Questions and Answers of Marketing Research

How is the Define stage of the DMAIC process structured?
Discuss what the different categories of quality costs might mean to your college and university? How can they be measured?
How does the adoption of a Six Sigma approach within an organization change the amount and types of data that may be gathered routinely, as well as for specific projects?
Find a small-to medium-size company that is using Six Sigma teams. Where have they changed the GE/Motorola model in the way that they train and use team leaders and resource people (green, black, and
Which of the five key dimensions of service quality—reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy, or responsiveness—would the following items from a retail banking customer survey address?a.
What is a team? What are the characteristics of the different individuals who make up Six Sigma teams?
For services, how do the eight quality dimensions relate to the five dimensions of reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy, and responsiveness identified by other researchers? Do they all fit into
Develop a SIPOC for some process around your college, for example, admissions, registration, instruction, and so on. Use these to describe possible project charters for Six Sigma projects.
Explain the steps of the project-planning process.
Many quality experts, such as Joseph Juran and Philip Crosby, advocate cost-of-quality evaluations. Deming, however, states that “the most important figures are unknown and unknowable.” How can
Identify an important problem around your school or in some related function, such as a student organization, and define a suitable Six Sigma project. Write a project charter and identify the
Explain the five stages of the project life cycle.
What are the four factors involved in all project management decisions?
Cost of quality data are often expressed as indexes by dividing by some reference value, such as cost/sales dollar or cost/labor dollar. Compute a sales dollar base index for International Fabrica,
Legal Sea Foods operates several restaurants and fish markets in the Boston area and other East Coast locations. The company’s standards of excellence mandate that it serves only the freshest,
Give several examples of dissatisfiers, satisfiers, and exciters/delighters in products or services that you have recently purchased. Why did you classify them into these categories?
What are the essential people skills needed by project managers and team members?
Consider the following customer expectations for a fast-food (quick-service) restaurant. Would you classify them as dissatisfiers, satisfiers, and exciters/delighters?a. Special prices on certain
List and explain the different levels into which Six Sigma projects can be categorized, based on their impact on results.
What are Peter Scholtes’ ten ingredients for a successful team?
List and explain the four major categories of quality costs. Give examples of each.
Discuss the five key stages that teams typically go through during their life cycle.
Why do messes arise in organizations? How can the DMAIC process help to untangle messes?
Why are cost of quality programs valuable to managers?
Discuss the following questions related to the Six Sigma in Practice vignette about Novozyme Corporation in the text:a. What Six Sigma and lean tools were used by the cross-function Novozyme team to
Explain the difference between a histogram and a Pareto diagram. Do they apply to the same types of data?
What is a SIPOC diagram? How is it used in the Six Sigma Define phase?
What are the categories of critical-to-quality characteristics?
Discuss the following questions related to the Six Sigma in Practice vignette about Schwan’s Corporation in the text:a. How was Six Sigma black belt training used to plan and carry out valuable
How does a Six Sigma project differ from a traditional project? What should be included in the Six Sigma project charter?
What factors should be considered when selecting Six Sigma projects?
What are the steps that should be taken in using the Nominal Group Technique (NGT) to make shared decisions?
Define the “voice of the customer.” What are some of the key approaches to gathering customer information?
List some of the common processes that a student performs. What would the requirements of these processes be? What types of variation exist in these processes? How can these processes be improved
Briefly summarize the Six Sigma Body of Knowledge.
Review the Six Sigma Body of Knowledge. What topics have you covered in previous courses at your school? Which topics are new to you?
Write down your process for preparing for an exam. How could this process be improved to make it shorter and/or more effective? Compare your process to those of your classmates. How might you
Cablesplice, Inc.’s manufacturing process consists of five steps: making conductors, adding insulation, adding sheathing, irradiation, and printing and coil cutting. Units are measured in meters.
Describe the principal sources of ideas for Six Sigma projects.
How might you apply the concepts of dashboards and balanced scorecards to your personal life?
Interview a manager at a local organization to identify the value-creation and support processes used. What techniques does the company use to improve them?
For Cablesplice’s process described in Problem 1, find the rolled throughput yield (RTY) for the five-step process.Data from in Problem 1Cablesplice, Inc.’s manufacturing process consists of five
What are dashboards and balanced scorecards? How do they support Six Sigma projects?
Discuss some of the key processes associated with the following business activities for a typical company: sales and marketing, supply chain management, managing information technology, and managing
Identify some examples of problems in each of the five problem-solving categories discussed in this chapter. Draw from your personal experiences.
List and briefly define the five categories of quality-related problem types. What are the best approaches for attacking each of these types of problems?
Three popular websites for Six Sigma are http://www.ge.com/sixsigmahttp://www.isixsigma.com http://www.sixsigmaforum.com. Explore these sites and classify information you can find
Miricelwell Insurance Company processes insurance policy applications in batches of 100. One day, they had 12 batches to process and, after inspection, it was found that four batches had
Explain the application of Six Sigma in service organizations. How does it differ from manufacturing? How is it similar?
