Part II : Define Phase
When former president Jimmy Carter participated in the successful dialogues with Haiti, Egypt, and beyone, to what did he attribute much of the success?
"I Listen" - ASQ Quality Progress, May 1998
A business performance measure that provides an approach to measuring multiple aspects of a business, including the financial aspect, is
A balanced scorecard
Which of the following graphically shows interdependence between tasks while highlighting key tasks, time to accomplish, and flow paths?
Activity network diagram
This important planning tool is founded on the premise that solid planning helps prevent undesirable surprises and saves valuable resources:
Advance quality planning
This diagram tool is used to produce many possible answers to an open-ended question:
Affinity diagram
Successful risk analysis depends, in part, on ensuring that
All appropriate organizations are represented during risk analysis meetings with all aspects of potential risk considered
Benchmarking is the process of looking at one system(s) and applying the concepts observed to
Another system
Flow utilized when a line operator or front-desk personnel want to provide feedback to the management, or a team member wants to communicate to the executive sponsor of the project is
Bottom-up or upward flow
Methods used to identify internal and external customers include which of the following?
Brainstorming, SIPOC, marketing analysis data, tracking a product to delivery
Which of the following measures the project's performance in dollar terms (for example, the ratio of earned value [budgeted cost of work performed] versus the actual cost of work performed)? A ratio of 1 or higher is desirable.
Cost performance index
QFD is applied to improve
Customer satisfaction at acceptable cost
What index is used to identify the total number of defects/deficiencies that have occurred and standardized to a common total number of possibilities?
DPMO
What index is calculated as the total number of defects/deficiencies divided by the total number of products produced?
DPU
Process performance is a measure of how the process is executing against an established goal. Process performance measures usually include
Defects per unit, defects per million, rolled throughput yield, sigma levels, process capability indices
The define phase of the DMAIC model services which of the following two primary purposes?
Defines the project management process and defines the problem or issue to to be worked on
Focus groups are an attempt to improve the _____ and ____ of customer responses
Depth, Accuracy
An exercise of going to your local McDonald's to understand how processes work would be an example of which type of benchmarking?
Functional
QFD is also known as
House of quality
Once focus group planning is completed, the focus groups can be
Identified, session conducted, their data collected and analyzed to determine how the process or product should be adjusted
What is a frequently occurring important barrier to good listening?
Impatience and jumping ahead of the speaker -This barrier falls across all genders, ages, and cultures
Effective project planning requires skills in which of the following areas?
Information processing, communication, resource negotiations, securing commitments, incremental planning, ensuring measurable milestones, facilitating top management involvement
Which of the following are types of benchmarking?
Internal, competitive, functional, collaborative
A flowchart is a picture of the separate steps of a process in sequential order, including
Materials, services, people, decisions, time, and process measurements
In this technique, the team members consolidate all previously generated ideas, number or letter them, and then quickly prioritize them.
Multivoting
This idea generation tool does not include verbal interactions and instead utilizes writing first and then posting for all to read
Nominal group technique
A project charter can take many formats but is usually limited to
One or two pages serving as a quick top-level overview of the project
Cause-and-effect diagrams can be used to analyze
Positive effects as well as undesirable ones
A charter is a document stating the purposes of the project. Every charter should contain which of the following points?
Problem statement, purpose, benefits, scope, results
The final step performed to prove that the project met established goals and objectives and that all documentation was completed and stored is called
Project Closure
What index is used to identify the first-pass rate through a series of processes?
RTY
Statistically, what is the most valid procedure for collecting customer data?
Randomly selected large groups for interviews
Which of the following is a measure of the project's efficiency to schedule as expressed in the ratio of earned value to planned value?
Schedule performance index
An individual trained in Six Sigma methodologies, statistical tools, basic financial tools, change management, risk management, and project management and experienced in managing projects is a
Six Sigma Black Belt
A force field analysis produces the driving and restraining forces of
The desired future state / objective
Flow utilized when top management, or the executive sponsor of the project, is providing instruction, communicating policies, or providing feedback on project performance is
Top-down or downward flow
Which of the following are tools for gathering customer data
Voice of the customer, surveys, QFD , interviews, and focus groups
The first thing to know when planning to audit something is
What the standard or criteria are that we will be auditing against
In a project setting with a matrix organizational structure, the importance of communication cannot be stressed enough
Yes - Incomplete, sporadic, or inaccurate communication would never be acceptable
Project planning tools are many. For a beginning project planning tool, start with
a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet listing the projected dates of the project or brainstorm a flowchart
A key aspect of measuring a project (project metrics) is to start
as early as possible in tracking the data to benchmark the current state
When planning to study a process or system, it is very important to first identify the
boundaries
When an individual or team develops as many ideas as possible concerning a topic in a short period of time, using various creative techniques, it is called
brainstorming
you can make a ______________________ choice with regard to the listening level that you choose within a given scenario
conscious
The project selection group (Six Sigma Master Black Belts, Six Sigma Black Belts, Six Sigma Key Executives, and Six Sigma Champions) should
establish a set of criteria for project selection
Teams typically go through the following sequence or stages of evolution:
forming, storming, norming, performing
Stakeholders (e.g., customers, suppliers, employees, investors) generally
have a vested interest in the process and/or its products and outputs
Process inputs are traditionally recognized as
man, materials, methods, Mother Nature, management, measurement
Negative team dynamics are often reflective of
negative issues within the organizational culture
Those who have responsibility for the execution and implementation of specific tasks or activities undertaken are
process owners
The composition and number of people on a team
should be based on size and scope of the project
Those who have a vested interest in the process and/or its products and outputs are
stakeholders
When we strive to understand the process and know that if one factor is changed or influenced in some particular way, then something different might happen downstream in the process is commonly referred to as
systems thinking
A function of team performing includes
team members realizing interdependence
A function of team storming includes
team members voicing their ideas
One of the key differences between deploying Six Sigma in a large organization and deploying Six Sigma in a small organization is
the number of champions involved in the effort -In a large organization you would expect to have many champions, and in a small organization you might have one
One factor that has helped Six Sigma be successful is
the structure it demands of the organization
