Question

1.       How has the emphasis of quality control changed in recent years? Describe some of the modern quality control techniques that illustrate this change in emphasis.

2.       How are MRP and ERP similar? How do they differ?

3.       PERT is a popular control method used by organizations. Explain the purpose of PERT analysis, and describe the steps involved in constructing a PERT network. Your explanation should include a discussion of the significance of the critical path in a PERT network.

4. List the three generations in the workplace today, and provide at least two characteristics of each generation that affect their motivation.

5. Explain how managers could motivate employees by using expectancy theory? Create a story/example of expectancy theory at work, incorporating the three questions that according to expectancy theory employees will ask.

6. Compare the assumptions Theory X makes about employees with those of Theory Y. How do these different assumptions influence management styles?

Answer 1

1. The emphasis of quality control has changed in recent years due to the fact that quality control function, in the contemporary environment, is a part of the operation management department. These days there is no separate quality control department within most of the organizations as it used to be in the past. This change was brought about due to the high costs that organizations had to accrue with regards to their quality control department. Secondly the change was introduces as the technique of analyzing quality at the end of production was not a pragmatic process.

The modern quality control techniques have made the process a continuous process. Now, instead of being performed at the end of production, quality control is now performed at every step and stage of the production process. This change led to introduction of new standards and new techniques in the domain of quality control. For example a new standard of six sigma was introduced in which defects per million units should be 3.4 and not more than that. Modern quality control techniques are based on statistical quality control and statistical process control.