From the power of six sigma by subir chowdhury

1. What company and division did Joe (the main character) work for?

2. Who is Larry Hogan? What company and division did Larry work for? How does Joe know Larry?

3. Who is Cathy Baker? What did she do that really benefited the company she worked for?
4. Larry said, “The real power of Six Sigma is simple because it combines _________ _________ with _________ _________.

5. According to Larry, what are the two ways to win a football game? What analogy does he make with football and a business?*
6. Larry said, “Six Sigma is a management ______________ focused on _______________ _____________, _______________, and _______________.” “It establishes a measurable status to achieve and embodies a _________________ _________-__________ ____________ to increase ______________ _______________ and dramatically enhance the ______________ _____________.”
7. What is DPMO? How many occur at 3 sigma? At 3.8 sigma, what amount of output is correct?
8. What was Larry’s point when Joe estimated that a burger restaurant on average “screwed up” a dozen hamburgers a day?
9. What are the two most common misconceptions about Six Sigma (according to Larry)?
10. Why does Larry say that focusing on customer retention is at least as important as attracting new customers?

11. Who determines what to do to make customers happier and increase profits?

12. Define each key role in Six Sigma (those with an “^*” should have a substantially greater explanation to clearly convey the role and duties.)
    1. Executive Leadership
    2. Executive Champion
    3. Deployment Champion
    4. Project Champion
    5. Master Black Belt^*
    6. Black Belt^*
    7. Green Belt^*

13. Who are the only people who work full-time on a Six Sigma project?
14. How many projects per year might each Black Belt complete? How much money can be saved doing this?
15. How many weeks of training for a black belt? Is it all at once? What happens during the period of time the black belt is under training that makes the preparation successful?
16. Based upon Larry and Joe’s discussion, define and describe the DEFINE phase of the Six Sigma process. Which of the problems should a business pick to work on?
17. Based upon Larry and Joe’s discussion, define and describe the MEASURE phase of the Six Sigma process. Why is it so important?
18. How does Larry say to measure “capability”? What is CTQ?
19. Based upon Larry and Joe’s discussion, define and describe the ANALYZE phase of the Six Sigma process. What are the two big questions to answer?
20. Based upon Larry and Joe’s discussion, define and describe the IMPROVE phase of the Six Sigma process.
21. Based upon Larry and Joe’s discussion, define and describe the CONTROL phase of the Six Sigma process.
22. Finish Larry’s sentence “Once the plan’s in place, it’s the Master Black Belt’s job to make sure the team _______________________________, ____________________________, and __________________________________.”

23. What was a major quality problem with the pizzas according to the customers? What was the measurement they did to understand the significance of this problem?
24. What about the process caused this problem? (There were multiple things.)
25. Why did management approve the major change suggested by Larry? What about the Six Sigma method was important to obtaining approval?
26. Besides eliminating defective pizzas, what positive benefit did American Pizza receive?

27. What was the next big problem for American Pizza to deal with?
28. How did the customer’s definition of this problem differ from what American Pizza’s definition? What was the measureable difference?
29. What did they do to improve this? How could they afford to spend that amount of money on doing those things?

Describe one other project undertaken by Larry for American Pizza

A large electronics manufacturing firm makes HD televisions for export around the world. The firm is fairly new. This industry is extremely price competitive; building a solid market share quickly is the only path to survival. The company makes a limited number of models so that manufacturing can be standardized. This also keeps quality high, which is a must. All employees work at the main factory, except for a handful of sales teams who have small offices in key cities around the world. Not much changes in the company from month-to-month, except that sales volume is steadily increasing. When designing their organization structure, what choices will support the goals and culture of this organization? Select the five choices that apply.

Provide a full paragraph biography on each top/key executive for General Motors (Do not include the CEO) Include pictures if possible. The company website is a good source. Based on the photos and backgrounds, how diverse do you feel the make up of the top executives is? Consider the female/male makeup, the ethnic make up and the different races of board members.

Provide a few strategies companies should consider to better cope with climate change disruptions.

Assume you are the logistics manager for fictional StayFresh Grocery Stores, in Cleveland, Ohio. You are responsible for seven stores in the metropolitan area.

*How might you employ cross-docking at your biggest regional warehouse to improve the distribution of goods to each of the stores?

*Identify how cross-docking works and how it could aid in on-time (and fresh) produce deliveries.

What is social business? Discuss its advantages using relevant examples.

how PetMed will increase its competitive advantage by increasing the acquisition of new customers and increasing sales to loyal customers. What can they do?

Select two Fortune 500 companies. Compare their entrepreneurial orientation (autonomy, innovativeness, proactiveness, competitive aggressiveness, and risk taking). Based on your analysis, which one of the two companies you selected has a stronger entrepreneurial orientation?

The global trade environment and the dynamics of competition among organizations are the most important topics for understanding and practicing management in today’s markets. The focus of this TMA is to select an example of a successful global organization/brand and discuss the factors that had led to its success along with the challenges that it faces in operating globally.

