Q1: What are the internal customers of a business?

Why are they important from a quality

perspective?
Ans: The internal customers of a business are any group, departments, divisions or individuals
within an organization that, at any time, rely on others within that organization to satisfy the
external customers, who are the ones that receive a final product or service from the company
[1]. For example, the relationship between the purchasing department and the production
department when it is acquiring the parts and materials for the assembly line. Also, all employees
are the internal customers of their companys human resources department and its services [2].
The business is kind of a network of systems that contains interrelations and interdependence
among several processes, branches and sub businesses, and any break in that network will lead
to the loss for the company. The Internal customers play a key role in that network and as a result
the business's success, specifically from a quality perspective because the quality concept
encourages the organizations to treat their employees and even employees themselves to treat
their co-workers as customers, and that will raise the quality awareness within the company
which leads to successful internal environment that has a strong influence on the quality of the
final product which delivered to external customers. In other words, an unsatisfied internal
customers will damage the satisfaction of the external customers of the organization and as a
consequence, the company will lose competitive advantages to against its competitors. So the
main contribution comes from the understanding that everyone within the organization has an
effect on the external customer which can help to reduce the variation in terms of everything
and that will lead to reduce the cost and improve the overall quality.

Q2: What are the three primary technical tools used for quality control and improvement?

Ans: The three primary tools that are essential for quality control and improvement are

SPC-statistical process control

Design of experiments

Acceptance sampling

To control and maintain the quality of the manufactured product is of principal importance in
any production process so that the manufactured products have a tendency to conform to a
particular standard. This statistical process is achieved through the statistical process control
tools called the control charts that founded and named by Walter A. shewharts [3]. The main
purpose of control charts is to signal the user that the process has changed and check whether
the process is conforming to the standards and help to make the appropriate adjustment to

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reduce the variability in any ongoing process keeping in to consideration the cost factor. The
control chart has a central line with two control limits, an upper control and a lower control limit
lines just above and below the central line. The central line indicates where the process
characteristic should lie in the absence of any variation in the process. The upper control limit
and the lower control limits limit lines shows the limit to which the variation in the process is
acceptable beyond which serious consideration is required. A control charts hence serve the
purpose of process monitoring, controlling and improving the overall process performance over
time, by considering variation and its actual source. A designed experiment is an extremely useful
tool for discovering key variables that influence quality characteristics. Designed experiments can
be applied either to an actual physical process or to a computer simulation model of that process,
and can be used both for determining which factors influence the outcome of a process and for
determining the optimal combination of factor settings [4].
Acceptance sampling is a form of inspection that is applied to lots or batches of items either
before or after a process instead of during the process. In most of the cases, the lots represent
incoming purchased items or final products awaiting shipment to warehouses or customers. The
purpose of acceptance sampling is to decide whether a lot satisfies predetermined standards, to
be accepted, or those that do not, are rejected. Rejected lots may be subjected to 100-percent
inspection, or purchased goods may be returned to the supplier for credit or replacement [5].
Acceptance sampling procedures are most useful when one or more of the following conditions
exist: 1) a large number of items must be processed in a short time. 2) The cost consequences of
passing defectives are low. 3) Destructive testing is required. 4) Fatigue or boredom caused by
inspecting large numbers of items leads to inspection errors. Also acceptance sampling
procedures can be applied to both attribute (counts) and variable (measurements) inspection.

Q3: Are internal failure costs more or less important than external failure costs?
Ans: Before discussing the main differences and which one is more important we need to know
what are the internal failure costs & the external failure costs;
Both the Internal and the External failure costs are represent the second category or component
of the cost of quality that called the cost of poor quality (which is the cost of non-conformance).
Internal failure costs are costs that are caused by products or services not conforming to
requirements or customer/user needs and are detected before delivery of products and services
to external customers. They would have otherwise led to the customer not being satisfied.
Deficiencies are caused both by errors in products and inefficiencies in processes. They could
include: Rework, Delays, Re-designing, Shortages, Failure analysis, Re-testing, Downgrading,
Downtime, and Lack of flexibility and adaptability. While the external failure costs are caused by
deficiencies found after delivery of products and services to external customers, which lead to
customer dissatisfaction. Examples include the costs for: Complaints, Repairing goods and
redoing services, Warranties, Customers bad will, Losses due to sales reductions and
Environmental costs.
Internal failure costs are typically more expensive than both prevention and appraisal costs (the
cost of good quality) because a great deal of material and labor often has been invested prior to

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the discovery of the defect, However, It is less than the cost of the External failure since it is the
most expensive category of quality costs where it involves more costs, in addition to the internal
costs, we have the customer dissatisfaction which lead to the bad reputation of the company and
then losing the business. This would give an idea that the external failure costs are more
important than the internal. Nevertheless we can say that the internal failure are the source of
the external failure costs because both types of failures would disappear if there were no defects
on the product, which can be controlled prior to delivering it to the customer and because most
of the external failure costs are caused by an internal failure.

