Discussion Questions
1. How can quality be measured for the following?
a. Phone service
b. Automobile repair
c. Ballpoint pens
2. What are the differences between quality of design and
quality of conformance?
3. Product A has an MTBF of 30 hours and an MTTR of 5
hours. Product B has an MTBF of 40 hours and an
MTTR of 2 hours.
a. Which product has higher reliability?
b. Which product has better maintainability?
c. Which product has greater availability?
4. Recall a bad service experience that you recently had.
What led to the service failure? Consider such dimen–
sions as tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance,
or empathy.
5. Suppose you manufacture 10,000 wooden pencils per
day. What would be an appropriate quality planning and
control system for this product? Consider such factors as
product attributes, measures of quality, tests, and so forth.
6. Can you name products and services that, in your
opinion, have relatively poor quality? Relatively high
quality? Are companies that provide better quality more
successful? How can you tell?
7. How can supplier certification contribute to quality
products or services? Should all suppliers be certified?
Why or why not?
8. What products have recently been recalled? Why? Check
the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission website.
9. Which of the four manufacturing quality dimensions are
most likely to improve revenue? Which ones are related
more to cost reduction or to both revenue and cost?
10. The following costs have been recorded:
Incoming materials inspection $20,000
Training of personnel 40,000
Warranty 45,000
Process planning 15,000
Scrap 13,000
Quality laboratory 30,000
Rework 25,000
Allowances 10,000
Complaints 14,000
What are the costs of prevention, appraisal, external
failure, and internal failure?
11. Which of Deming’s 14 points do you agree with and
which ones do you disagree with?
12. Contrast and compare the Deming and Juran approaches
to quality improvement. How different are these two
approaches?
13. Why is ISO 9000 considered a first step or a basic
approach to quality?
14. Critique the seven categories used by the Baldrige Award.
Are there some items that you think are missing?
15. Compare the Baldrige-based approach to the use of
ISO 9000.
16. What are some of the barriers to a successful quality
implementation effort?
