Reference no: EM133781137

Systems Thinking for an integrated workforce

Assessment 1:

Objective: The purpose of the essay is to allow you to consider in depth a particular TQM/Systems thinking-related aspect that is relevant to your interests and/or likely career path, and develop your critical thinking, exploratory research and communication skills. Ideally, but not a requirement, the content would support future courses of action or aspects to apply or test within your own working environment post-course.

This assessment provides a unique opportunity to review, aggregate, synthesise, consider and communicate without the pressure to also apply or solve. Ideally, the content will provide a strong basis for improvement strategies and implementation (whether to assess, problem solve or otherwise improve workplace systems, practices and outcomes) thereafter.

Topic: The topic for discussion is your choice; it should relate to the philosophy of TQM and Systems thinking and current management practices in industry. Take a field of your interest and investigate TQM (or key aspects therein) within that context, e.g., TQM/Systems thinking in Health Care, Engineering, Education, Retail, Automation, etc.

Consider if your broad area may be specified (e.g., TQM in clinical management as opposed to the more general TQM in health care). You may use your own organization as inspiration, but you should not describe or assess it, nor should you reveal any sensitive/inside information in the analysis. For example, if you work in the aviation industry you cannot simply assess your organisation for aspects you would expect to see in a TQM-based organisation. However, you could, for example, consider the area of Quality and Safety in the Aviation Industry and explore that aspect in light of TQM, potentially utilising your own organisation as supporting evidence of current practice (either for or contrary to such) and practical conclusions surrounding such. Yet, be careful to not base conclusions solely on one organisation, base it on broader research.

You may explore areas of TQM that are still under discussion or contain conflicting views with current management practices. You may be interested in comparing TQM with other management techniques (e.g., TQM v Six-Sigma / Lean Thinking), or perhaps how it may be used to advance existing principles (e.g., Health and Safety in the workplace), or in exploring the concept of teamwork and organisational culture in the workplace (in light of TQM's perspective), etc.

Better essays will be those that take a particular thesis and argue for or against it based upon, and supported by, your literature search: be mindful of providing evidence to support claims.

Size: 1000 words core plus extras (see below).

Requirements

Research: It is anticipated between five and ten hours of research accompany the time spent writing the essay. Such research could involve journal, textbook and other article searches (via internet and/or library), reading, reflecting and synthesising the information. Be careful to use reliable vetted sources and to not base your essay on unsubstantiated web content. The majority of your references should be from reputed sources, such as peer-reviewed journals, companies press-releases, statements etc.

Formatting: The essay should have the following structure
Title
Executive summary/abstract: 200 words max
Body: 1000 words max
References: 5 min
Figures/Tables: 5 max
Provide a word count before the body text.
Summary: One paragraph that is preceded by the word Summary/Abstract, that provides a concise description of the essay body. It should not repeat statements from the body verbatim, nor should be used as a space for introduction/conclusion that have not met the body's wordcount.

Body: An essay should not have numbered sections, nor have a contents page. It should have a natural flow, much like any chapter of a novel you read. The initial paragraphs should provide a setting for the topic of discussion. The ensuing paragraphs should provide viewpoints and discussion of such perspectives, providing the main body of the essay. Such discussions should be clearly related to the content of the initial paragraphs, building upon the initial thesis and enabling the reader to gauge and value the author's perspective and develop an informed opinion. The closing paragraphs should leave the reader with a clear understanding of the concluding viewpoint of the author that is consistent with the main body of the essay and the initial thesis under scrutiny.
References should be listed in a separate section in the end of the document and follow one of the citation guidelines: any of your choice, but consistently. Note, that a single web-link is not a proper citation: any document has an author/title/etc that constitutes a citation, and the web-link is just a way to access that document.

Figures/Tables are not required, but you may use them to support your discussion. They may be located either in-text or in a separate section after References. A figure/table must contain a caption/title (does not contribute towards the wordcount) that briefly describes its content. If there is more than one figure/table, its title should be preceded by a keyword, e.g. "Figure N. ".

