Six Sigma Quality Planning

Chapter 1

1. Define satellite-level metrics for a for-profit company, nonprofit organization, school, religious organization, or political organization. Answer: In a for-profit company, satellite-level metrics focus on the financials including key elements such as dividend payment, stock price increase, ROE (return on equity), sales growth, OI (operating income) growth, earning per share, debt service charge, P/E (price to earnings) ratio, economic profit, ROIC (return on invested capital) and people development. Corporate satellite-level metrics is tracked over time and is not bounded by calendar years.

2. Create a strategic plan for improving a set of satellite-level metrics for one of the categories noted in Exercise 1. Answer:

Chapter 2
1. Describe a situation in which you think management, organizations, or 
society is addressing the wrong problem. Answer: I would like to take the Chinese national football team as an example.On June 15 Chinese national team faced humiliating 1:5 loss to Thailand. Though the coach Camacho should take some responsibility, firing him is an excuse to avoid the real problems that have brought endless failures. The national team has had 11 coaches since 1992 including seven foreigners, resulting in an inconsistent style of tactics.

From my prospective, there are many reasons that lead to the national team’s problem such as the schools’ training methods, the scarcity of pitches, the state’s emphasis on individual over team sport, its ruthless treatment of athletes, the one-child policy, bribery and the corrosive influence of gambling. Most lead back to the same conclusion: the root cause is the system. (Coach Camacho was hired in 2011 with a reported annual salary of 2.8 million euros ($3.75 million), and another 1.5 million euros for his previous team, making him the most expensive coach the team has ever had.

The former Spanish national and Real Madrid coach headed the Chinese national team in 20 matches and lost 11, including the early loss in the 2014 World Cup Qualifier last year and a consecutive three losses in friendly matches in June.)

3. Describe customers for the organization chosen in Exercise 1.1 (Exercise 1 in Chapter 1). Build a strategy for determining the VOC and tracking how well their needs are fulfilled. Answer: Customer for a for-profit organization refers to who is relative to the profit of each member of supply chain with the products or the service provided by the organization including the end user and the component suppliers. Most of them do not complain, however, if their expectation is not fulfilled, they get unsatisfied. And they would be quite satisfied when they get wow quality service/product. The VOC is assessed at two levels: the high level (satellite level) and the project level (e.g. 30,000-foot level). For the project level, tools such as QFD (quality function deployment) and Cause-and-effect Matrix can be used to collect the VOC. Or when the tools are too complicated for the project, a survey towards the customer can be used. First conduct brainstorming sessions and list all expected features, problem resolutions, and so forth. Then develop customer satisfaction survey questions.

Though satisfaction is infinitely variable, for practical reasons, a satisfaction scale would need to be limited. The customer should be afforded sufficient flexibility in his or her response that the match between the customer experience and the response on the scale are comfortable. Scales used to indicate customer satisfaction are often 5-point, 7-point, or 10-point, such that zero always represents the highest degree of dissatisfaction. On a 5-point scale, a customer would be asked to select a response to a questionnaire item from the following set of alternatives: 1 Very unsatisfied, 2 Moderately unsatisfied, 3 Neutral, 4 Moderately satisfied, 5 Very satisfied. After that, analyze customer satisfaction data. Strong analyses of customer satisfaction will include mathematical and statistical methods of data analysis. For example, the survey data can be put into a plot to build a perceptual map. The average question response could similarly be plotted in order to obtain the tracking information on customer satisfaction.