QUESTION 1 (45 marks)

Recently, your organization has been bedeviled by serious problems with quality. Customers are complaining publicly about how service quality has deteriorated over the years and blame the organization for not caring and not taking any remedial action. Many of your customers have decided to vote with their feet (leave the organization) if no action is taken immediately. Employees get their salaries late. As of today, 9 August 2023, July salaries are yet to be paid. Besides an ordinary apology, no firm action has been taken by senior management to remedy the situation. Employees are left guessing as to what the future holds in the organization. Staff turnover is, as a result, rising as well-qualified and competent employees are leaving the organization in droves.

(a) If the quality problems that confront your organization now can be resolved, the organization will bounce back in business spectacularly although the resolution of the problem will be quite costly in terms of time spent, innovations, and experimentation. Follow the nine-stage process for studying the problem as the precursor to solving your organizations quality problems.

(b) Assuming that the quality problems referred to in (a) are prevalent in your organization, use Demings following three types of quality efforts to improve quality in the organization.

1) Quality of design (8 marks)

4 discussion points on quality of design (4 marks)

4 discussion points on how the quality of design can be applied to improve quality in a specific organization (4 marks)

2) Quality of conformance (6 marks)

3 discussion points on quality of conformance (3 marks)

3 discussion points on how the quality of conformance can be applied to improve quality in your organization (3 marks)

3) Quality of performance (6 marks)

3 discussion points on quality of performance (3 marks)

3 discussion points on how the quality of the performance was applied to improve quality in your organization (3 marks)