
Six Sigma methods are most applicable to conformance problems because the processes that create the problems can be easily identified, measured, analyzed, and changed.
True
The American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) noted that executives have long felt frustrated by their inability to identify or transfer outstanding practices from one location or function to another.
True
The frequency of sampling in pre-control is often determined by dividing the time period between two successive out-of-control signals by six.
True
The impact of other process on a particular process must be considered while designing the process, as processes rarely operate in isolation.
True
The improvement aspect of process management focuses on continually seeking to achieve higher levels of performance, such as reduced variation, higher yields, fewer defects and errors, and smaller cycle times.
True
The methodology of axiomatic design is based on the premise that good design is governed by laws similar to those in natural science.
True
The purpose of the balanced scorecard is "to translate strategy into measures that uniquely communicate your vision to the organization."
True
The square of the correlation coefficient is called the coefficient of determination.
True
The transfer of knowledge within organizations and the identification and sharing of best practices often set high-performing organizations apart from the rest.
True
The use of arrow diagramming has generally been confined to technical experts.
True
When interactions are present in an experiment, main effects have little meaning.
True
The term "_____" refers to those pressures that exert a decisive influence on an organization's likelihood of future success.
strategic challenges
The goal of _____ is to envision the future for purposes of decision making and resource allocation.
strategy development
In the context of the criteria for performance excellence, the aim of strategy development is to:
strengthen overall performance, competitiveness, and future success.
Kosher's, a supermarket in Surbury, employs various strategies to provide good quality products to consumers at lower prices compared to other competing stores. This marketing strategy is most likely to influence the _____ perspective of quality.
Value
To achieve a high level of performance excellence, an organization requires a much broader set of performance measures that are aligned to an organization's strategy; this became known as the:
balanced scorecard
According to the dimensions of quality, as suggested by David A Garvin, _____ refers to the probability of a product's surviving over a specified period of time under stated conditions of use.
Reliability
Which of the following points about Crosby's absolutes of quality management is true?
The only performance measurement is the cost of quality.
Collecting _____ data is usually easier than collecting _____ data because the assessment can usually be done more quickly by a simple inspection or count.
Attribute; variable
If random samples are not used, _____ may be introduced.
Bias
In a bottom-up approach to Six Sigma projects, _____ choose the projects that are well-suited to the capabilities of teams.
Black belts
Successful green belts are often promoted to _____.
Black belts
With respect to the six competencies summarized by the human development and leadership division of the American society for quality, which of the following competencies in a leader, entails assuming responsibility for ensuring necessary resources are available and the evaluation of processes to ensure effective resource use?
Builder
Which of the following personal leadership competencies refers to sticking to a task or purpose, no matter how hard or troublesome, which is vital for overcoming obstacles and motivating subordinates?
Perseverance
After-action review or debrief is a process control approach used by organizations to:
Prevent the errors in a process from occurring again in the future.
Which of the following measures of the Baldrige criteria of performance measurement includes internal quality measurements, defect levels, service errors, and response times?
Product outcomes
Process control in manufacturing starts with the _____ process.
Purchasing
Which of the following is true of quality management during the age of craftsmanship that existed before the advent of industrial revolution?
Quality assurance was informal and efforts were made to ensure that quality was built into products by the people who produced them.
In the context of the Weber's classification of the way leaders exercise authority, government officials who legislate, execute, and enforce regulations exhibit _____.
Rational-legal leadership
In the context of the Weber's classification of the way leaders exercise authority, which of the following leadership styles is established by policies, rules, and laws?
Rational-legal leadership
_____ is defined as the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service, and speed.
Reengineering
The sampling method where every item in the population has an equal probability of being selected is called:
Simple random sampling.
The senior management at Delta Inc., a pioneer in the health care domain, came up with a blueprint to address the current issues facing the company. This blueprint provides the framework for the company to address the current business needs while giving it the agility and strategic management to prepare successfully for the future, to prepare for real-time or short-term emergencies, and for workforce and customer engagement. Which of the following Baldrige organizational concepts is being used by the company?
Sustainability
Which of the following stages of a team's life cycle takes place when team members disagree on team roles and challenge the way that the team will function?
Storming
_____ set an organization's longer-term directions and guide resource allocation decisions.
Strategic objectives
Partitioning a population into hierarchical groups or levels, and selecting a sample from each group is known as:
Stratified sampling.
The value perspective defines quality of a product on the basis of:
The relationship of product benefits to price.
The net present value of a customer is:
The total profits (revenues associated with a customer minus the expenses needed to serve a customer) discounted over time.
