QUESTION 1

Explain why continual quality improvement is important. How is

your company doing this? 

Continual quality improvement is fundamental. This is what make a

company survive in a global market place. There are tons of
companies that are competing nowadays and the challenge begins
with a constant  research for better products that is perfectly
aligned with  quality improvement. The product nowadays need to
respond fastly to the market demand and companies are aware
that customer needs are not static; they change continually. A
special product feature that is considered innovative today will be
considered just routine tomorrow. A product cost that is considered
a bargain today will be too high to compete tomorrow. A good case
in point in this regard is the ever-falling price for each new feature
introduced in the personal computer. The only way a company can
hope to compete in the modern marketplace is to improve
continually. Our company is deeply aware of this and the
investments we are involved with count research and collaboration
with universities, in order to develop the best quality and innovative
products. Every employee in the company is trained and they do
their best. Continual and periodical quality check are done and this
gave added value to what we are producing, but the customers are
willing to pay more cause they perceive the big work behind
them.  Our final aim is to break last year’s record in order to make
a new one that is even better. 

QUESTION 2.
What is management’s role in continual quality improvement ?

The first step to make ,in order to gain continual quality

improvement, is not only linked with the philosophy of a company
or its policy. Upper managers and executives must participate
personally and extensively in the effort of bringing quality. There
should be a leader able to act is role properly,  able to apply the
concept of quality management, in the work environment. The role
of a manager in quality improvement is to  establish goals to guide
and metrics to measure continual improvement. This means that
quality improvements are reached for the top to the bottom and
subordinates are not leave alone. 

The following points describe how they can succeed:

1. Establishing an organization-wide quality council and serving on
it.  
2. Working with the quality council to establish specific quality
improvement goals with timetables and target dates.
3. Providing the necessary moral and physical support. Moral
support manifests itself as commitment. Physical support comes in
the form of the resources needed to accomplish the quality
improvement objectives.
4. Scheduling periodic progress reviews and giving recognition
where it is deserved.
5. Building continual quality improvement into the regular reward
system, including promotions and pay increases.  

QUESTION 3 
Discuss the Kaizen approach. How is your company doing this?

Kaizen is the name given by the Japanese to the concept of

continual incremental improvement. Kai means “change”
and zen means “good.” Kaizen, therefore, means making changes
for the better on a continual, never-ending basis. The improvement
aspect of Kaizen refers to people, processes, and products. If the
Kaizen philosophy is in place, all aspects of an organization should
be improving all the time. People, proc- esses, management
practices, and products should improve continually: “good enough”
is never good enough. 
Kaizen is the continuous improvement that is based on certain
guiding principles: Good processes bring good results Go see for
yourself to grasp the current situation Speak with data, manage by
facts Take action to contain and correct root causes of
problems Work as a team Kaizen is everybody’s business
The points here above are linked with the Kaizen Value System
that can be summarized as continual improvement of all things, at
all levels, all the time, forever. All of the strategies for achieving this
fall under the Kaizen. Executive managers, middle managers,
supervisors, and line employees all play key roles in implementing
Kaizen.

To improve day by day you need to identify the problems within

the company and big results come from many small changes
accumulated over time. This is not to be misunderstood, in fact
Kaizen involves most of the part of a process, he best ways to
identify problems that represent opportunities for improvement is
to use a checklist that focuses the attention of employees on those
factors that are most likely in need of improvement. These factors
include personnel, work techniques, work methods, work
procedures, time, facilities, equipment, systems, software and tools.
The Kaizen approach is also linked with exceeding customers
satisfaction. Regardless of how customers define quality, it can
always be improved and it should be, continually. Kaizen is a broad
concept that promotes quality from the all-encompassing Big Q
perspective.
Our company wants to make changes that bing to best solution
than before. The Kaizen approach is followed for this reason and it
affects the processes in a company, managing the data that are
available.

QUESTION 4.
How would you describe a lean system? How is your company doing
this? 

