Service Management, Student Workbook: An Integrated Approach to Supply Chain Management and Operations

12. Supplement Tools and Techniques of Total Quality Management

S12.5 Summary of the Chapter

This supplement presented some of the most widely used tools and techniques of quality and continuous improvement. Most quality improvement projects can be based on the plan-do-study-act cycle. In solving quality problems and improving existing systems, one or more of the tools, known as the “magnificent seven,” can be used. These are simple and straightforward graphical tools that are easy to learn and use; they are also very effective in uncovering quality problems. We discussed one of these tools, the process control chart, in more detail because of its applicability in many services.

The process control chart is a quality control technique constructed ...