Outline how the DMAIC process might be used to improve a process in a school or university. What data or information might be difficult to obtain? Why?
Devise a red bead-type of experiment using bags of M&M candies. Implement the experiment in class.
Tremblor Airlines measured their numbers of lost bags in one month and found that they had lost 150 bags for 10,000 customers. If the average number of bags per customer is 1.3, how many errors per
What are process owners and stakeholders? How are they different from each other?
In a true story related by our colleague, Professor James W. Dean, Jr., the general manager of an elevator company was frustrated with the lack of cooperation between the mechanical engineers who
Set up and implement the funnel experiment using household items. Can you replicate the results discussed in this chapter?
Boardwork Electronics manufactures 250,000 circuit boards per month. A random sample of 4,000 boards is inspected every week for five characteristics. During a recent week, three defects were found
Define the two general categories of processes in any organization and provide examples of each.
Discuss some examples of “waste” in your life? How might they be avoided through lean thinking?
Megasigma Corp. has a process they believe is operating near the six sigma level and want to verify this. If the specification for a critical part in the process is 2.75 cm ± 0.05, and the standard
What are process requirements and how can they be identified?
The Six Sigma philosophy seeks to develop technical leadership through extensive training, then use it in team-based projects designed to improve processes. To what extent are these two concepts
Newfound Fish Company advertises that 99.2% of their fish were caught within the past 36 hours and that all of their products are 100% fresh. How many dpmo does this claim represent? At what sigma
Explain the concept of variation in processes. State the primary sources of process variation.
During one month, MegaInvoice Company (MIC) processed 30,000 invoices for Alpha Corp, 19,000 for Beta Corp, and 15,000 for Gamma Corp. Of these, 300 of the Alpha, 323 of the Beta, and 285 of the
Discuss the following questions related to the INFICON Six Sigma in Practice vignette:a. What role did training play in their application of lean Six Sigma methods to their operations?b. How did
What operational problems are caused by excessive variation?
Verasource Microprocessor Corporation (VMC) sells 2000 specialized computer processing chips each month at a price of $1,500 each. Variable costs amount to $1,500,000, and fixed costs are $500,000.
Explain Deming’s red bead and funnel experiments. What lessons do they provide?
Explain the difference between a measure and an indicator.
What is a nonconformance? How does it differ from a nonconforming unit of work?
Explain how to calculate the dpmo metric.
Explain the theoretical basis of a six sigma quality level (3.4 dpmo).
What are the key themes common to all problem-solving methodologies?
Describe the steps in the DMAIC methodology.
What is project scoping? Why is it important to good problem solving?
Explain the principles of lean thinking and the seven categories of waste.
Describe the principal tools used in lean production.
What is the Theory of Constraints (TOC)? Briefly explain the key principles.
Define the term “breakthrough.” Why is it an important concept for modern organizations?
Discuss how Six Sigma might benefit you personally.
Find some examples of organizations that are using Six Sigma. What results have they achieved? What challenges have they faced?
Define “Six Sigma.” Where did the term originate?
Do you believe that William Cooper Procter’s statement from 1887 is still true today? Why or why not?
Investigate the ISO 9000 standards and the Baldrige Award by researching their websites. How might Six Sigma support each of these quality management frameworks?
What does the acronym DMAIC stand for?
Do you believe that Motorola’s quest for zero defects is realistic and achievable? Why or why not? In either case, what benefit would there be to setting such a goal?
List the four key metrics on which Six Sigma is focused.
How might the key concepts of Six Sigma be used to improve a quality process in a school or university? What elements of the Six Sigma philosophy might be difficult to obtain support for in the
Prepare a feature similar to the Therma-Tru or Gates examples using sources such as business periodicals, personal interviews, and so on. Focus your discussion on how their approach to total quality
Explain the difference between the terms “Six Sigma” and “six sigma.”
How might the different perspectives of quality apply to your college or university? Provide some specific examples.
What are the core concepts of the Six Sigma philosophy?
Think of a product or a service that you are considering purchasing. Develop a list of fitness-for-use criteria that are meaningful to you.
Describe the evolution of quality management and how it influenced the Six Sigma philosophy.
Select a service activity with which you are familiar. What might be some critical to quality (CTQ) characteristics associated with it?
How does Six Sigma differ from TQM (total quality management)? How is it similar?
Discuss how a learning cycle might be useful to you as a student?
Explain the definitions of quality from design, operations, and customer perspectives.
Choose an organization that you have read about or with which you have personal experience and describe their sources of competitive advantage. What role might Six Sigma play in this organization?
Explain the concept of specifications and provide examples in both manufacturing and service.

Showing 500 - 600 of 608