Mgsc 346 02 - Operations and Productions Management

Brandon Higginbotham

Professor Higgins

MGSC-346-02

Assignment 12: Six Sigma + Ch. 8 Discussion Questions

        Part 1 analyzes the inception of the Six Sigma DMAIC project created by an IT support business. The project is geared toward helpjng an individual company become more competitive within their markets and more profitable within their companies. One of the most important concepts to consider with the six-sigma project is that one of its primary uses is the assistance with which it gives to customer satisfaction.

        The case study is broken down into focusing on the project, customer service and business growth, and support costs per call, per client. Focusing on the project within the IT service business field resulted in finding out that its competitive position in the market was not secure from the competitors.  Senior managers of the company realized that solving the problem within their company did not stop at creating a project team but rather to identify the specific issues so that the Six Sigma DMAIC project team could attack the problem at the source to increase customer satisfaction and profits.

        The company purchased industry data to see the level of customer satisfaction and the growth rate of the company. As a result, the project team could see that customer satisfaction was average.

        The benchmark data showed that there was not in fact a direct relationship between customer satisfaction and business growth and a model including the variables: transfer, wait time, and service were used to determine that the DMAIC project was suitable to reduce support costs.

Discussion Questions 8: 2 & 11

2.  What are the differences between the dimensions of quality of design and quality of conformance?

        Quality of design is determined before a product is produced. The cross-functional design team is usually in charge of determining the quality of design. Market research, design concept, and specifications are all involved in the quality of design.

        Quality of design is a means of producing a product to meet specific specifications. Once the product conforms to the proper specifications, the operations team considers it a quality product regardless of the quality of the design specifications.