The purpose of this book is to improve the thinking done as part of quality improvement activities in organizations. That thinking is problem solving, hence the book's title, Quality Problem Solving. It has been written for use by anyone who wants to make organizations work better. Thus, the book's target audience includes managers at all levels and employees in all kinds of organizations : public and prive, for-profit and non-profit, government, manufacturing, and services, large and small. While it will be useful to quality engineers, inspectors, and other quality professionals, the book offers even more to general managers and employees, people without technical training in quality who are concerned with organizational improvement. Quality Problem Solving is also intended for students, providing durable knowledge and hands-on advice that can help them have an immediate impact on the performance of organizations that employ them.



A terrific reference for all industries, this book offers state-of-the-art problem-solving insights and advice for anyone tryng to solve complex, real world problems. This in-depth and extremely comprehensive refernce uses numerous case studies and examples to ilustrate key concepts so you can easily understand various kinds of problems and discover their solutions.



Written so it will be beneficial for the reader with basic to advanced knowledge of problem solving, the author classifies problems, explores how to solv them, and illustrates key concepts. many books address the elements of problem solving in terms of various tools and techniques, but none are as comperehensive or actually teach readers how to think effectively about quality problems.



Benefits:

* Covers problem solving fundamentals - cognitive, functionalist, and problem-driven approaches

* Addresses important functional demands - problems identification, problem definition, diagnosis, and elternative generation-posed by quality problems

* Identifies fve types of quality problems, offering practical, experience-based problem-solving advice for each.

* Discusses important problem solving techniques, their uses, and limitations.



This book will increase your problem solving effectiveness, both as an individual and as a member of organizational improvement teams.



About the author:

gerald F. Smith is an associate professor of decision making at the University of Northern Iowa. he has worked in various corporate positions invliving accounting, financial analysis, and planning. In addition, he has extensive university-level ecperience teaching and conducting research on managerial problem solving. Smith received his Ph.D in decision science from Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.