This text focuses students on how to effectively manage quality. Students must understand their businesses, understand the quality body of knowledge, understand the available tools, and have a method for planning quality improvement based on this knowledge. What trends do you see affecting quality management? With the increased focus on the supply chain giving companies a competitive advantage, do you try to show how this impacts quality? Unifying theme of the supply chain. Today''s firms are ever-more focused on improving supply chain performance. Key to this improvement is quality management. As we look upstream, we need to develop our suppliers. Downstream, we focus on after-sales service and customer service. Implicit in this process is service design.

In your classes, you can drive these concepts home by emphasizing the systems-view implicit in supply chain management. Provides linkage between the roots of quality management (Shewhart and Deming) with new developments such as six sigma and service quality. {See chapters 1-9} In business, it''s clear we work in functional teams, do you try to show that in order to improve quality everyone must work together? Integrative Approach. Workers and managers in organizations are somewhat limited by their particular functional preparation and specialization (going back to their educational training). This narrow presentation filters how they analyze and cognitively interpret information. Shows we all have to work together to satisfy customers. However, quality management has emerged as a discipline that is not owned by any single functional area such as operations management, supply chain management, human resources, or marketing. How do you get students to evaluate the company, the market, its customers in order to implement a quality improvement initiative? Contingency Approach.

This concept has been emphasized for a long time but is beginning to get traction in the research and practitioner literature. Therefore, the contingency approach is used to instruct students how to assess the current position of the firm and identify an effective strategy for improvement based on a profound understanding of their company, market, customers, and etc. Emphasizes improvement is based on the contingent variables that are operative in the firm as it exists. This contingency approach is introduced in Chapter 1 and permeates the rest of the text. Do you cover the standard quality tools? Quality tools and techniques -Covers the basic 7 tools of quality, the managerial tools, the Taguchi method, project management, and statistical quality control. Provides students with the fundamental tools/techniques that they can apply to their future careers. What type of examples do you use to motivate students? Practical applications - Boxed highlights, introductory quotes, chapter questions, solved problems, chapter exercises, and cases. Provides students with practice applying the concepts with real world exercises that reinforce the text.

Do some of your students go on and take certification exams? Covers ASQ (American Society for Quality) certification topics -Curriculum for Certified Quality Manager (CQM) and Certified Quality Engineer (CQE) are found in the chapter contents. Exposes students to critical topics that are required for the certification exam. The student Cd includes: Video Clips Active models Excel files.