Any citation or figure/table used in the essay must be referred to in the text: it is not enough to simply list references/figures in the end of the document. For example, "according to [1] / (Glavatskiy 2022) / Figure 2 / Table 1, an essay must contain in-text labels that clearly indicate the referred source".

Notes
You are not implementing TQM tools nor trying to necessarily improve any organisation or field. You are discussing the use of the tools and principles of TQM in a field and the potential for TQM to add value to an organisation.
You are not expected to provide solutions; rather you should present an insightful discussion of organisational processes and management methods and how these compare with (or contrast) the ideas that you have learnt in this course. Comments on the merit of the TQM concepts should be made where applicable.
Considering a small department within an organisation in isolation will not provide sufficient scope for this essay: TQM crosses all departments (it is organisation-wide, driven from upper management, etc).
Things to look for in an organisation/field include (but not limited to): use of data, 7 simple tools, having customers defined and surveyed, use of Deming's 14 points, using teams for problem solving, documentation of processes and an understanding of systems, measuring waste and rework, cause-and-effect mechanisms of variation, using advanced statistical tools, etc.

Assessment 2:

Question 1 - The consequences of ignoring some TQM principles [3,2]

An Iron Ore mining company in Australia is defined as having three primary departments or divisions: the Mine (where Iron Ore is mined), the Rail (which is in charge of the site-to-port land transport of Iron Ore) and the Port (where the Iron Ore is loaded and shipped to markets). Each division has a separate manager who reports to the senior management (General Manager).

The General Manager was known for annually reviewing the budget for each division separately and indicating each division needed to reduce its budget by 10%. However, in an industry where fixed costs (e.g., machinery) are a large proportion of the overall costs, the amount of tonnes available to be sold is central to reducing the overall ‘unit cost' (e.g., cost per tonne).

The Rail Manager decided that his goal was to achieve budget, resulting in a capacity (i.e., maximum) of 58 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) being able to be transported to the Port. The manager of the Mining division believed that the goal was to maximise output. The Mine had a mining capacity of 65 mtpa.

During the year, the marketable amount (that which the company could have transported and sold) was 60 mtpa; however, the constraints set by the Rail Manager's goal dictated that only 58 mtpa would reach the market.

Table 1 content (below) is based on an existing fixed cost of 75% of total costs. Thus even if nothing was produced (mined), 75% of the budget is used.
The first column indicates the Division of the Iron Ore mining company.
The second column indicates unit costs, by division and in total, based on 58 mtpa.
The third column is the expenditure in millions of dollars, by division and in total, based on 58 mtpa.
The fourth column is the expenditure in millions of dollars, by division and in total, if 60 mtpa (the marketable amount) of Iron Ore was mined and sold to the market; the values are based on 75% being fixed costs and the remaining costs (25%) increasing proportionally with the change in mtpa (i.e., 60/58).
E.g., the value 234 is obtained from 0.75*232+0.25*232*60/58 where * represents multiplications (it is not critical that you can follow this calculation).
The fifth column indicates unit costs based on the potential 60 mtpa of Iron Ore mined and sold to the market.

Discuss the implications of this scenario: identify aspects of systems thinking and TQM that this company is overlooking and the significance of doing so (max. 400 words: 300 should suffice).

There is one particular aspect of TQM/Systems thinking that this company was overlooking and from which they would have benefited had it been understood and implemented.

Identify the aspect, which would have been part of your response in a), and provide an example of a situation that exhibits the positive results from implementing such an aspect (and the loss from not doing so). Ensure it is adequately described (max. 120 words: 50-80 should suffice).

Your example cannot be one discussed in lectures and should not simply be a replica of the above values in a new or fictitious situation. Your example is unlikely to be as involved as the presented situation and it does not need to include calculations, values or numbers - the scenario could be simply explained. It need not even be an example for an organisation; it may be something from personal or other non-workplace activities.