Q4: Why are designed experiments most useful in the improve step of DMAIC?
Ans: The purpose of the DMAIC Improve phase is to identify a solution to the problem that the
project aims to address, and Develop a list of criteria to be considered while making solutions for
improving the situation. Time, cost, and ease of process are the criteria normally used during the
improvement phase of the process. Designed experiments shed a vital role into the DMAIC
process, mainly within the improve step and it is usually cited as the most important of the Six
Sigma tool kit [4]. And that because of the following reasons:
1- This process includes confirming that the proposed solution will positively impact the key
process input variables (KPIV's) that are the source of the variation and the CTQs. Which
lead to understand the relationship between the set of key process variables and the
CTQs.
2- Designed experiments can be applied either to an actual physical process or to a computer
simulation model of that process.
3- Can be used both for determining which factors influence the outcome of a process and
for determining the optimal combination of factor settings, in other words to verify
possible improvement ideas or theories.
4- To mathematically model your process with the significant input factors from the Analyze
phase and come up with a relationship that will help you better control the behavior of
the input factors.
5- If a process is in statistical control but still has poor capability, then using Designed
experiments to improve process capability, may offer a more effective way than SPC,
since that the SPC is a passive statistical method which provides less useful information
than the experimental design which is an active statistical method that involves series of
tests on the process or system, making changes in the inputs and observing the
corresponding changes in the outputs, and this will produce enough information that can
lead to process improvement.
As a result of all these benefits the effective use of designed experiment methodology can lead
to products that are easier to manufacture, have higher reliability, and have enhanced field
performance.

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Q5: Suppose that you want to improve the process of loading passengers onto an airplane.
Would a discrete event simulation model of this process be useful? What data would have to
be collected to build this model?

Ans: Yes, the discrete event simulation model has a great positive impact on the process of
loading passengers onto an airplane, by controlling one of the key elements of that process
which is the passenger boarding, where reducing passenger boarding time will lead to increase
the customer satisfaction and result with more profit of the airlines companies.
In a discrete-event simulation model, a computer model simulates a process in an organization,
uses computer software to combine the effects of mathematical queuing theory with an
analysis of random behavior. So to build the model that simulates the process of passenger
boarding we need to collect the data associated with the interior configuration changes and
variations in passenger boarding procedures, in addition to the number of agents and their
service rate, such data includes
- Passenger attributes such as: walking speed, type of carry-on luggage, luggage put-away
time, relationship with other passengers (traveling alone or with a group) and passenger
ages.
- Passengers with special needs.
- The timing of each event (waiting or moving).
- Number of agents.
- Agents service rate.
- The interior design of the airplane.
- The location of each passenger in the airplane (passengers at the window seats first,
middle seats, etc.)
Finally its worthy to mention that both manufacturing and service organizations can greatly
benefit by using simulation models to study the performance of their processes. And one of the
first companies which used this approach to improve the process of the passenger boarding
was Boeing in 1994 [6].

Refrences:
[1] M. Martinez and B. Hobb, Building a Customer Service Culture: The Seven Service elements
of Customer Success (Hc), 2008, Information Age Publishing, ISBN: 978-1593119362
[2] S. Gronfeldt, and J. B. Strother, Service Leadership The Quest For Competitive Advantage,
2005, Sage Publications, ISBN: 978-1412913751.
[3] B. S. Dhillon, Quality Control, Reliability, and Engineering Design, 1985, CRC Press, ISBN: 978-
0824772789
[4] D. C. Montgomery, Introduction to Statistical Quality Control, 2008, Wiley, ISBN: 978-
0470169926.
[5] S. Patnaik, Operations Management, 2015, ebook.
[6] S. Marelli, G. Mattocks, R. Merry, The Role of Computer Simulation in Reducing Airplane
Turn Time, 1998, http://www.boeing.com/

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