DQM Core Units

Quality Improvement Projects flashcards

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Complete Flashcard Reference

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What are the four types of risk an improvement project carries?

Financial risk: the project overruns its budget or fails to deliver the expected return. Strategic risk: the project, even if delivered, fails to advance the organisation's actual objectives. Project risk: risks to the project's own delivery, such as schedule slippage, resource shortfalls and scope creep. Performance risk: the improved process fails to perform as intended once implemented.

What does DMAIC stand for, and which methodology is it associated with?

Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control. It is the Six Sigma cycle for a structured improvement project.

What are the six types of resources an improvement project may need?

Time, people, equipment, knowledge, information and finances.

What are the three types of improvement report, and when is each used?

Progress report: tracks the project against its plan and schedule while it is underway. Exception report: raised when the project deviates significantly from plan, such as a risk materialising or a milestone missed. Final report: summarises what was done, the results achieved and the lessons learned at closure.

Where do improvement opportunities come from?

Recurring non-conformities flagged by quality audits. Processes shown out of statistical control by control charts. Customer complaints and satisfaction trends. Pareto analysis of the most frequent or costly quality issues.

How does PDCA differ from DMAIC?

PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) is the general-purpose continuous-improvement cycle used throughout a quality management system, underlying most improvement tools. DMAIC is the more structured, data-heavy variant specifically associated with Six Sigma projects.

What activities go into developing an improvement plan?

Defining the specific, measurable improvement objective. Breaking the objective down into tasks (the work breakdown structure). Sequencing tasks and identifying dependencies. Setting milestones to track progress.

What does closing an improvement project involve?

Confirming all planned activities are complete. Verifying the improvement objective was actually achieved, against the measurements taken during monitoring. Documenting lessons learned and adding them to organisational knowledge. Formally releasing project resources and closing out the project record.

What does a project's scope state, and what does it prevent?

Exactly what the project will and will not address. It prevents scope creep from turning a focused improvement effort into an unmanageable attempt to fix everything at once.

What two things does monitoring an improvement project check?

Progress against the plan's milestones, which shows the project activities are proceeding to schedule. The process's own performance, re-measured once changes are implemented, which confirms the improvement actually worked, not merely that the activities were completed.

What question does every earlier quality unit point toward, and what does this unit do with it?