ASQ CQE Certified Quality Engineer – Section I – Management and Leadership (18 Questions) Part 3

36. 1B-2d Project Management – Resource Allocation

So far we have talked about Pert and CPM and previously we talked about Gantt chart as well. And all these tools are for planning. How do you plan your work, which activity happens after what? So you can plan that and then you can monitor the progress of this. Another important thing here in project management is resource allocation. How many people do you need? Let’s take the same example, what we took in CPM critical path method. Here we had five activities.

Activity ABCDE, which you can see at the top there. And then we also found out that the critical path here is A-B-E. Any activity on Abe cannot be delayed. If this gets delayed, then the whole project will get delayed. And we understood that this project is going to take 13 days. And in activity C and D there is a float. There is a float means there is a little bit of scope of delaying. You can delay activity C by three days. You can delay activity D by five days because that’s their float. And even with this delay, also your project will get completed in 13 days. Now when it comes to resource, you need to level your resources.

Let’s take the same example and for the sake of simplicity, all these activities take one person only. So activity number A, which takes two days to complete. So let me put it here. So activity A takes two days to complete and one person does that. Activity B-C-D-E. Also there is one person working on each of these activities. So once you start this project on day number one, you start with activity number A.

So one person is working. Second day also one person is working because that person is doing activity number A. Now two days have completed and with that activity number A has been completed. So for first two days you needed one person to do the job. For this project comes the third day. Now you have a choice. On third day you can start activity number B as well as activity number C. So you start both these activities.

Activity B and C you start on third day. Now, how many people you need on third day? On third day you need two people. Now, coming to the fourth day. Fourth day you cannot proceed to D or E. C you have already completed on the third day C is done. So now you are left with B only, which you can do for next three days. On 4th, fifth and 6th day you can do activity number B.

And then after that, once you have completed B and C, after six days completion, on 7th day you can start activity number D, E and so on. Just to give you a simple example. Now just think from resource planning point of view. First day. Second day you needed one person. That’s fine. Third day you needed two person. Fourth day you needed one person. Fourth and fifth day, 6th day you needed one person. Third day only you needed two person.

Now, where do you get this one person from? If you think a little bit clearly, then probably what I would have done is I would have moved activity number C slightly on the right, rather than doing on third day, I will do that on 6th day. So 3rd, fourth and fifth day I will just focus on activity number B and then I just need one person to do that. On the 6th day I will get an additional person and do B and C together. So that’s how something you need to do to resource planning. So once you draw this network diagram, you can make the resource allocation also along with that, this was just a simple example to demonstrate that resources will fluctuate when more activities are getting done, then there is something not happening.

Because of that, then you need to remove people from the project. So how do you manage the resource that also is a part of your planning process. Now take another case where your management says that instead of 13 days, we want this activity to be done in ten days. All right, but now you have calculated that the critical path of this is a B and E and a B and E together will take 13 days. So your project cannot get completed before 13 days. That’s your plan. Now, how do you get this thing done in ten days? So there are two main techniques here. Let’s understand the definition of that. And that’s all you need here. One is crashing and second is compressing the schedule. Now you have a schedule which gets this project done in 13 days. You can crash it or you can compress it. Let’s look at the definition of this. Crashing is adding additional resources to get activity done on or before time.

So instead of 13 days, if you want to crash this network, then let’s say on activity number B. Activity number B, if I can get four people working on that and if it is possible to get that activity number B get done in one day. So instead of four days, if I can get activity number B done in one day, I will be crashing the schedule by three days. So that’s crashing. Crashing is adding resources, additional resources to get things done faster. And the second approach is compressing. Compressing or fast tracking. This involves performing activities in parallel.

So if you could arrange or rearrange these activities so that these can be done in parallel, so that can help you in reducing the schedule. So that’s something you need to look at, whether you can add additional resources which will be crashing or you can arrange these or rearrange these activities so that some of these activities go in parallel rather than waiting for another activity. Let’s say in this particular case on third day, let’s say on third day, my activity number C is done. So just to recap that first and second day, I get activity number A done. On third day, I get activity number C done. And then I’m waiting for B to complete it. Because E cannot be started without completing B and C. If somehow I make an arrangement where I can start activity number E parallely without getting B and C completed, then probably I can compress my schedule. So these are the two approaches for making your project faster to crash or to compress the schedule. Ado.

37. 1B-3 Quality Information System(QIS)

Previously in Quality Management system topic we have talked about strategic planning which was one B one and then in one B two we talked about deployment techniques. In that we talked about number of tools and one B three is Quality Information System. So when you want to implement QMS or Quality Management System, you need to have some measurements. And we did talk about that in Balanced Scorecard earlier when we talked about tools. So data is important whenever you want to implement the quality management system. And that’s what we are talking here in this section, which is Quality Information system to have a system to get the data. So let’s see the definition of Quality information system first.

So here is the definition of Quality information system. Not a formal definition but the Quality information system is information Management System related to quality. So you have information Management System in organization which gathers all the information in the organization. So whatever part of that is related to quality is called as Quality Information system. So here you collect, store, analyze and report data related to quality management. So basically what we are doing here is we are looking at data centric quality management. We are focusing on data.

So quality related decisions should be made based on the data, based on the fact. And that is the intent of Quality Information System to make factbased decisions. Now let’s look at some of the examples where we are collecting data related to quality management. That data could be related to design reviews, whatever audits we are doing, the non-conformances repairs, returns, customer survey, test reports, test certificates, performance data. So there is a number of things which you can collect as a part of quality information system and what are the benefits of that. We need to make factbased decisions rather than subjective decisions. So using a quality information system where we collect data related to all the quality aspects, that can help us in identifying priorities.

