Individual Assessment 3 – Total Quality Management Proposal
Due date: Week 12, Wednesday 7 October 2015, 01:00 PM AEST ASSESSMENT
Weighting: 50% 3
Length: 3000 words +/- 10% (excluding front page)
Before starting this assessment activity, read the full assessment description, marking criteria, submission requirements and guidance.
Assessment Material and Guidance
Once you have read the following information, read the Student Guide to Assessment 3
Short Report Requirements
Assessment Context
You are the new manager of a chain of ‘fast food restaurants’ in Australia. You report to the owner of the business who has no active involvement in the chain, but has firm expectations about how it will be managed. The owner has given you twelve months to successfully implement Total Quality Management at the chain.
Assessment Task
You are required to write a 3000 word short report to the owner of the business that describes how the organisation will implement Total Quality Management.
1. Describe how you will prove to the owner that you have successfully implemented Total Quality Management. The proof must be able to be observed or measured. This must be supported by appropriate references.
2. Write an Action Plan that lists the steps in implementing Total Quality Management at the chain of fast food restaurants. This is a simple list of sequential steps, supported by at least one reference.
3. Describe each of the steps by stating in plain Australian English what will be done, why it will be done, and who will do it. It should be clear to the reader what the step involves. This must be supported by appropriate references.
Note: The organisation is fictitious. You can invent information about the organisation. Do not use up a lot of words doing this, and try to keep it realistic. Always remember that the purpose of the report is to demonstrate what you know about quality management and about the implementation of Total Quality Management. It is not about demonstrating in-depth knowledge of retail sales or other industries.
• You should conduct research to identify a suitable implementation process. Inspiration and further advice to guide your research and application will be provided on the course website.
• Use the organisation as a way to demonstrate your knowledge of the course content, including the textbook and additional reading you have done. This involves extensive referencing of theory available from these sources.
• Provide an executive summary, introduction, conclusion and recommendations. Use appropriate headings for the body of the report.
• Use at least eight (8) references from the course materials and your own reading that are specifically ‘quality management’ references. These should be from peer reviewed journal articles and quality management textbooks. The eight (8) references described above are in addition to any references you provide that give information about a chain of fast food restaurants.
• Use in-text referencing and a reference list, following the CQUniversity Harvard Referencing Style Guide provided on the course web site on Moodle.
• You are encouraged to use bullet points, illustrations and diagrams to reinforce your argumentation where appropriate.
Assessment Criteria
Your report will be assessed according to the following criteria.
Your report analysis, recommendations and presentation must demonstrate:
Thorough understanding of relevant quality management concepts, principles, theories, tools and models in regards to the case study and the questions. 60%
Appropriate and well structured, concise and clear expression of quality management arguments. 10%
Clear flow of thought throughout the paper with a clear and succinct purpose described in the introduction and a clear and succinct conclusion. 10%
Critical review skills and integration of relevant academic and profession literature. A minimum of eight (8) academic journals must be used. 10%
Appropriate in text referencing and reference list. Adherence to CQUniversity Harvard Reference Style. 5%
Clarity of expression, grammar and spelling. Appropriate presentation format within (?10%) of the word limit: 3000 words. 5%
Assessment Submission
The assessment submission must be made online here. The file submitted must be a Microsoft Word or Rich Text Format (.doc or .docx or .rtf) document.
Submit your report with a cover sheet showing the course name and number, assessment number, your name and student number.
Feel free to discuss your assessment ideas in the course discussion forum, before you complete and submit the assessment.
Student Guide
Assessment Context
You are the new manager of a chain of Fast Food restaurants in Australia. You report to the owner of the business who has no active involvement in the chain, but has firm expectations about how it will be managed. The owner has given you twelve months to successfully implement Total Quality Management at the chain.
I have added the following case study to add meat to the short description above. You are welcome to use this material if it helps you get your head around the assessment task.
Chain of Fast Food Restaurants
You are not to use the process in Goetsch and Davis without modification as this is envisioned for a large corporation. I recommend that you find a process which involves considerably less steps than the Goetsch and Davis process. You should conduct research to identify a suitable process.
