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CHAPTER 2
Foundations of Quality Management
ANSWERS TO INSTRUCTOR RESERVE MATERIALS
Instructor Reserve materials are older Quality in Practice features and Cases from previous editions
that may be used by the instructor to give the students additional experiences. These are available
in the Instructor materials in a separate folder.
Quality in Practice – Kenneth W. Monfort College of Business
1. Monfort College of Business’ (MCB) mission and vision are stated as:
MCB’s Mission – Our mission is to deliver excellent undergraduate business programs
and related learning opportunities that prepare students for successful careers and
responsible leadership in business.
MCB’s Vision – Our vision is to build a reputation of excellence in Colorado and beyond
for preparing future business leaders and professionals.
Their mission and vision drive their two long-term strategies that guide its actions: a
2. MCB’s philosophy of continuous improvement guides employee behavior and has been
key to attaining the mission and vision of the College. MCB’s commitment to an overall
organizational focus on continuous performance improvement and the significant
progress made toward development and deployment of this systematic approach, has
been driven externally and internally. Externally, UNC requires a regular cycle of
program review and evaluation, and AACSB accreditation maintenance (which also
requires continuous improvement) are both strong external drivers. Internally, drivers
include the commitment of MCB leadership to performance improvement and a strategic
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technologies, the encouragement and support from university leadership, and a series of
program accomplishments that have been contagious in creating expectations for
continued performance improvement.
3. A visit to the Baldrige web site (www.nist.gov/baldrige) helps to identify several “best
practices” that MCB employs that might be useful to any college or university for
improving quality. Some of these are:
a. Clearly state mission, vision, and values focused (in the case of MCB) on
undergraduate education. Values are “spelled out” for each academic component of
instruction, scholarship, and service.
b. Combine hi-touch and wide-tech – small class sizes combined with technology
infrastructure. This provides for many opportunities for experiential learning, while
helping students to learn about using the latest existing and emerging technologies
enabling them to make a seamless transition into the workplace after graduation.
c. Recruit faculty with professional depth – professors have a mix of academic
credentials and professional experience, with executives-in-residence having had
senior leadership positions in business and industry.
d. Build and maintain facilities that support and enhance the mission and vision of the
Quality in Practice – Toyota Motor Corporation, Ltd.
1. Toyota’s guiding principles include:
1) Honor the language and spirit of the law of every nation and undertake open and fair
corporate activities to be a good corporate citizen of the world.
2) Respect the culture and customs of every nation and contribute to economic and social
development through corporate activities in the communities.
3) Dedicate ourselves to providing clean and safe products and to enhancing the quality
of life everywhere through all our activities.
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4) Create and develop advanced technologies and provide outstanding products and
services that fulfill the needs of customers worldwide.
5) Foster a corporate culture that enhances individual creativity and teamwork value,
while honoring mutual trust and respect between labor and management.
6) Pursue growth in harmony with the global community through innovative
management.
7) Work with business partners in research and creation to achieve stable, long-term
growth and mutual benefits, while keeping ourselves open to new partnerships.
As stated in the chapter: “The TQ philosophy was based initially on three core principles:
customer focus, teamwork, and continuous improvement.” It’s interesting to note that
Toyota’s Guiding Principles focus on being a socially responsible, world entity. Customers
and stakeholders are seen to be part of the society in which they live. Five of the seven
principles speak explicitly of a global mission.
2. Other non-profit organizations might also learn from Toyota. Their constancy of purpose
and customer focus is exemplary. Their attention to detail and use of kaizen continuous
improvement methods has been documented time and time again. They use best practices
and share new approaches rapidly among organizational units. They treat their workers as
associates, and constantly seek suggestions for improvements from their partners.
Education could pick up some ideas on how to become a learning organization from
Toyota. Government could use some lessons in how to become more customer friendly
and how to develop more effective and efficient processes.
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Case – Child Focus, Inc.
1. Just as in any organization, profit or non-profit, it would be necessary to understand the
environment, the infrastructure, and the degree of commitment to building a quality
organization. I would want to ask:
• What support for quality do you have from your leadership team and board of directors?
• How have your mission and vision been developed, and how do associates see their
impact on the organization?
• How does your continuous strategic and tactical planning system work, who is
involved, and what types of goals are set?
• How do you train, empower, and reward your employees?
• How do you develop and reward leadership in the organization?
• What do you do in order to carry out continuous improvement of your processes?
Case – Mercantile Stores
1. Mercantile views quality as part of their mission. Two aspects of this are to provide the
highest level of customer service and a broad assortment of fashionable high-quality, high-
value products. Information technology (Quick Response) was implemented to improve
point-of-sale information needed by salespeople and inventory planning and control. This
technology allows higher efficiency in back-room operations and also serves the customer
better by ensuring that the right amount and type of inventory will be on the shelves when
needed. Through the University Business School, everyone from sales associates to
managers are trained and empowered to take responsibility and to make customer
satisfaction a priority.
2. The emphasis in this case appears to be on internal quality, although a customer focus is
evident. Components of time, timeliness, consistency and accuracy are certainly addressed
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Case: Nightmare on Telecom Street
1. This experience seems all too familiar to most of us. The points of failure are: 1) the number
of phone rings before pickup; 2) possibly, the annoyance of having to deal with an
automated system, rather than a human operator; 3) use of overlapping categories at the
first two stages [What if you’re going with a company group? going to an international
conference?]; 3) long delays on hold; 4) asking for a card number that you were not warned
earlier that you would need; 5) requiring highly personal information (4 digits of a social
security number), for no apparent reason; 6) having an emergency number, without
2. The answer to this is straightforward — toss out the system and start over again! Given that
an automated system is felt to be essential, each of the above failure points should be
addressed and corrected.
Case – Shiny Hills Farms
1. The case describes the quality assurance (QA) function of Shiny Hills Farms, which seems
to take a very traditional approach to “inspecting quality into” the product. The activities
include controlling product weight, appearance and shelf life of the product. The emphasis
is on QA specifications, monitoring procedures and temperatures, weights, USDA
standards, and charting performance. Other departments do seem to have a concept of
modern quality methods that could contribute to TQ. For example, R&D uses focus groups
to help design products that meet customer needs. Engineering personnel are replacing
lines with ergonomically correct designs, although this may be pointed toward productivity
improvement, as opposed to quality improvement.
2. The case narrative and the answer to Question 1 show that the QA department sees quality
as a “control” function. The TQ concept, with a high level of employee involvement and
commitment, QA personnel serving as trainers and technical support people and the
concept of internal customers seem to have little place at Shiny Hill.
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3. Shiny Hill could improve its quality by focusing on both internal and external customer
needs, reducing reliance on inspection, implementing continuous improvement concepts,
promoting employee involvement. The culture of inspecting quality into the product and
Case: U.S. Water Resource Agency – Flagstaff District
1. Even though the Flagstaff District is a public, non-profit government agency, it still has
customers. These include virtually everyone in their geographic region who uses water.
Some specific examples are commercial and recreational users of the waterways, locks
and dams; people who live along the waterways, including farmers and resident who may
be impacted by flood control and environmental protection actions; organizations for
which it performs reimbursable projects; those affected by regulations; and, perhaps,
indirectly, any organization or individual who uses water from the waterways.
2. The district might define quality in terms of meeting and exceeding customer expectations.
In many ways, they operate a service business similar to utilities, such as a waterworks,
gas and electric utility, etc. Their customers want to be able to use their services with the
assurance that they will be treated politely, by knowledgeable client service people, with a
minimum expenditure of time, using an easy–to-understand process, which is dependable
and accurate, at an affordable cost. How could USWRA- Flagstaff use this definition to