Management of Quality Assignment | Essay Help Services

Choose any product or service with which you are familiar and which you feel could be improved. 1. Describe the product/service that you consider (10%) 2. Construct QFD matrix Level I and Level II using the template provided in Appendix 1. Provide some supporting text to explain the matrices and analyze the results. (40%) 3. Develop FMEA using the template given in Appendix 2 based on the QFD matrix that you have constructed. Describe ad analyze the FMEA that you have developed. (40%) The document must be well-organized and formatted to meet the requirements of a report. Introduction and conclusion sections need to be included in your report. (10%)Introduction
Gaming laptop is a type of products that belongs to a niche segment of portable
computer market where these laptops in particular are placed in the higher-end
spectrum of the market segment. In comparison with other product groups, gaming
laptop is averagely $1,000 more expensive (CostAide, 2019) than common laptops in
general due to the higher quality of internal components which function to create best
gaming experience. One of the first high-end gaming laptops was developed by Razer
in 2011, the first of its series, Razer Blade 17-inch (Cesa, 2011) as seen in Figure 1.
It features high-end components that was different with its common counterparts. A
common difference can be seen by its processor (CPU), whereas generally Intel Core
i5 sufficed with $200 (Smith, 2017), while gaming laptops demanded more with Intel
Core i7 and above (ibid) which was priced $410, twice the price.
With the release of said gaming laptop that was s competitors
and the increasing economic growth along with rapid internet development, a window
of opportunity surfaced for portable PC companies. McKinsey & Company (2015)
stated in their Global Media Report that video games in particular was one of the
fastest growing markets by 14.3% and another report (Messner, 2016) clarified that
there were less barriers for potential consumers to enjoy the upward trend. However,
this opportunity came with more challenging requirements from demand side as
companies were racing to gain market capitalization in this particular niche.
Figure 1
The Asus ROG Strix GL503
Taking into account the previous circumstances of increasingly competitive
gaming laptop market, a Taiwanese-based company called Asus developed a brand
called Republic of Gamers (ROG), aiming to gain the portable PC for gaming market
niche. A particular gaming laptop produced by Asus called as Asus ROG Strix GL503
as seen in Figure 2 was not performing as well as its competitors. Several notable
websites which reviewed this gaming laptop in average rated it 3.5 point out of 5.0
(Macy, 2018), worse than its competito
Taking into consideration that this particular gaming laptop has room for
improvement, this essay would like to elaborate how Asus ROG Strix GL503 product
design can be optimized for future Strix laptop series through the usage of quality
management frameworks such as Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and continued
with failure identifying framework with Design Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (DFMEA)
to further solidify the optimization plan. As QFD and FMEA have been proven
countless times to help optimizing product designs (Murat, 2010), and have been used
as a quality management tool that helps optimizing designs and reduced cost and time
needed to improve product designs (Goetsch, 2015), this essay would follow the
suggested ways by Hauser and Clausing (1998). Whereas the first level I of QFD will
be the overview of customer s requirements as the objectives and design
characteristics as means to achieve the objectives. Afterwards the design
characteristics will be extended by identifying parts specifications in Matrix level II.
Figure 2 Asus ROG Strix GL503
QFD Matrix Level I
Through the usage of QFD matrixes, Voice of Customers (VOC) were identified
and translated into winning requirements to which would be answered through working
design characteristics in Matrix Level I and part specifications in Matrix Level II. In the
Matrix Level I, a general overview of
collected from numerous sources that have observed customer s buying habits and
preferences as suggested (Johnson, 1998) were translated and further transformed
into engineering characteristics to achieve these wants. These requirements have
varied level of importance, which range from 1 to 10 as applied in this essay.
QFD Matrix Level I The Parameters
As seen in Figure 3, the VOC located on the left-side emphasized that gaming
laptop consumers were mainly concerned highly about how smooth their laptop can
offer them gaming experience, which can be defined by the value of their frame rate
per second (FPS) (Whaley, 2018) and how it can processes the game in haste (Smith,
2018). This mainly requires a great processing speed and a fast time record to load
the games. As customers played their games, it is imperative for the laptop to maintain
a constant and stable FPS which requires a fast processing speed, while at the same
time maintaining a high quality display as a part of their gaming experience. To be able
to project this high quality graphic rendering, a sufficient large screen display is also
required by the customers. However, most customers perceived having the display
screen of 1366 x 768 pixels (px) is sufficient enough and helps improving FPS in
consequence of large display (Piltch, 2018), therefore, the importance of smooth
gaming experience is more apparent that of high quality display.