A lean or a just in time (JIT) system is also known as a PULL

system, it means that the market request for a product pulls the
entire process for that particular product. In other words the
consumer plays the main role in the chain of value, because in a
company that adopts the lean philosophy you are not going to
produce as much as you can (PUSH system), but you produce only
what is necessary.Just in time is an administration theory that
looks to kill all types of waste. In other words, JIT/Lean delivers
just what is required, when it is required, in the amount
required. The reduction of waste approach to Lean implementation
grew out of Toyota’s desire to eliminate waste in manufacturing
processes. Lean focuses on reducing and, ideally, eliminating the
following types of waste, shown in the figure. Overproduction (do
not produce more than the consumer wants) Inventory (without
overproduction the inventory costs are lowered) Motion (design the
productive chain and workplace to reduce the unnecessary
movements) Transportation (specific scheduled rides to supply the
workstations) Over processing (do not do anything redundant)
Defects (the defected products are very few because of the control)
Waiting (design the workstations in a way that reduces the waiting
time between an operation and the following one) Under utilization
(fulfil the worker’s skills)
My company is doing this, working on quality improvements that
avoid waste. We are involved in the food and hygiene. There will be
continuous check on its production in order to make our product
aligned with the highest benchmark in the market. Having a deep
check on the process will allow us to escape from waste defects, and
in the long term it will increase our incomes.

QUESTION 5.
What is lean six-sigma and how would you apply it to a quality
management system?

Six Sigma is one of the most innovative developments to emerge out

of the total quality movement. Its purpose is to improve processes
to the point where the defect rate is 3.4 per million or less.
 
Originally designed for use in high-volume production settings, it
has nonetheless been found equally suited to service organizations,
including the military, hospitality industry, supermarkets, and so
on.
Its benefits include the following: Cost reduction Productivity
improvement Market-share growth Customer retention Cycle-time
reduction Culture change Product/service development
In manufacturing, for example, there are many possibilities of
defects and most good companies try to operate in the 3-sigma to
4-sigma region. Their number of defects range between 63 and
2,700 defects per million. The Six Sigma companies expect just 3.4
defects per million.
 
The six core steps of this approach are the following:
 
1. Identify the product characteristics wanted by customers.
2. Classify the characteristics in terms of their criticality.
3. Determine if the classified characteristics are controlled by part
and/or process.
4. Determine the maximum allowable tolerance for each classified
characteristic.
5. Determine the process variation for each classified characteristic.
6. Change the design of the product, process, or both to achieve
better performance.
 
Six Sigma is a strategy within the context of total quality that
moves the target to a much higher level of quality and it is not a
concept that supplants or replaces total quality.

QUESTION 6
Define bench marking. Define auditing. How does bench marking
and auditing relate to each other?

Bench marking is the process of comparing and measuring an

organization’s operations or its internal processes against those of a
best-in-class performer from inside or outside its industry. It is
about finding the secrets of success of any given function or process
so that a company can learn from the information and improve on
it. It is a process to help a company close the gap with the best-in-
class performer. A process of emulation will start. The organization
involved will gain from the exchange of information.
Now it is time to define what is financial auditing. Financial
auditing is the process of examining an organization's financial
records to determine if they are accurate and in accordance with
any regulations, and laws. External auditors come in from outside
the organization to examine financial records and provide an
external opinion on these records (law requires that all public
companies have their financial statements externally audited).
Internal auditors work for the organization as internal employees to
examine records and help improve internal processes.
Thank to auditing and bench marking a company can
easily understand if it is reaching market and price standards.
Relating these two "tools" a company it is able to accomplish
continual improvements, meeting customers need and producing
cost-effective items. 

QUESTION 7
How can you apply bench marking data in auditing processes,
systems, designs, products, factories and services?

As said before, bench markings are used to improve what a

company can produce/make. There are fourteen different steps
that can be applied in order to achieve benefits and improvements.

