This assignment requires you to look in some detail at one quality issue arising in your organisation. Some of the exercises in Units 4 and 5 have already suggested that you consider applying the concepts to your own organisation and these exercises may well assist you in carrying out this assignment.

Section 1

(a) Choose a product or service of your organisation and identify one aspect of this product or service that is important to customers. (You need to think carefully here in order to choose an aspect of the product or service for which you will be able to carry out the analyses below.)

(b) List the measures that are made (or might be made) that relate to this aspect of the service or product.

(c) Choose one of these measures and explain how the concepts of common cause variation and special cause variation might apply to this measure, giving examples of each.

Section 2

(a) Define the specification limits for the measure you have selected in Section 1. Draw the corresponding quality loss function if appropriate.

(b) Design an appropriate control chart.

(c) If you have access to existing data on this measure then you should plot the control chart and analyse it to determine whether or not the process is stable. If it is stable then you should make one suggestion for the reduction of common cause variation. If it is not stable then you should identify (as far as you are able) the special causes that have occurred.

(d) If you do not have access to existing data on this measure, then you should collect some data in order to start the control chart. You may not have enough data to reliably indicate whether or not the process is stable. Nevertheless, you should make one suggestion for the reduction of common cause variation.