In addition to the smooth gaming experience and high quality display, the second
most important consideration of gaming laptop is its durability. The less frequent the
customers need to charge their laptop battery, the better due to convenience (Smith,
2017). This is due to the fact that laptop functions to be more portable than common
PC desktops, and therefore, relied less on charging continuously. This brings to
another requirement of portability, in this case, how the customers can easily bring
their laptop among their personal belongings. However, there are numerous of cases
where most gaming laptops are more than 17 inches, which explains why portability is
not exactly one of the highest important requirements (ibid).
Last but not least important requirement is the capability of storing large amount
of games. As laptops function as a portable desktop, the necessity to store and install
numerous of games are inherent for gamers (ibid). This is important due to the
increasingly demanding games which takes up in average 10% of storage memory
each game. For example,
two of the most recent and
most downloaded games in
Steam, an online
marketplace for PC games,
called
Die Twice took up a
minimum 25 GB for its
installation, while the other,
Monster Hunter: World took
up 30 GB, as can be seen in
Figure 4. This shows that
the larger the storage
memory is, the more games
that the gamers can enjoy
without having to uninstall
and delete their other games.
Figure 4 Various specifications of PC Games in Steam
QFD Matrix Level I The Result
With the establishment of interrelationships between requirements and design
characteristics, the significance of each engineering characteristics can be determined.
The degree of relationships between the characteristics and customer requirements
are defined as strong, medium and weak. The stronger the relationship is, the more
influential the characteristics are to affect the requirements (Johnson, 1998). For
example, as was mentioned previously that smooth gaming experience derived
heavily from the fast processing speed and the fast loading time of the laptop, therefore
these characteristics have strong alignment toward this requirement. However,
another characteristics such as less overheating, have an underlying implication
toward smooth gaming experience, however it does not directly impact the gaming
experience itself, therefore it has a weaker degree of relationship.
With the VOC and interrelationships established, the results are calculated by
multiplying the importance values and the degree of interrelationship (ibid). The result
showed that the most important design characteristics are having an efficient battery
that drain slowly, followed by having large storage memory, less overheating and fast
processing speed. These values would be carried on and iterated to Matrix Level II, to
further analyze the part specifications to create the desired design characteristics.
QFD Matrix Level II Parts Specifications
As the significance of design characteristics were found through Matrix Level I,
these design characteristics value of Matrix Level I will be used as the next-level
requirement for the part specifications to pass (Johnson, 1998). Through the
illustration provided in Figure 5, with the similar procedure with the previous level, the
significance of design characteristics were carried forward from the Level I and
multiplied by the interrelationships with the parts specifications.
The CPU have direct influence with processing speed, loading time and how
likely the laptop is overheating. The stronger the CPU is, the faster the processing
speed and loading time, however this affects how likely the laptop is overheating
(Sayers, 2019). In the case of Strix GL503 having a high-end CPU, which is Intel Core
i7, will result in a laptop that may have issue with overheating. In addition to the CPU,
GPU has also similar case with overheating. Furthermore, GPU has direct influence
on the graphic output it produced and how fast the computer produced the graphics
therefore scored strongly in that relation. Another one of the important parts is the
storage memory type. In general, a laptop is sufficient with a hard disk drive (HDD)
storage memory type, however a gaming laptop is suggested to have a solid state
drive (SSD) instead, due to the more integrated the component is, and directly
influence the volume of memory it provides as well as influences greatly on processing
speed and loading time (Piltch, 2016).
Other parts specifications such as good ventilation have indirect relationship with
almost every design characteristics, however it does not directly involved with the main
operations. It has direct relationship on keeping the laptop not overheating. In addition
to good ventilation, other notable parts are removable battery, which helps the users
to remove battery in the case of laptop overheating and allow it to cool down.
Through calculations, the three of the most important parts for optimization are
the processor (CPU), graphic processor (GPU) and the storage memory type
respectively. Several other parts are not exactly main concern, but some have only
slight difference with the main means, such as the random access memory (RAM) and
internal ventilation. An unnecessary mean for optimization in this case would be the
lightweight bodyparts, which only caters to increase portability of the laptop. With the
main optimization parts are identified, D-FMEA will be used to identify possible failures
that can be optimized, and gave weight to which optimization should prioritized.
Design Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (D-FMEA)
Figure 6 – Design Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (D-FMEA)
To identify the prioritized factors that need immediate improvement, a calculation
of risk priority number (RPN) is imminent (Johnson, 1998). The calculation takes into
account factors such as the occurrences (OCC) and severity (SEV) and how easily it
is detected (DET). OCC and SEV values are given from 1 to 10 where the higher the
number, the more the failure modes are likely to occur, and how severe these modes
will cause. On the other hand, DET values are the otherwise, where the lower the
values, the easier it is to detect the failure modes. From Figure 6, the highest RPN
are allocated mostly due to the failure of Storage Drive, and less on the CPU and the
GPU.