Step 1: Obtain Management Commitment

Bench marking  requires a great deal of time from key people, and
money must be available for travel to the bench marking partners’
facilities. Both of those require management’s approval.
 
Step 2: Baseline Your Own Processes
When a process is base lined, it establishes the starting point for
process improvement. A base lined process will have complete
documentation of its inputs and outputs.
 
Step 3: Identify and Document Both Strong and Weak Processes
The processes that are the weakest are the ones that are most
detrimental to competitiveness. They offer the most room for
dramatic improvement.
 
Step 4: Select Processes to Be Bench marked
Never benchmark a process that you do not wish to change. There
is no point in it.
 
Step 5: Form Bench marking Teams
The teams that will do the actual bench marking should include
people who operate the process. These people are in the best
position to recognize the differences between your process and that
of your bench marking partner.
 
Step 6: Research the Best-in-Class
It is important that a bench marking partner be selected on the
basis of being best-in-class for the process being bench marked
(don’t limit research to like industries).
 
Step 7: Select Candidate Best-in-Class Bench marking Partners
When the best-in-class have been identified, the team must decide
with which among them it would prefer to work. The best bench
marking partnerships provide some benefit for both parties.
 
Step 8: Form Agreements with Bench marking Partners
When a company is willing to participate, an agreement can usually
be forged without difficulty. The terms will include visit
arrangements to both companies, limits of disclosure, and points of
contact. In most cases, these are informal.
 
Step 9: Collect Data
Observe, collect, and document everything about the partner’s
process. In addition, try to determine the underlying factors,
practices, and processes: what is it that makes the company
successful in this area?
 
Step 10: Analyze the Data; Establish the Gap
With the data in hand, the team must analyze them thoroughly in
comparison with the data taken from its own process. In most
cases, the team will be able to establish the performance gap.
 
Step 11: Plan Action to Close the Gap or Surpass
It is very important to approach implementation deliberately and
with great care. In some cases, it may be wise to try the new
process in a pilot model.
 
Step 12: Implement Change to the Process
The easiest step of all may be the actual implementation, assuming
that the team’s planning has been thorough and that execution
adheres to the plan.
 
Step 13: Monitor Results
After the process is installed and running, performance should
come up to the benchmark quickly. All processes need constant
attention in the form of monitoring.
 
Step 14: Update Benchmarks; Continue the Cycle
Let continual improvement take over for the best processes, and
concentrate bench marking on the ones that remain weak
(improvement process is a cycle).

QUESTION 8
What is a JIT system? How is your company doing this? 

A JIT/Lean system  permits the production of only what is needed,

only when it is needed, and only in the quantity needed. This must
apply not only to the just-in-time/Lean manufacturer, but also to
its suppliers if the system is to eliminate all possible waste. In this
mode, there is no warehousing and, therefore, no wasted resources
for buildings,maintenance, people to care for the material, spoilage,
obsolescence, or other related problems. The main aim of the JIT is
to reduce waste of materials and costs! Using the JIT/Lean there is
a continual checking in the line production and the accumulation of
products want to be avoided. The customers have a big
importance, implementing this method, because e nothing is built
until there is an order for it. After an order is received for a
product, the final assembly process is turned on to put together the
required number of units.
The JIT is completely opposite to the classic "PUSH method"
that set the production schedules based on a forecast of future
needs, which, in turn, is based on historical data and trend
analysis.
Our company is doing this, trying to listen to customers needs,
instead of estimate the demand looking at old data. We want to
exceed customers needs in order to produce the right quantity of
the products we sell to the market avoiding cost for the inventory,
accumulating items that can have also an expiration date or shelf
life and can lose their values without being bought by anyone.

QUESTION 9
What are the benefits of JIT/lean? How is your company doing
this? 

