Managing for Quality and Performance Excellence 9th Edition by James Evans,William Lindsay

Exercise 50

This exercise provides an experience with developing an affinity diagram for analyzing complaints and would best be performed by the class as a whole. 72 Each student writes one or more descriptions of personal experiences of frustration and dissatisfaction with products and services. Two examples might be: "Every time I purchase a CD, the seal is difficult and time-consuming to remove. I have even cracked the case a few times while trying to remove it." "I purchased a new pair of running shoes, and the laces were too long." These experiences should be written on large sticky notes and posted on the classroom wall. Students then group the responses into logical categories and develop descriptive headers for each group that explain the causes of dissatisfaction and then create the affinity diagram. For instance, the shoe example might fall into a group titled "Product components are incompatible." An alternative project is to use positive comments about products and services.