CQIA flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Quality (ASQ definition)

The totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs; quality is judged by the customer rather than the producer.

Cost of poor quality

The sum of internal and external failure costs, such as scrap, rework, warranty claims, returns, and complaint handling, representing money spent because defects occurred.

Prevention cost

A cost of good quality incurred to keep defects from happening, including training, process design, supplier qualification, and preventive maintenance; it is the least expensive cost-of-quality category.

External failure cost

Costs arising after a defective product reaches the customer, including warranty, returns, recalls, field service, liability, and lost goodwill; the most expensive cost-of-quality category.

Deming's 14 points

A management philosophy for improvement stressing constancy of purpose, eliminating fear, and abolishing numerical quotas and merit ratings; Deming held management responsible for roughly 85% of problems.

Juran quality trilogy

Joseph Juran's framework of three managerial processes: quality planning, quality control, and quality improvement, combined with the Pareto principle that a vital few causes produce most problems.

Crosby zero defects

Philip Crosby's doctrine that quality means conformance to requirements, that defects are preventable, and that quality is free because prevention costs less than rework.

ISO 9001

The international standard for quality management systems, built on seven principles including customer focus, leadership, process approach, improvement, and evidence-based decision making.

Forming stage

The first stage of team development, in which members are polite, dependent on the leader, and unclear about roles and goals while orienting themselves to the task and each other.

Storming stage

The second team stage, marked by conflict over roles, methods, and influence; the leader must clarify goals, ground rules, and decision processes to move the team forward.

Norming stage

The third team stage, in which agreement forms around roles, procedures, and behavior norms; cohesion and trust grow and members begin cooperating on the shared task.

Performing stage

The fourth team stage, where the group is productive and self-managing; roles are clear, problems are solved collaboratively, and energy focuses on achieving the team's objectives.

Consensus decision

A decision all members can support and commit to even when it is not each person's first choice; it requires open discussion of objections rather than unanimity or simple majority rule.

Nominal group technique

A structured group method in which members silently write ideas, each idea is posted and clarified, and members privately rank the ideas to set priorities and prevent domination by one personality.

Team charter

A written document defining a team's purpose, scope, customers, deliverables, authority, resources, milestones, roles, and operating ground rules, aligning the team with its sponsor.

Cross-functional team

A team whose members come from different departments or disciplines, such as operations, engineering, and quality, assembled to solve a problem that crosses organizational boundaries.

PDCA cycle

The Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, also called the Deming or Shewhart cycle: plan a change, run it small, check results against the objective, then standardize or adjust and repeat.

DMAIC

The Six Sigma improvement roadmap: Define the problem and customer requirements, Measure current performance, Analyze root causes, Improve the process, and Control the gains.

Kaizen

A Japanese term meaning continuous incremental improvement made by everyone every day at low cost; it relies on small team-based changes and standardization rather than large capital projects.

Takt time

The pace at which a process must complete one unit to meet customer demand, calculated as available production time divided by customer demand over the same period.

5S

A workplace organization method with five steps: sort, set in order, shine, standardize, and sustain; it removes clutter, makes abnormalities visible, and supports standardized work.

Poka-yoke

A mistake-proofing device or design that prevents an error from being made or makes it immediately obvious, such as a fixture that accepts a part in only one orientation.

Value stream map

A visual map of all material and information flows required to deliver a product, used to separate value-adding from non-value-adding steps and target waste reduction.

Six sigma defect level

A process performance level of 3.4 defects per million opportunities, representing statistical capability of about six standard deviations between the process mean and the nearest specification limit.

Pareto chart

A bar chart of problem categories ordered largest to smallest with a cumulative percentage line; it applies the 80/20 rule to separate vital few causes from trivial many.

Cause-and-effect diagram

Also called a fishbone or Ishikawa diagram, it organizes possible causes of a problem into branches such as manpower, machine, material, method, measurement, and environment.

Control chart

A time-ordered plot of a process statistic with a center line and upper and lower control limits, usually at three standard deviations, separating common from special cause variation.

Histogram

A bar graph of the frequency of measurements grouped into intervals; it reveals the shape, center, spread, gaps, and outliers of a data distribution.

Scatter diagram

A plot of paired values of two variables, one on each axis, used to see whether they are related, the direction of the relationship, and how strong it is.

Check sheet

A prepared form on which data are tallied as events occur, allowing consistent collection of defect types, locations, or frequencies before charting and analysis.

FMEA risk priority number

In failure mode and effects analysis, the risk priority number equals severity multiplied by occurrence multiplied by detection; higher values identify failure modes that should be addressed first.

Run chart

A line graph of a measure plotted in time order with a median line; it shows trends, shifts, cycles, and unusual patterns before formal control limits are applied.