Chapter 12
Managing Production Operations
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
12-1. Q: Distinguish between quality of design and quality of conformance.
A: Quality of design measures the extent to which fitness for use is incorporated into the
12-2. Q: Research and report on an American company or industry that (a) has had declining sales
as a result of noncompetitive product quality, and/or (b) has grown stronger through a
deliberate effort to improve quality.
12-3. Q: (a) In your School of Engineering, determine which engineering curricula require a course
in statistics, and estimate the proportion of engineers that graduate literate in statistics or (b)
survey engineers and other employees in your company to estimate how many were trained
in statistics in school or on the job.
12-4. Q: Distinguish between the statistics of attributes and the statistics of variables, and
comment on how they are applied in process control charts and in sampling.
A: Variables methods involve measuring a quality characteristic on a sample, then using a
12-5 Q: The involvement of production workers in quality circles seems to conflict with the
concept of Frederick W. Taylor, founder of scientific management, that managers should
define how work is to be done and workers simply perform as they are instructed and trained.
Comment.
A: Taylors failure to involve the ideas of workers in developing better methods for them to
12-6 Q: State the essence of Taguchi’s teaching.
12-7. Q: Examine Deming’s 14 points and select three or four you consider most effective in
assuring product quality. Explain your reasoning.
12-8. Q: Choose an organization that claims to be using Total Quality Management. Discuss how
they have implemented it and assess its effectiveness.
12.9. Q: What do you see as some of the organizational changes that have occurred as quality has
matured into the twenty-first century? Answers could include some of the following:
A: ISO 900 series of quality management standards was revised to increase emphasis on
12-10. Q: For most of the middle of this century U.S. factories were the most productive in the
world. What has happened to change this?
A: Volumes have been written on why the U.S. has lost its productivity advantage. Tables
12-11. Q: Distinguish between the methods used in (a) time study of existing tasks, (b) time study
of proposed new tasks, and (c) work sampling.
12-12. Q: Comment on the application of the work measurement methods cited in question 12-13 to
knowledge workers such as engineers.
A: Classical time study and MTM methods are designed to apply to routine, repetitive work
12-13. Q: Identify three types of maintenance and distinguish between them.
A: Corrective maintenance is repair work undertaken because of breakdown or failure.
12-14. Q: Discuss how Total Productive Maintenance relates to other concepts developed in this
chapter.
12-15. Q: Where might engineering knowledge and skills be valuable in each of the following
functions: (a) human resources management, (b) purchasing, and (c) other materials
management activities?
A: (a) Engineering talents are valuable in the human resources management tasks of
12-16. Q: Discuss how the management functions of leading, planning, organizing, and controlling
relate to the production process.
PROBLEMS
12-1. Q: The Ajax Corporation is proud of its quality control program. It employs two quality
engineers at an average $35,000 salary for quality planning and engineering, test method
development, and quality training. Every item is 100% inspected using six inspectors earning
an average of $20,000 a year. Nevertheless, in a typical year about 100 items averaging $200
in value must be scrapped, and another 200 require rework costing an average $75. Customer
service costs estimated at $11,000 annually are generated by still more defects that slip
through. Analyze the firm’s quality cost situation and make recommendations
A: The quality cost data should first be divided into the four ASAC categories:
12-2. Q: Tomatoes are packaged in a can designed to hold a nominal 28 ounces of product. Five
cans sampled randomly were found to contain 28.3, 27.3, 29.1, 28.5, and 27.8 ounces of
product. Calculate the mean value and range of sample data, and (b) calculate the variance
and standard deviation of the sample.
A: (a) As shown in the table below, the mean is Σx/n = 141.0/n = 28.2, and the range is (29.1
12-3. Q: An ‘x-bar’ control chart is developed for recording the mean value of a quality
characteristic using a sample size of three. The control chart has control limits (LCL and
UCL) of 1.000 and 1.020 pounds respectively. If a new sample of three items has weights of
1.023, 0.999, and 1.025, what can we say about the lot (batch) it came from?
