QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SURE A+
✔✔Key Policies - ✔✔Main goals of an organization.
✔✔Organizational Structure - ✔✔The formal relationships among different functional
areas that aids in communication.
✔✔Relative Advantage - ✔✔Where one entity has an advantage over another; will often
trade their specialized products for those that they do not produce; companies with a
relative advantage are able to produce products at a lower cost than their competitors.
✔✔North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) - ✔✔A free trade agreement
between the United State, Mexico, and Canada to reduce tariffs and other trade
restrictions.
✔✔General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) - ✔✔A trade agreement designed
to reduce tariffs and other trade restrictions.
✔✔Sustainability - ✔✔Balancing the interconnected obligations to economic viability,
society, and the environment (the triple bottom line).
,✔✔What is the percentage of businesses that operate within the service sector? -
✔✔88 percent
✔✔Supporting Goods - ✔✔Supplies and equipment that aid in the development of
products and services.
✔✔Market Share - ✔✔The percentage of sales in a particular market.
✔✔VIRAL - ✔✔Value, Inimitable, rare, aptitude, and lifespan.
✔✔SWOT Analysis - ✔✔Analyzing the internal (strengths and weaknesses) and
external (opportunities and threats) environments.
✔✔Requirements for developing competitive advantage - ✔✔SWOT, business process,
competitive capabilities, and customer requirements.
✔✔Learning Curve - ✔✔Continuously improving a product to make it better and
cheaper.
✔✔Synergy - ✔✔Teamwork where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
✔✔Key Processes - ✔✔Strategy development, product development, system
development, and order fulfillment.
✔✔System - ✔✔The process of producing goods and system.
✔✔Matching - ✔✔Matching strengths to opportunities.
✔✔Converting - ✔✔Converting weaknesses or threats into strengths or opportunities.
✔✔Productivity - ✔✔Output / Input; the goal is achieving more output given the amount
of inputs, thus saving money and reducing production costs.
✔✔The First Revolution - ✔✔Starting in the late 1800s, increases in manufacturing
productivity reduced the need for physical labor and enabled a shift towards service-
based jobs.
✔✔The Second Revolution - ✔✔Productivity and efficiency improvements in
manufacturing freed resources for the rapid expansion of the service industry.
✔✔The Third Revolution - ✔✔Also known as the post-industrial era, this revolution
began in the 1950s with the development of computers. This technology has allowed
fewer people to do more work.
, ✔✔Reliability - ✔✔The ability to perform dependably and accurately.
✔✔Assurance - ✔✔Knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to convey
trust and confidence.
✔✔Process Redesign - ✔✔The complete overhaul of a process to improve
performance.
✔✔Percent Change in Productivity - ✔✔[(New Productivity - Old Productivity)/Old
Productivity] * 100
✔✔Quality (internal) - ✔✔How quality is defined by the business; often measured as the
amount of a desired attribute; objective.
✔✔Quality (external) - ✔✔How quality is defined by the customer and the product's
fitness for use; meets customer's needs and expectations; subjective.
✔✔Questions for Customers when Improving Products - ✔✔Ask what they value (not
just what they want), how do they work, what makes them happy, and feedback on
specific product attributes.
✔✔Costs of Quality - ✔✔Failure costs, appraisal costs, and prevention costs.
✔✔Failure Costs - ✔✔Costs accrued by the organization or customer as the result of a
failure of the product.
✔✔Appraisal Costs - ✔✔Investments in measuring quality and assessing customer
satisfaction.
✔✔Prevention Costs - ✔✔Investments designed to prevent defects from occurring.
✔✔Poka-yoke - ✔✔Mistake proofing; an approach to prevent defects, such as color-
coding parts so that customers assemble the product correctly.
✔✔Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) - ✔✔Products should be designed
so that they are simple and inexpensive to produce.
✔✔Design for Operations (DFO) - ✔✔Services should be simple and inexpensive.
✔✔Statistical Process Control (SPC) - ✔✔The use of statistical methods to determine
when a process that produces goods is getting close to producing too many defects.
✔✔W. Edwards Deming - ✔✔The most influential individual within the specialty of
quality; After World War II, he went to Japan to help rebuild their economy, and he was