Hi
i have a question plz help me;
This is my Question
In the context of quality, what is the importance of each of the following terms?
The 5 whys
Brainstorming
Quality Circles
Pareto Analysis
thanks!
-Nimesh-
Context of Quality
-
satisfactionuk
- Expert Member
- Posts: 132
- Joined: Wed 08 Sep 2010 1:38 pm
- Location: Westminster - London
Hi,
All of the terms in your question are just tools to be used to aid better decision making and to identify and rank cause and effects of a problem.
From a cost perspective whenever faced with a quality problem the first thing to do is consider and investigate the five why's, however you must bare in mind that this process is not restricted to five, it can be as many why's as is necessary to reach the root cause of a problem. You generally start with the end of the problem and work backwards asking why the event happened. One must bare in mind that ‘effects’ can have multiple (partial) causes and so one must not restrict ones thinking to a linear process.
Considering this issue for project management in relation to quality once one has identified the cause and effect and produced a list or visual aid in the form of a hierarchy list of cause and effects or on a flow chart then one is able to examine each element in order to determine the cost of possible solutions. Not all of the solutions may be practical or even desirable, nor may they contribute significantly to the desired outcome. Very often one may identify out of a list of say 10 whys that only 2 or 3 are significant and if these are solved then the other effects either disapear or are tolerable in relation to the cost of solving them (the law of deminishing returns).
From a risk management perspective, one could appoint probabilistic risk factors to each element of the ‘Why’s’and use a monte-carlo simulation programme such as MS @Risk for projects to determine the severity or likelihood of each risk element happening.
Vilfredo Pareto’s 80:20 principle translated into an economic law stated that 80% of Italy’s wealth was owned by a mere 20%. Putting this theory into business practice, Pareto’s Law believe that 80% of a company’s business will be generated by 20% of the sales team.
In relation to your question from a project quality perspective one can assume that 20% of the ‘Why’s’ will cause 80% of the problem in question. This supports the assertion outlined above (risk analysis) and could be used as an intermediate step along the path to a much more rigorous analysis of the problem. Obviously, if one does not have access to such a sophisticated and rather expensive analysis tool such as @Risk one could use the Pareto Analysis technique to improve ones decisions.
In all instances the objective is to make sound business decisions that economically address only the elements of the problem that will achieve the desired outcome.
What comes to mind here from the Project Managers perspective is to avoid the ‘better mousetrap syndrome’.
Regards
Stephan Toth
All of the terms in your question are just tools to be used to aid better decision making and to identify and rank cause and effects of a problem.
From a cost perspective whenever faced with a quality problem the first thing to do is consider and investigate the five why's, however you must bare in mind that this process is not restricted to five, it can be as many why's as is necessary to reach the root cause of a problem. You generally start with the end of the problem and work backwards asking why the event happened. One must bare in mind that ‘effects’ can have multiple (partial) causes and so one must not restrict ones thinking to a linear process.
Considering this issue for project management in relation to quality once one has identified the cause and effect and produced a list or visual aid in the form of a hierarchy list of cause and effects or on a flow chart then one is able to examine each element in order to determine the cost of possible solutions. Not all of the solutions may be practical or even desirable, nor may they contribute significantly to the desired outcome. Very often one may identify out of a list of say 10 whys that only 2 or 3 are significant and if these are solved then the other effects either disapear or are tolerable in relation to the cost of solving them (the law of deminishing returns).
From a risk management perspective, one could appoint probabilistic risk factors to each element of the ‘Why’s’and use a monte-carlo simulation programme such as MS @Risk for projects to determine the severity or likelihood of each risk element happening.
Vilfredo Pareto’s 80:20 principle translated into an economic law stated that 80% of Italy’s wealth was owned by a mere 20%. Putting this theory into business practice, Pareto’s Law believe that 80% of a company’s business will be generated by 20% of the sales team.
In relation to your question from a project quality perspective one can assume that 20% of the ‘Why’s’ will cause 80% of the problem in question. This supports the assertion outlined above (risk analysis) and could be used as an intermediate step along the path to a much more rigorous analysis of the problem. Obviously, if one does not have access to such a sophisticated and rather expensive analysis tool such as @Risk one could use the Pareto Analysis technique to improve ones decisions.
In all instances the objective is to make sound business decisions that economically address only the elements of the problem that will achieve the desired outcome.
What comes to mind here from the Project Managers perspective is to avoid the ‘better mousetrap syndrome’.
Regards
Stephan Toth