Reading Assignment:

Download and read Chapter 3 in Essentials of Quality With Cases and Experiential Exercises.  Review the Discussion Questions at the end of the chapter

While the Seven Tools of Quality are designed for making sense of quantitative data, the Seven Management Tools are particularly useful in analyzing and communicating qualitative information.

The 7 management tools can help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of meetings and planning sessions.  For example, affinity diagrams are often used in conjunction with brainstorming sessions to provide structure for the recording of ideas.  The Roger's Take-Out Pizza example in the text shows how the 7 management tools can be integrated into a systematic approach to improving a process.

Quality Function Deployment, or QFD, is a systematic means of assuring that the voice of the customer is heard during the design process. The first  QFD matrix is often referred to as the "House of Quality" because the assembled series of sub-matrices resemble a house.  The QFD process begins with a determination of what product/service characteristics are important to the customer.  Might there be a relationship between these customer requirements and the dimensions of quality?

QFD systematically moves from customer requirements to metrics (design requirements) and target values for the product or service.  The current or proposed product or service is compared with those of leading competitors utilizing the metrics.  The relationship between metrics and customer requirements is determined to be sure that each customer requirement is addressed by a metric.  Tradeoffs are also analyzed by examining the relationship among the metrics (e.g. Would increasing one metric adversely affect any other metric?).

Read more about QFD at the QFD Institute web site.

Answer Discussion Questions 1-3 at the end of Chapter 3 of the text.

Answer Problems 12-15 at the end of Chapter 3 of the text.

Do Case 3.1 Acme Corp. at the end of Chapter 3 of the text.