Assignment Aims
This assignment is intended to help you:
Achieve a deeper level of learning through reflective practice
Make the learning experience more personal and relevant by linking it to your own work and life experiences
Develop your skills in writing in a reader-focused way
Assignment Detail
This assignment gives you the opportunity to express your own views about issues covered in the unit learning materials and to illustrate your understanding by making linkages to considered and detailed examples or observations, from your own life and work experiences, that significantly and directly relate to the issue or point.
You need to select only one issue from four of the five topics listed below, and write no more than 400 words for each issue. Do not cover more than four topics or more than one issue from a topic, and do not exceed the word count for each issue.
1. Topic 1:
a. Meeting the customer requirements (Oakland 2003) is a reasonable definition of quality.
b. Customer satisfaction means we can wrap up our projects more rapidly (Frame 2002, quoted in Reid 2013a)
c. Not doing it right the first time at every stage of the process, essentially, is the cause of failures and problems in the production of products and services (Oakland 2003).
2. Topic 2:
a. Excellent communication between customers and suppliers is the key to total quality performance (Oakland 2003).
b. It is always cheaper to do it right the first time (Crosby in Beckford 1998, quoted in Reid 2013b).
c. If all employees are to participate in making the company or organisation successful…then they must also be trained in the basics of disciplined management (Oakland 2003).
3. Topic 4:
a. All employees must be committed to quality in order for an organisation to achieve sustained improvement (Oakland 2003).
b. A strong competitive advantage…provides direction and motivation to the entire organisation (Evans 2005, quoted in Reid 2013c).
c. …it is better to work together with a supplier to remove problems, improve capability, and generate a mutual understanding of “real” requirements, than to hop from one supplier to another and thereby experience a different set of problems each time (Oakland 2003).
4. Topic 5:
a. Everything we experience in or from and organisation is the result of a design decision, or lack of one (Oakland).
b. Customer expectations …are rarely well defined and may well evolve as the transaction progresses (AS 3906, quoted in Reid 2013d).
c. …as suppliers, all employees need to identify their internal and external customers, their specific needs and suitable measures of satisfaction (AS3906, quoted in Reid 2013d).
5. Topic 6:
a. In the organisation that is to succeed over the long term, performance must begin to be measured by the improvements seen by the customer (Oakland 2003).
b. The only performance measurement is the cost of quality, which is the expense of non-conformance (Crosby 1979 in Sower and Quarles 2003, quoted in Reid 2013e)
c. It is the “internal” cost of lack of quality that lead to the claim that approximately one-third of our efforts are wasted” (Oakland 2003).
Ensure you explain the direct connections that you see between your own detailed examples or observations and the specific aspects of an issue. In other words, don’t just write in a stand-alone way about your detailed example or observation. You must clearly say how your detailed example or observation links with the issue.
Remember that your comments must relate to your own direct views and experiences and you must not write in general terms about what you consider “others” or “everyone” thinks or believes about an issue. Nor is it adequate to base your assignment on a series of statements of what various authors say about an issue.
You must include your own examples or observations in your assignment. Do not use the same examples that are included in any of the unit learning materials. Also, do not include the same examples or observations in more than one Topic. Your submission must be concisely and clearly written, and be well structured. I recommend you follow the information about the writing process covered in the Guidelines for Written Assignments (which incorporates the Pyramid approach to writing), and the guidance about good writing structure included in The Writing Construction Manual by Jeanne Dawson (also called The Little Red Writing Book). You will find a copy of the Guidelines for Written Assignments in the Assignment link in Blackboard. The approach explained in the Guidelines can significantly assist students to write effective assignments in this and other units, as well as help them become much more effective writers in general.
When writing a journal entry you may find that you need to make linkages back to specific content from the Learning Modules or the Oakland text, eg you might say something like “I agree [or disagree] with the view of Oakland that…” – if this is the case, correctly reference Oakland by including the year the text was published (ie 2003) and include the text in a list of references placed at the end of the assignment. You can follow the approach to in-text citation that I have used for each of the issues noted in this assignment, and you can similarly follow the list of reference information included at the end of this assignment. If these do not fully cover your needs, then refer
to the latest Chicago Author-Date 16 th -ed referencing guide produced by Curtin Library which is available at http://libguides.library.curtin.edu.au/content.php?pid=141214. The Library guide is easy
to follow and clearly shows examples of how to include in-text citations and how to write the associated references in a reference list for a wide variety of primary and secondary sources. It is not the intention of the assignment that you read sources other than the Learning Modules and the Oakland text. This is not the type of assignment that requires you to research and identify what other authors say about a given issue. The focus of the assignment is your own, personal views, opinions and experiences. However, if you find that that you do make reference to any other authors, make sure you correctly include in-text citations and the sources in the list of references using the format prescribed.
I anticipate that you will have difficulty keeping your journal entries for each issue within the 400 word maximum allowance. Therefore, I expect that most of your work will be at, or close to, the 400 word limit. This limit is intentionally low to make you think hard about the content you include, and to encourage you to review and re-write your work so the final submission is well structured and is as concise and to the point as possible (the Guidelines for Written Assignments will help guide you on how to do this). If you find that your word count is less than the limit, and in some cases much less, then it indicates that you have likely not explored the issue or point in sufficient depth and your marks will be significantly affected as a consequence. To gain high marks in this assignment, you must follow and meet all of the requirements I have noted in the Assignment Detail, Assignment Layout, and Assignment Marks/ Rubric sections of this handout.
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