CPU and GPU failures are easier to detect, therefore most of their consequences
can easily be avoided by the users albeit if the consequences do happen, it was quite
severe (level 7 to 8). This was due to Strix GL503 having a dedicated Republic of
Gamer (ROG) Game Center Hub program which helps monitor and remind the users
as prevention design control. This dedicated game center hub also contributes to
lowering the chance failures can occur. However, this program can be further
improved by showing the age of the components since it was first booted, to further
inform the users if there are any cases of lifetime expiry that are likely to contribute as
the cause of the failures.
There were major concerns which was showed by the high RPN regarding the
storage drive. The storage drive type that Strix GL503 have was a hybrid SSD and
HDD which was cheaper in comparison with fully build SSD. However, being a hybrid
SSD affects the performance of the speed to which the data is transferred.
Furthermore, the storage memory is likely to suffer from bad sectors that appeared
because the slow transfer speed when booting up performance-demanding games
(Hoffman, 2017). Additionally, this failure is difficult to detect, and likely to be detected
once the failures have happened. One of the only ways to detect this is through
accessing the BIOS of the laptop, which is not common for users to use due to its
technical terms, or downloading a third-party program to detect possible problems with
bad sectors. In addition to bad sectors, once a storage drive is totally corrupted, it was
hard to salvage it through supply perspective, and users need to buy a new storage
drive (Kingston, 2019). To prevent all of this from happening, it is recommended for
the future Strix GL503 to use non-hybrid storage drive and instead have a dedicated
SSD type instead.
Another important optimization factor is through the bottom case design that can
help users to prevent dust or lint to clog the components. This problem currently does
not have prevention nor detection control, other than manual overseeing from the
users. To help users preventing consequences that happened from accumulating dust
that contribute to overheating, future Strix laptops are suggested to have an easier to
open bottom case that can help users to immediately spot the dust or lint in the spaces
of back ventilation. Not only that, it is suggested for Asus to also provide a guide for
users to help clean the laptop in their laptop booklet, as this procedure may be tricky
without proper guidance.
Conclusion
As portable PC industry develops, the niche gaming laptop market develops as
well, and this demands companies to create a more high quality gaming laptop that
can satisfy customer requirements. As market gets more demanding, one of Asus
gaming laptop called as Asus ROG Strix GL503 was not performing as well as its rivals.
Through the usage of quality management frameworks such as QFD, gaming laptop
consumers requirements can be systematically identified as objectives, or called as
VOC, and means to achieve these objectives were created as design characteristics.
Afterwards, these design characteristics can be iterated into part specifications, to
which in order to pass satisfying design characteristics, part specifications need to be
optimized. The QFD s importance weighting was calculated and identified that in order
to satisfy the most out of the customer s requirements, gaming laptops need to
optimize its processor (CPU), graphic processor (GPU) and storage memory type.
Continuing with the optimization, D-FMEA framework is used to identify failure modes
of the prioritized parts, and where improvement can be made in these parts. Through
the FMEA and aligning with the current parts that Strix GL503 had, an optimization
surrounding memory drive was the most imminent.

BUSI3116 – Management of Quality
Individual Coursework
Choose any product or service with which you are familiar and which you feel could be improved.
1. Describe the product/service that you consider (10%)
2. Construct QFD matrix Level I and Level II using the template provided in Appendix 1. Provide some supporting text to explain the matrices and analyze the results. (40%)
3. Develop FMEA using the template given in Appendix 2 based on the QFD matrix that you have constructed. Describe ad analyze the FMEA that you have developed. (40%)
The document must be well-organized and formatted to meet the requirements of a report. Introduction and conclusion sections need to be included in your report. (10%)
Note:
Submission deadline: Monday 25 May 2019, 4:00 pm.
Your answer should be between 2,000 and 2,500 words maximum, not including appendices and references.
An electronic copy should be submitted to Turnitin at the module page on Moodle. The coursework assignment accounts for 20% of the overall mark of this module.
Marking criteria for assignments
All work on this module will be marked in accordance with the marking guide included in your 2019/2020 Business School Student Handbook.
To achieve a high mark (e.g. first class), it is essential to clear and precise in your application of the Quality Management techniques, theories or concepts learned in this module.
Demonstrated evidence of independent learning beyond classroom materials will be rewarded. That is, students are expected to use/cite any relevant supporting materials outside of those used in the classroom to support their submission.
Contact me via chandra.irawan@nottingham.edu.cn if you need further details on any of the coursework components or assessment criteria, please. Good luck!
Appendix 1. QFD matrix
Significance
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