So if we have a data which is related to let’s say repairs, then we can look at things that which area we have more repairs. So we can prioritize or we can put our focus on those areas where there are repeated problems. So that’s how this can help us in identifying priorities. Another thing is track the performance of initiatives and investments. So in six Sigma let’s say you have some initiatives, some projects where you try to improve the quality, make things faster. So whatever initiative you are taking, quality initiative, you can track the performance of that.

That means you can record data, let’s say related to repairs, what was the repair rate prior to that initiative? You will have a historical data and then after that initiative, whether the repair rate has gone down or didn’t change, you can record that. So you can track the performance of wherever you have taken some initiatives and you can use this for tracking competitor performance. So in benchmarking. We did talk about that. How do you compare yourself with best in class? So if you want to track your performance as against your competitor’s performance, and I’m sure that you don’t have all the data of competitor, so whatever public information you have related to competitors, you can track that and you can compare your performance against your competitors.

And once you have a standardized approach of data in the organization where everyone can have access to that data, that really can help you in breaking out the barriers in the organization. For example, let’s say repair rate data, that’s not only important to quality, that’s important to sales as well. So sales can plan that how much they want to sell, that can be helpful to design group. Also they can help how they can design so that that sort of repairs could be reduced. So if that data is available to everyone in the organization, that really helps in breaking down the barriers. And everyone has access to the data so that everyone can work towards the cobalt goal of the organization. So these are some of the benefits of quality information system.

38. 1C ASQ Code of Ethics for Professional Conduct

Section. One of the CQE certified quality engineer body of knowledge was management and leadership. And as I said earlier, from Management and Leadership you are expected to get 18 questions. In Management and leadership we looked at part A which was quality philosophies and foundations and then we looked at quality Management system. So that was quite a long session on quality Management system. Now coming to one C which is ASQ code of Ethics for Professional conduct. So let’s see what ASQ expects you as a member as a certified person. So if you are a CQE, then what does ASQ expect from you when it comes to ethics? So ASQ requires that it’s representative to be honest and transparent, that’s what it’s expecting from you. And avoid conflict of interest, pleasures, don’t harm other people, treat everyone with respect, dignity and fairness. Be professional and socially responsible. Advance the role and perception of quality professional.

And why does ASQ expects these things from you? Since ASQ is certifying you as a CQE certified Quality Engineer, ASQ name is attached with you. So what ASQ expect is that you don’t put their name at harm, their reputation at harm. So if somebody is dishonest, somebody is having conflict of interest, harming other socially irresponsible, if that person has a CQE certification, probably that’s something which ASQ doesn’t want their name to be associated with. So these are some fundamental principles you need to know. Another thing which you need to understand is that every three year or sometime when you are due for certification, you are expected to sign that that you comply with this code of ethics.

So you need to continually comply to this code of ethics if you need to continue your certification. In addition to those fundamental principles, here is the expectations of a quality professional. So I have put them in three broad columns here. Point number one here is act with integrity and honesty. The second one is demonstrate responsibility, respect and fairness. Third is safeguard proprietary information and avoid conflict of interest.

So if you look at some of the points in act of Integrity and Honesty that says that you need to be truthful, transparent, you need to execute your responsibility in a factual and objective manner. You need to accurately represent and don’t mislead other regarding your professional qualifications qualification including this CQE, don’t misrepresent that. So what does that mean is if this has expired and you have not renewed that, then don’t add that in your name, against your name that your CQE.

If you have not continued your qualification or if you have not renewed your qualification. And other thing is offer your services only in those areas where you have competence, expertise and training. So you need to represent yourself properly, don’t misrepresent yourself. So coming to this second column which is demonstrate responsibility, respect and fairness. So here you need to be aware of safety, health and welfare of individuals and public and environment and don’t do anything which basically harms the reputation of the society, the ASU. Don’t do anything like that and do not intentionally cause harm to others through your words or deed. Treat everyone with fair courtesy and do your business in a professional way and allow diversity of opinion. People might have different opinion, allow those things, listen to everyone and then take decision based on facts.

So that’s a point number two here, which is demonstrate responsibility, respect and fairness. Coming to the third point in this expectations of a quality professional, which is safeguard proprietary information and avoid conflict of interest. So you need to protect the information property of other people. So if as a CQE certified quality engineer, if you have to deal with some proprietary information of some organization, make sure that’s properly protected. So as a CQE you might get access to some details in the organization which are basically with the proprietary of the organization. Make sure that those are not given away or somehow leaks to someone else.

So that’s something which you need to do to protect the intellectual property and obviously you cannot use the confidential information for your personal gain. That’s another important thing here. And then if you have conflict of interest, then you need to fully disclose that. And another important point is give credit where it is due to others. If something is coming from someone else, then don’t take credit for that. Don’t use other person’s knowledge and put your name on top of that. So give due reference to that and all these things. The details of the Code of Ethics can be found at this URL which is ASQ orgaboutsqcodeofithics.

So if you go there, you can look at the full copy of the Code of Ethics. Have a look at that. This is an important thing not only from being a good person, but also from the exam point of view, also from exam point of view also expect something out of this. So have a look at the Code of Ethics so that you can properly answer in your exam and of course to act professionally in your work. So this was.

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