7. Self-study task

Exercise 1. Revise the active vocabulary from the unit. Create a sentence for the each word or word group given.

Office productivity, targets, standards of performance, corrective action, strategic planning, concern, merchandise, consistent, to measure, input, ongoing, to emphasize, accuracy, flexibility, timeliness, reward system, to assess, benchmarking, continuous improvement, hierarchy, to generate compliance, feed forward control, concurrent control, feedback control, input quality, end product, strategic objectives, quality circle, total quality management, outsourcing, bureaucratic control.

Exercise 2. Study the following words and word groups concerning control and total quality management. Match them with their definitions. Find their Russian equivalents in your bilingual dictionary and do the exercise that follows.

1. specifi cations (specs)	a) no faults at all
2. dimensions	b) doing sth again
3. conformity	c) with no correcting mistakes later
4. zero defects	d) quick random examinations during production to ensure everything is going well
5. right first time	e) a detailed description of a product including its design, the materials used, etc.
6. reworking	f) improvements
7. spot checks	g) correspondence or likeness in form or appearance
8. enhancements	h) the recognized methods of correctly running businesses or providing services
9. mystery shoppers	i) a complete restructuring of an organization
10. best practice	j) size
11. business process reengineering	k) people who pretend to be shoppers to check service in shops

Exercise 3. Complete the crossword with words from Ex.1 and Ex. 2.

Across

3. See 6 down.

4, 5 down Right … … . (5, 4)

8. Could be length, height or width. (9)

11. Total quality … . (10)

12, 10. Making sure things are alright. (4, 6)

Down

1. What the designer decides . (13)

2. Doing it again when you shouldn’t have to. (9)

4. 11 across. Topics relating to the environment. (5, 6)

5. See 4 across.

6, 3 across. No mistakes at all. (4, 7)

7. A quality … meets to suggest improvements. (6)

9. Short form of 1 down in plural. (5)

Exercise 4. Which expression from ex. 1 and ex. 2 describes each of these situations? One of the expressions is used twice.

1. A police service reduces the number of forms to fill in when a crime is reported, first from fifteen to twelve, then to ten, then to seven, then to three.

2. A travel company closes all its high street shops, lays off middle managers and half of its sales assistants and retrains the others to sell on the phone. It also starts an Internet service.

3. A telephone company looks at other telephone companies to see which one issues bills with fewest mistakes to customers. It then copies this company’s methods to reduce the mistakes in its own bills.

4. Most parcel delivery companies deliver 70 per cent of parcels by 10 am the next day, but one company has an advanced computer system that enables it to achieve an 80 per cent delivery rate.

5. An Internet banking service starts by allowing customers to see how much money they have in their accounts, and the latest transactions in the order they took place. Six months later customers can view the transactions in different orders. Three months later, they can make payments using the Internet service, which they couldn’t do before.

Exercise 5. Study the following words concerning quality control and customer service. Use these words to complete the text below. Mind the form of the verbs.

Verbs: identify, modify, fail, re-launch, recall, test.

Nouns: durability, reliability.