Interview questions for Quality

1. Define The Terms Total Quality Management, Just-in-time, And Reengineering. What Do These Terms Have In Common?

Total quality management (TQM) is a philosophy that focuses on meeting the needs of the customer. TQM is not inspection, but actually the prevention of defects. It involves everyone in the organization. Just-in-time is a philosophy that focuses on reducing inventory and other wastes and on the production of the right number of items at the right time. Reengineering focuses on improving business processes in order to improve efficiency. Each of these techniques strives to allow more responsive and more efficient production leading to higher quality and higher customer satisfaction.

2. Describe Today’s Om Environment. How Is It Different From That Of A Few Years Ago? Identify Specific Features That Characterize Today’s Om Environment?

Today’s OM environment is more global, more service oriented, and uses more information technology than that of even a few years ago. Companies can outsource steps of their operation easier. Now even service operations are outsourced off-shore. Information technology allows companies to cooperate more closely, creating tighter supply chains, quicker response and less waste. Specific features include greater outsourcing, greater use of information technology, and deeper cooperation in the supply chain.

3. Is Operations Management Is Important In All Types Of Organization?

In some types of organization it is relatively easy to visualize the operations function and what it does, even if we have never seen it. For example, most people have seen images of automobile assembly. But what about an advertising agency? We know vaguely what they do – they produce the advertisements that we see in magazines and on television – but what is their operations function? The clue lies in the word ‘produce’. Any business that produces something, whether tangible or not, must use resources to do so, and so must have an operations activity. Also the automobile plant and the advertising agency do have one important element in common: both have a higher objective – to make a profit from producing their products or services. Yet not-for-profit organizations also use their resources to produce services, not to make a profit, but to serve society in some way.

4. What Is Operations Management In The Smaller Organization?

Operations management is just as important in small organizations as it is in large ones.
Irrespective of their size, all companies need to produce and deliver their products and services efficiently and effectively. However, in practice, managing operations in a small or medium-size organization has its own set of problems. Large companies may have the resources to dedicate individuals to specialized tasks but smaller companies often cannot, so people may have to do different jobs as the need arises. Such an informal structure can allow the company to respond quickly as opportunities or problems present themselves. But decision making can also become confused as individuals’ roles overlap. Small companies may have exactly the same operations management issues as large ones but they can be more difficult to separate from the mass of other issues in the organization.

5. Why are you applying for this internship?

Hopefully this is a question you’ve asked yourself long before you started the actual internship application process and before you ever agreed to an internship interview.
An internship is an amazing opportunity to get hands on experience in your chosen field, network with peers, meet people who might be invaluable mentors and guides and ultimately might lead to a permanent paying position. Of course, if the internship has absolutely zero to do with your ultimate goals in life, then you’re not just wasting your time, you’re potentially taking this opportunity away from someone who really wants/needs it.

6. What Is Operations Management In Not-for-profit Organizations?

Terms such as competitive advantage, markets and business, which are used in this book, are usually associated with companies in the for-profit sector. Yet operations management is also relevant to organizations whose purpose is not primarily to earn profits. Managing the operations in an animal welfare charity, hospital, research organization or government department is essentially the same as in commercial organizations. Operations have to take the same decisions – how to produce products and services, invest in technology, contract out some of their activities, devise performance measures, and improve their operations performance and so on.
However, the strategic objectives of not-for-profit organizations may be more complex and involve a mixture of political, economic, social and environmental objectives. Because of this there may be a greater chance of operations decisions being made under conditions of conflicting objectives. So, for example, it is the operations staff in a children’s welfare department who have to face the conflict between the cost of providing extra social workers and the risk of a child not receiving adequate protection.

7. What are your long-term goals?

Again, this is a question you should ask yourself before your interviewer asks you! Interviewers who ask this question want to know that you’re there for the right reasons. An easy way to tackle this question is by breaking it into two parts; short term goals and long-term goals. Start with the short-term first and then work towards the long-term.

8. What Is The Input–transformation–output Process?

All operations produce products and services by changing inputs into outputs using an ‘input-transformation-output’ process. Put simply, operations are processes that take in a set of input resources which are used to transform something, or are transformed themselves, into outputs of products and services. And although all operations conform to this general input–transformation–output model, they differ in the nature of their specific inputs and outputs. For example, if you stand far enough away from a hospital or a car plant, they might look very similar, but move closer and clear differences do start to emerge. One is a manufacturing operation producing ‘products’, and the other is a service operation producing ‘services’ that change the physiological or psychological condition of patients.

9. Why should we consider you for this internship?

For an unprepared intern candidate, this can be a heartbreakingly hard question to answer because the first thing you’ll be inclined to say is “because I really want this internship!” Unfortunately for a hiring manager, that’s not a good enough answer…which is why you need to prepare for it ahead of time. Make sure your answers are targeted directly to the internship you’re applying to and include concrete examples of your skills and experiences and how they relate to the internship overall

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