Assignment 1

Subject: Quality Management

Instructions

1. The review questions in Part A are provided for self practice.

2. The Part B case study has to be submitted.

Part A: Review Questions (For Self Practice)

1. Define the term quality.

2. What is total quality?
3. List and explain the key elements of total quality.
4. Explain the rationale for the total quality approach to doing business.
5. Describe the following concepts:
a. Deming’s Fourteen Points
b. The Deming Cycle
c. Deming’s Seven Deadly Diseases
6. List and explain Juran’s main contributions to the quality movement.
7. Why do some quality initiatives fail?
8. For what contributions to the quality movement is Philip B. Crosby known?
9. Summarize the most common errors made when starting quality initiatives.
10. Explain the trends that are affecting the future of quality management.

Part B: Case Study

How Japan Caught Up with the United States and How the United States Caught Up with
Japan Again
Immediately following World War II, the quality of products produced by Japanese companies was not good
enough to compete in the international marketplace. The only advantage Japanese companies had was price.
Japanese goods, as a rule, were cheap. For this reason, Western manufacturers, particularly those in the United
States, saw the Japanese threat as being rooted in cost rather than quality. Reading the future more accurately,
albeit belatedly, Japanese companies saw quality as the key to success and, in 1950, began doing something
about it. While Japanese companies were slowly but patiently and persistently creating a quality-based
infrastructure (people, processes, and facilities), American companies were still focusing on cost, shift in the
manufacture of labor-intensive products offshore and, at the same time, neglecting infrastructure improvements.
By the mid-1970s, the quality of Japanese manufactured goods in such key areas as automobiles and consumer
electronics products was better than that of competing American firms. As a result, Japanese exports increased
exponentially, while those of Western countries experienced corresponding decreases. This explains how Japan
rose up out of the ashes of World War II to become a world-leading industrial nation. But the story does not en
there. After losing market share to the Japanese for more than two decades, companies in the United States
began to embrace the principles of quality management. As a result, by the mid-1990s companies in the United
States had reasserted themselves in the global marketplace. Now, the two countries are like well-matched
heavyweight boxers who slug it out every day in the world of global business. On any given day, either can win
the global business battle. There are no longer any automatic winners. Regardless of whether they are Japanese
or American, those companies that adhere to the principles of quality management and continually improve are
the ones that will win in today’s marketplace.

Question
Why do you think that companies in the United States were slow to adopt the quality management principles
Japanese companies had used to gain market share worldwide?