Course Description
Course Details
Learn how to effectively apply the fundamentals of total quality. Understand what quality is and learn about the history of the quality movement. Discover the role of customers in quality and determine the major elements of a quality system. Master key concepts such as the cost of nonquality, variation, and total employee involvement (TEI). Increase your value to your company by learning about various motivational models, leadership, and teamwork. Determine how to effectively apply quality standards by creating and implementing internal and external auditing activities. Learn the ins and outs of ISO 9000, ISO 14000, and the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. In this six-week online course, you will learn how successful organizations apply quality to their everyday activities. You will find out how to use teamwork to make the most of employees' abilities and potential. I will help you manage the process of change, reduce customer complaints, and increase customer service. You will learn of a number of quality fallacies and how to lessen their impact.
How It Works
This course is fully online, you require internet access and an email account. The course duration is 6 weeks, followed by a 2-week period to complete the final exam (online, open book). Lessons are released on Wednesdays and Fridays of each week, for a total of 12. You are not required to be online at any specific time. In addition to the specific lesson content, there is a discussion board with each lesson and often there is an optional assignment to apply the learning. Following each lesson, there is a short multiple choice quiz. Your score on these quizzes does not count towards the final mark but completing these helps solidify your learning as well as prepare you for the final exam. The final exam is an open-book, multiple choice exam and you need to achieve a minimum of 65% on the final exam to pass the course. There is only one opportunity to pass the exam. A certificate of completion from WatSPEED is available within four weeks of successful completion of each course and can be accessed in your student portal. Many of the Ed2Go courses are eligible towards the various online certificates offered by WatSPEED.
Syllabus
Lesson 1 - Introduction to Quality. In our first lesson, we'll discuss the concept of professional quality certification as defined by the American Society for Quality (ASQ). Next, we'll come up with a universal definition of quality, a challenging proposition because so many people have different perspective of what quality is and what it isn't. You'll learn about the history of the quality movement and see how Six Sigma fits in. We'll finish up by examining Total Quality Management (TQM) and discuss its concepts and components.
Lesson 2 - Customers and Organization. Quality is best viewed as a total customer satisfaction package. You satisfy customers by effectively combining products and services. To help you get to know customers better, we'll discuss different customer types. We'll also discuss how you can minimize customer complaints. You'll discover the role that your organization plays in providing high customer satisfaction by maintaining a quality philosophy and creating quality systems.
Lesson 3 - Nonquality Costs and Variation. I've often observed that companies don't pay enough attention to problems until they begin to see sales and profits drop. Because of this tendency, an effective way to get top management's attention and hopefully increase their commitment to quality is to express problems in terms of costs. In this lesson, I'll discuss the cost of nonquality (also called the "cost of quality") and its components—external failure, internal failure, appraisal, and prevention costs. We'll also explore the concept of variation and discuss how you can use statistical process control (SPC) to meet customer requirements.
Lesson 4 - Assessment and Leadership. Companies grow by entering new markets and meeting unmet customer needs. To achieve and maintain this growth, it's important to have a healthy organization that has the right mix of leadership and power. Today you'll learn about the basic leadership styles and two leadership models. You'll also discover how the concepts of distinctive competency, competitive advantage, and organizational assessment position your organization for success.
Lesson 5 - Motivation and Change. In today's lesson, you'll learn what makes people tick and how to manage change. Reaching quality levels you desire will require dedication from everyone in the organization, so you need to know what motivates people in order to successfully work with and direct them. Also, as you work with people, you're faced with change. We'll talk about forces for change, learn why people resist these forces, and discuss ways to manage change.
Lesson 6 - Team Building and Training. It seems as if teams are everywhere. Despite the popularity of teams, far too many people report that their experience hasn't been too fulfilling. Six Sigma and quality projects rely on high-performing teams, so it's vital that you learn the secrets of team building. Many companies fail to devote enough time to training. After we complete today's lesson, I hope you'll be able to play a large role in making sure that employees receive the right type of preparation. When we finish, you'll have a solid understanding of how to build a strong team and effectively deliver training.
Lesson 7 - TEI and Measuring Performance. When companies decide to improve quality and better satisfy customers, they won't succeed unless all employees are behind these goals. Once you get employee commitment, you need to measure your progress. In this lesson I'll share a concept, "total employee involvement" (TEI), to help you get the most from the total power of every single person at your firm. You'll learn about the role that management and employees play in TEI. You'll also learn how to determine progress by using traditional and progressive performance measurements.
Lesson 8 - Standards and Auditing. Standards and auditing work hand-in-hand. The first helps you plan and the second makes sure that you follow your plans. Firms that conform to standards are more capable of competing. In this lesson, we'll explore the basics of standards and auditing. We'll talk about how standards are used and how they're developed. We'll also explore their benefits and discover how they're defined. Regarding auditing, we'll examine their features, discuss the different types of audits, and look at why auditing is a challenging activity.
Lesson 9 - External and Internal Auditing. In this lesson, we'll explore how your firm can use external auditing to assess suppliers' capabilities and internal auditing to improve company operations. You'll learn the difference between external and internal auditing. And I'll share the nuts and bolts of auditing and show you how to plan and conduct an audit and write a final audit report.
Lesson 10 - ISO 9000. I believe that ISO 9000 is one of the main reasons why organizations continue to focus on quality. It's difficult for companies to disregard quality once they make a decision to adopt the ISO 9000 standard. In today's lesson, we'll start out with some background about ISO, discuss what ISO 9000 represents, identify the challenges of implementing it, and go over a recipe for successfully putting ISO in place. We'll also talk about each section of the ISO 9001:2000 standard.
Lesson 11 - More Standards and Systems. In this lesson, we'll tackle a number of topics that will increase your knowledge about quality standards and systems. Although ISO 9000 has a high profile, other methods and structures also play a vital role in quality improvement. First, we'll close our study of ISO by looking at a series of standards to manage the environment—ISO 14000. Next, we'll dive into the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA), an esteemed award given for quality excellence in the United States. Finally, we'll explore three systems that apply to many of you: QS-9000, the Advanced Quality System (AQS), and the Conformité Europeenne (CE) mark.
Lesson 12 - Quality Culture and Fallacies. After you implement everything from the lessons of this course, you can safely say your organization has a quality culture. Without a quality culture, it's difficult to satisfy customers, improve processes, and reduce costs. In addition to discussing a quality culture, we'll also examine quality fallacies. We'll finish up the lesson by identifying the most common quality fallacies and discuss what beliefs should take their place.
