Exam 4: Building Competitive Advantage Through Functional-Level Strategy

Poor commercialization occurs when there is definite customer demand for a new product, but the product is not well adapted to customer needs because of factors such as poor design and poor quality.

Just-in-time inventory systems:

Sherree works at Dustcloud Manufacturing where she is part of a seven member team.Her team coordinates its own activities as well as makes its own hiring, training, work, and reward decisions.This type of team is referred to as a virtual team.

refers to unit cost increases associated with a large scale of output.

Customer focus in a function of only the lower levels of an organization.

Close integration between research and development (R&D), production and marketing can help a company avoid innovation failures.

The "sigma" in the Six Sigma name refers to the Greek letter meaning standard deviation from the mean.

Which of the following does the philosophy underlying TQM include?

A benefit oflong-time customer loyalty is the free advertising that customers provide for a company tluough referrals.

The challenge for a company's human resource function is to find ways to lower wage and benefits costs.

Employee productivity is:

Strong brand loyalty leads to more sales and the ability to charge higher prices.

Six Sigma is a quality and efficiency program derived from the concept of Total Quality Management, and was widely used in Japan before acceptance in the U.S.

Although important, unfortunately, innovation plays a minor role in achieving competitive advantage.

A company's hiring strategy: