This assignment gives you the opportunity to express your own views about issues covered in the unit learning materials and to illustrate your understanding by making linkages to considered and detailed examples or observations, from your own life and work experiences, that significantly and directly relate to the issue or point.

You need to select only one issue from four of the five topics listed below, and write no more than

400 words for each issue.  Do not cover more than four topics or more than one issue from a topic, and do not exceed the word count for each issue.

Meeting the customer requirements (Oakland

1.    Topic 1:

a.     2003) is a reasonable definition of quality. b.     Customer satisfaction means we can wrap up our projects more rapidly (Frame 2002,

quoted in Reid 2013a)

c. Not doing it right the first time at every stage of the process, essentially, is the cause of failures and problems in the production of products and services (Oakland 2003). 

Project Quality Management 641

Index Number 13619

Assignment 1 

2.    Topic 2:

a. Excellent communication between customers and suppliers is the key to total quality performance (Oakland 2003).

b.     It is always cheaper to do it right the first time (Crosby in Beckford 1998, quoted in Reid

2013b).

c. If all employees are to participate in making the company or organisation successful…then they must also be trained in the basics of disciplined management (Oakland 2003).

3.    Topic 3:

a. All employees must be committed to quality in order for an organisation to achieve sustained improvement (Oakland 2003).

b. A strong competitive advantage…provides  direction and motivation to the entire organisation (Evans 2005, quoted in Reid 2013c).

c. …it is better to work together with a supplier to remove problems, improve capability, and generate a mutual understanding of “real” requirements, than to hop from one supplier to another and thereby experience a different set of problems each time (Oakland 2003).

4.    Topic 4:

a. Everything we experience in or from and organisation is the result of a design decision, or lack of one (Oakland).

b.     Customer expectations …are rarely well defined and may well evolve as the transaction

progresses (AS 3906, quoted in Reid 2013d).

c. …as suppliers, all employees need to identify their internal and external customers, their specific needs and suitable measures of satisfaction (AS3906, quoted in Reid 2013d).

5.    Topic 5:

a. In the organisation that is to succeed over the long term, performance must begin to be measured by the improvements seen by the customer (Oakland 2003).

b.     The only performance measurement is the cost of quality, which is the expense of non‐

conformance (Crosby 1979 in Sower and Quarles 2003, quoted in Reid 2013e)

c. It is the “internal” cost of lack of quality that lead to the claim that approximately one‐third of our efforts are wasted” (Oakland 2003).

Ensure you explain the direct connections that you see between your own detailed examples or observations and the specific aspects of an issue.  In other words, don’t just write in a stand‐alone way about your detailed example or observation.  You must clearly say how your detailed example or observation links with the issue.

Remember that your comments must relate to your own direct views and experiences and you must not write in general terms about what you consider “others” or “everyone” thinks or believes about an issue.  Nor is it adequate to base your assignment on a series of statements of what various authors say about an issue.

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