Get Inspired
Here is how you may find some inspiration to get started.
1. First read chapter 22 in the textbook to understand what implementing TQM means in practice. Then use the internet and the library database to find (or design) a suitable implementation process.
2. Try out the following to get started: Search for “implementing TQM” in Google (and Google scholar).
3. Search for “PDCA”, “TQM audit”, “total quality maturity model” and “TQM benchmarking” to understand how TQM progress can be measured.
Notice how a lot of the material is for large company implementation of TQM. We should regard the fast food restaurant as a small to medium size enterprise.
Find Professional Literature
4. But what we really want is to use good professional and academic sources of TQM writing to support your report recommendations. You may find that the following literature help with an overview of potential TQM implementation options. The below literature is 10 years old so finding more contemporary articles would be a bonus
Yusof S.M. Aspinall, E 2000, ‘Total quality management implementation frameworks: comparison and review’, Total Quality Management, Vol.11, No.3, pp.281-294
Yusof S.M. Aspinall, E 2000, ‘A conceptual framework for TQM implementation for SMEs’, The TQM Magazine, Vol.12, No. 1, pp.31-36.
I hope this assessment helps you to learn about practical TQM implementation approaches for SMEs.
Question and Answer Section
Question: Can we give the chain of face food restaurants a fake name so we can refer to this in our writing in order to make it easier?
Answer: Sure you can give the restaurant a fake name, but a better alternative is to create an abbreviation that you introduce in the introduction. I assume you want to reduce the word count and improve readability for the marker
Chain of Fast Food Restaurants (CFFR)
Question: What does successful implementation of TQM in a fast food restaurant mean and how you prove that the TQM implementation is successful?
Answer: I encourage everyone else to join the online discussion on this issue. Think about what quality parameters are relevant for a fast food restaurant and how they secure that quality in their behaviour, processes, culture, ethics. What can TQM contribute with and how do you suggest to measuring the success of your implementation?
What do you think of measures such as the following?
• Change in quality culture
• Change in quality behaviour
• Change in performance on particular quality metrics
• Quality system benchmarking
• ISO 9000 certification
Question: What is an appropriate report structure?
Answer: Check out the: short report format requirements
and then the following Q&A assessment 3 report structure discussion: Q&A forum discussion thread on the report structure
Short Report Requirements
Your report should be presented in short report format, and incorporate the structure outlined below. Use headings and sub-headings as appropriate. The assessment short report writing requirements are provided below. For further details see Chapter 4 and 6 of the Faculty Guide for students. See the link under Assessment of Learning. Also, please consult the supplementary text Your Business Degree (McCulloch & Reid 2012) regarding report writing.
Your short report must contain the following:
• Title Page
• Executive Summary
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Body/ Discussion
• Conclusion/Recommendations
• References
• Appendices
Title Page
The title page must contain the following information:
• Report Title.
• Course number and name: MGMT19105 Quality Management.
• Your name and student number.
• If applicable the granted extension request.
• Word count (excluding title page, executive summary, table of contents and reference list)
Executive Summary
The executive summary is intended for the busy executive needing an overview of the short report. The executive summary is expected to contain summary statements key/important elements of the report such as of the focus of the report, findings, discussion, conclusion and in some cases recommendations.
Table of contents
The table of contents is used to show the reader where parts of the report can be found. It is up to you to decide on the level of detail in the table of contents.
Introduction
The introduction provides the purpose and scope of the report. In this case the subheadings of Background, Aim and Scope may be used.
Discussion
The body/discussion includes the findings, analysis, discussion in which the material is analysed and interpreted. This is the core of the report. Use appropriate headings.
Conclusion
The important conclusions justifiable reached as a result of the work should be stated in this section.
Key recommendations should be included in the conclusion.
References
Your report must include in-text referencing and a correctly cited list of references ordered alphabetically by surname of first author, in accordance with the Harvard style of referencing. See the link under Assessment Guidance.
Note that references are usually not sited in the executive summary, introduction and conclusion. These are used in the main body of the text.
Appendices
Here you include material that is important to the report, but to comprehensive to include in the body/discussion of the report.