Your answer should be in the form of an essay. The essay should be well organized, that is, it has an introduction (2.5 marks), body and conclusion (2.5 marks). The introduction should introduce the topic.

In the body paragraphs, the following points should be discussed:

1. Name the global brand/organization and briefly describe its products, markets and activities.
2. What does it mean to be a global organization? Why is your chosen organization global?
3. Discuss the main success factors of the global brand. What is the marketing strategy, competitors and competitive advantage?
4. Discuss the concept of globalization vs. customization and the measures taken by the global brand to recognize that offerings and communication should be adapted to local preferences and conditions. Support your answer with solid examples.
5. Discuss the main challenges faced by the global organization in brand building such as positioning, communication, environmental change, product life cycle, brand equity, market share, consumer behavior, etc...(10 marks)
6. Discuss the organization’s future plans, expansions and diversification.

As part of a quality improvement initiative, Consolidated Electronics employees complete a three-day training program on teaming and a two-day training program on problem solving. The manager of quality improvement requested that at least 8 training programs on teaming and at least 10 training programs on problem solving be offered during the next six months. In addition, senior-level management specified that at least a total of 25 training programs must be offered during this period. Consolidated Electronics uses a consultant to teach the training programs. During the next six months, the consultant has 84 days of training time available. Each training program on teaming costs $10,000 and each training program on problem solving costs $8,000

1) Build a spreadsheet representation of the model, and then solve it using Solver. Keep the solution as part of your spreadsheet. How many training programs of each kind would be offered, and what would be the total cost at the optimal point?

A consumer products company has identified a potential product which would require $1,800,000 in start-up costs to launch. If it turns out to be a major success, there will be a $10,000,000 contribution to profit. A minor success would give a profit contribution of $2,000,000, while a failure would have a profit contribution of only $500,000. The company is most worried about this third possibility, since in this case the net profit would be $500,000 minus $1,800,000, i.e. a loss of $1,300,000. In the past, only one new product in twenty became a major success, while three-quarters of them became failures; there is no reason to suspect that this product would be any different from the rest. Some of their competitors use an outside independent market research firm to give them advice about new products. The fee for the research firm is $50,000; in return, the consumer products company would be told that the proposed product either “looks well” or “looks poorly”. The research company had established a track record which gave them confidence about saying the following: 1. If a product would be a major success, they would say “looks well” with probability 0.8; 2. If a product would be a minor success, they would say “looks poorly” with probability 0.7; 3. If a product would be a failure, they would say “looks poorly” with proba- bility 0.9. Develop a decision tree and solve it to obtain a recommendation for the con- sumer products company. Show all workings and calculations

• State your Research Topic, Objective/Purpose and Research Question(s).

Aviation safety: pilot fatigue

Should the FAA allow for cockpit naps to help with pilot fatigue? Does even taking short naps of 40 minutes even help with fatigue and improve alertness?

• List and label the variables, including independent, dependent, intervening, or moderating.
• Explain the relationships among the variables.
• What is the purpose of operationalizing variables?
• How would you operationalize the variables in your research question(s)? You can mention more than one possible option for these, as there can be different ways of operationalizing the same variables.
• Develop a set of hypotheses (null and alternative) from your identified variables that address your identified research question(s).

1. Discuss strategic advantages and disadvantages of joining the European Union.

2. Why do some countries refuse to join (or are leaving/left - Britain) the EU while others take advantage of the opportunity?

A farmer has been in the habit of always planting potatoes on his farm. In previous years, the seeds for the potatoes were planted in the spring, and were ready to harvest in mid-July. After that, a second planting took place in late July, which was ready to harvest in early October.

This year, however, there is concern that a blight might destroy some or all of the potato crop. One thing he could do would be to plant a different crop such as peas which would not be affected by the blight. The peas would have only a single planting at a cost of $40,000. This planting would yield a crop in October worth $70,000 if the weather turns out to be good, or $30,000 if the weather turns out to be poor. There is a 60% chance that the weather will be good.

If, however, he decides to plant potatoes, he will have to worry about the blight (but the weather has little effect on the potato crop and can be ignored). The potato crop would cost $60,000 to plant. There is a 10% chance of a severe blight, which would destroy the crop, and render any attempt at a second planting in late July not worth doing. A mild blight (20% chance) would partially destroy the crop, making it worth only $35,000, while having no blight (70% chance) would produce a crop worth $80,000. After either a mild blight or no blight, a second planting could be undertaken, with the same costs and revenues as the first. The probability of a severe, mild, or no blight would be 15%, 30%, and 55% if the first planting had a mild blight, but would be 0%, 5%, and 95% if the first planting had no blight.

NOTE: The crop planted in the Spring will be either peas or potatoes; doing a bit of both is not an option in this problem.

Draw the tree, solve it using the rollback procedure, and state the recommen- dation and the ranking payoff. When drawing the tree, use payoff nodes for inter- mediate payoffs.

Please show all workings and show where the numbers come from.