Which Tool to Use

As the manager of a department that is beginning to use the total quality tools, Marion thinks a wall chart in the team meeting room would be helpful when the teams decide on which tools to apply to their problem-solving or decision making efforts. She has listed the most commonly used tools and wants a simple one-line “purpose statement” for each tool, similar to the one she developed for the flowchart. Your task: Develop the rest of the purpose statements for the wall chart here.

Constructing a Flowchart: Scheduling a Meeting

Marion read that even the most routine tasks can be flowcharted and that when they are, the diagram may reveal complexity that is both surprising and unnecessary. She thought she would test this by flowcharting a process that seemed to be the most used in her organization, scheduling a meeting. She convened a meeting of her direct subordinates, and together they have listed the steps involved in scheduling a meeting. Now they are ready to develop the chart. You are the facilitator. Lead them through the diagramming process. (Draw the flowchart.)

Selecting Improvement Subjects Using Pareto Charts and Stratification

Starlight Homes Inc. is a building contractor specializing in upscale homes in the Southwest. Before each new home is sold, Starlight conducts a final inspection of the home and repairs any defects. In addition, Starlight receives a “punch list” of defects (to be corrected) compiled by the buyers following the sale. Ricardo Alvarez, Starlight’s lead supervisor, has concluded that even if it should cost more to do the work right in the first place, it will be a lot cheaper than going back later to fix the defects. In an effort to reduce costs, improve the quality of Starlight’s homes, and reduce the number of complaints after the sale, Ricardo has assembled data from his final inspections and the punch lists for the last 20 homes sold. These data are listed in the following chart:

Construct a Pareto chart to illustrate the defect types by number of defects. Which two defect types appear to be the most significant? Should Ricardo focus his attention on these two categories of defects? Ricardo decided to stratify the Pareto chart by cost before making any decision. His bookkeeper developed the average cost per repair event per category. The data are shown here:

The second-level chart developed from these numbers should show Ricardo which two or three defect types are the most significant in terms of cost, enabling him to put his efforts where they will do the most good. What are they? Was Ricardo justified in going to the second level (of stratification) before making a decision on where to focus his efforts? Why?

Constructing a Cause-and-Effect Diagram

Your team has been given the charter to make recommendations for improving the cleanliness of the company’s restrooms. The team has finished compiling a list that it considers to be the possible contributors to less than desirable restroom cleanliness:

Construct a cause-and-effect diagram incorporating all these ideas.

Translating Your Histogram

Your process has a normal histogram with m located at 10 millimeters, 1s points at 9.9 and 10.1 millimeters, 2s points at 9.8 and 10.2 millimeters, and 3s points at 9.7 and 10.3 millimeters.

If your customer will accept parts measuring between 9.7 and 10.3 millimeters, how many parts of every 1,000 produced would you expect to scrap? If your customer notified you that henceforth it would accept only parts between 9.9 and 10.1 millimeters, what would you anticipate your scrap rate to be? What would have to be done to bring the scrap rate at this new customer requirement back down to what it had been at the former customer specification? Compared with the bell curve above, what would the new histogram have to look like?