There are some benefits that are linked with the JIT/lean. The
following are the usual targets of such  implementation. With the
implementation of this technique there will be the inventory near
to be "zero", the cycle time will be checked more and there will be
continual improvements and reduction of waste.
Of course, the first point, doesn't make sense in reality, in fact the
real objective is to minimize the inventory to the maximum possible
extent without shutting down production.
Moreover this approach aims to reduce the production cycle time
(the period bounded by the time materials are sent to the
manufacturing floor for the making of a product and the time the
finished goods are dispatched from the manufacturing floor)
Generally speaking, the shorter the production cycle time, the lower
the production cost. Short cycles improve a factory’s ability to
respond quickly to changing customer demands as well.
 
Another important aspect of the lean benefit is the topic of the
continual improvement. It seeks to eliminate waste in all forms,
improve quality of products and services, and improve customer
responsiveness and do all of this while at the same time reducing
costs. 
 
The last main feature is concerned with reducing the waste.
Our company is trying to follow this path with a big
commitment because we want to avoid all the kind of waste that
there are in processes.

Our company produces hygienic food. The production of this kind of

goods, are a little bit difficult to manage, because a lot of things are
to be kept in mind, when it is time and there is no time to wait for
a demand. Despite this, our goods are fundamental for every person
and are consumed daily. 

QUESTION 10
Discuss automation system ideas for JIT/lean . How is your
company doing this? 

JIT/Lean and automation are compatible may be advantageous in

many applications but before talking about the automation, I think
that the first step that need to be solved is the one about human
processes.If you have not solved the problems in the human
operated versions of those same applications, you are not ready to
automate them effectively.

Having said that there are many examples of very successful

automated plants, especially for high-volume manufacturing. So it
doesn't matter, once a process is deeply known, whether the
processes are operated by humans or robots. Automation and
JIT/Lean are completely compatible. Probably the best example of
that is in today’s auto industry. JIT/Lean was originally designed
for an auto producer, and as automation has been integrated, and
as automation capabilities have evolved, JIT/Lean has been there
doing its job. In these plants, JIT/Lean is at least as valuable as it is
in plants with less automation. Its pull system prevents
overproduction of any manufacturing element, and supplies
materials at the front end of the process when needed, and does it
without the massive inventories of the pre-JIT/Lean era. Whether
the processes are operated by humans or robots makes no
difference in this regard.

Our company has trained deeply all the employees and now, many
process, including the the making of food automated, in order to
produce high volume of goods that are need for the market,
avoiding waste also due to human mistakes.
12) SOCIAL NETWORKING ARTICLES

ARTICLE 1: Amazon begins testing customer deliveries using Rivian

electric vans
MY VIEWS: According to me Amazon's plan of getting the electric
vans into the market is a very good initiative as it is good for the
environment. The vans also includes special features such as alexa,
traffic assistance etc that can be really helpful for the drivers. It
travels around  150 miles a charge, so they should plan of getting
more charge stations or increase the capacity of the vehicles. The
article says that people are also getting very excited about the
electric vans which can create an influence in the market that will
make people to buy electric vehicles.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/03/amazon-begins-testing-
customer-deliveries-using-rivian-electric-vans/

ARTICLE 2: More evidence an afternoon nap can be good for your

brain 
MY VIEWS: According to me rest is necessary for the body to keep
it calm and active. One should take smaller naps usually called as
the power naps to make body more active but the nap should not
increase more than one hour as it is not good for the body to sleep
more. This can lead to various heart diseases and a feeling of
laziness. Today's generation has a very disturbed sleep cycle as they
do not sleep on time. So, timing also plays an important role as
your body needs rest in the night in order to heal.

https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/more-evidence-afternoon-
nap-cognitive-brain-health/
ARTICLE 3: Pandemic aftershocks overwhelm global supply lines
MY VIEWS: This article is based on the affect of the pandemic on
the supply chain lines. The prices of the supply went very high after
the pandemic and supply of products went less. Many companies
such as GAP underwent supply problems. Markets in America and
other countries faced this problem together as there was shortage
in everything including the suppliers, drivers etc. This is going to be
continued in the near future also as the nations are still trying to
recover and the pandemic is not over yet.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/01/24/pandemic
-shipping-economy/