Question 2 - Statistical Process Control [4, 6]
(1 per part) Name the control chart (from those discussed in the course) that is most appropriate to apply for each of the following situations and explain why:
Monitoring the monthly number of adverse events (errors) occurring during delivery of new- borns (babies) at a hospital.
Monitoring the daily number of complaints received in an airline's call centre.
Monitoring the weekly total sales (in dollars) of electrical appliances at a store.
Monitoring the number of defective transistors from random samples of 100 tested each week.

(2 per part) Electronics, Inc. has been reporting difficulties with the circuit boards purchased from a supplier. There have been complaints about the distances between the two holes drilled on the circuit
board. The holes are supposed to be 5cm apart.
Twenty-five samples, with each sample consisting of 4 circuit boards, were taken from random samples across successive shipments sent by the supplier. An excerpt of the data is provided below:

The observations represent the distances between the two holes drilled on the circuit boards.
N.B. All control charts relating to this question (Figures 2, 3 and 4) appear after the questions.

R and X-bar control charts are constructed from these 100 observations (25 subgroups, each of size 4), see Figure 2. Report the key information based on Figure 2, clearly (and briefly) identifying your suggested course of action and rationale (max. 120 words: 60 words should suffice).
The supplier's plant quality manager confirmed that they were experiencing quality problems for shipments 18, 19, 20 and 21. These shipments have been excluded and the control charts are reconstructed. Figure 3 contains the revised R and X-bar control charts, where the four poor batches (subgroups) are removed.

How has the removal of these observations affected your assessment of the system, based on the control charts? Report the key aspects based on these two charts (max. 100 words: 50 should suffice)

The supplier's plant quality manager indicated that they had sought to rectify the quality problems they had been experiencing. Samples of 4 circuit boards were taken from each of the next ten shipments. Using the revised control chart limits from part (ii) above (i.e., excluding the samples 18- 21), the R-chart and the X-bar chart for the thirty-five samples have been plotted (see Figure 4). Comment on whether the quality problem appears to have been rectified (max. 90 words).

Question 3 - Deming's Fourteen Points, The Joiner Triangle and TQM

In this scenario, the actual organisation's name has been replaced by a fictitious name ‘FishCo'; in all other respects the following is a true account of the scenario as it transpired.

A customer purchased a crumbed fish product at FishCo. When the customer cooked and bit into one of the crumbed fish pieces, one piece was found to have a white ‘fishing-line-like' thread or band within it - the thread/band remained within the fish piece with a few centimetres of the offending thread/band protruding out where the customer had taken the bite.

The customer reported this to FishCo, and returned the sample in question, and a few weeks later received a letter from FishCo. The sections of the letter pertinent to this exercise read:

"Thank you for taking the time to contact us regarding your experience with the FishCo crumbed fish that you purchased. We are most concerned to learn of this matter and would like to extend our apologies.
Our FishCo products are produced to meet high quality standards. We work closely with our suppliers to ensure that the selection on offer across our stores meets these quality requirements.
Our suppliers have quality assurance checks in place which include raw material and finished product inspections, to prevent any foreign matter making its way into the end product.
We referred your concerns along with the sample you provided to our National Quality Team and our supplier for investigation. The sample was inspected by our supplier and suspects the string comes from the strapping band. Because the colour of the string is similar to the fish, the operator did not pick this up.
As a result of your complaint our supplier has changed the colour of the strapping band to avoid this from occurring.
Our supplier has brought your complaint to the attention of their production team to raise awareness and our National Quality Team will continue to monitor this product, to ensure standards expected by both our customers and us are met.
..."
Consider the above in light of what we have discussed in the course and report notable aspects, including whether or not the response aligns with or indicates use of elements of the course.
Within the above you may identify and explain which, if any, of Deming's Points for Management, the elements of the Joiner Triangle or other Systems thinking or TQM-related concepts are noteworthy in relation to this scenario, including support as applicable. (max. 250 words)