Certified Production & Operations Manager (POM) Practice Exam

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A customer service manager analyzes complaint trends using a tool organizing complaints into sources. This describes which TQM tool?

  1. Control chart

  2. Histogram

  3. Cause-and-effect diagram

  4. Flowchart

The correct answer is: Cause-and-effect diagram

The correct answer is a cause-and-effect diagram, also known as a fishbone diagram or Ishikawa diagram. This tool is specifically designed to identify, explore, and visually display the various potential causes that lead to a particular problem or effect, in this case, customer complaints. By organizing complaints into their sources, the customer service manager can better understand the underlying issues contributing to the complaints. Using a cause-and-effect diagram allows the manager to systematically categorize different types of complaints and trace them back to their root causes, facilitating targeted problem-solving efforts. This method enhances clarity and aids in exploring the relationships between different variables affecting customer satisfaction, ultimately helping the organization develop effective strategies for improvement. The other tools mentioned have different primary functions; a control chart is used to monitor process variability over time, a histogram provides a visual representation of data distribution, and a flowchart is used to outline processes step-by-step. These do not focus on categorizing and analyzing causes of complaints specifically, thus highlighting why the cause-and-effect diagram is the most suitable TQM tool in this context.