Question

Monitoring product quality. The Wallace Company of Houston is a distributor of pipes, valves, and fittings to the refining, chemical, and petrochemical industries. The company was a recent winner of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. One of the steps the company takes to monitor the quality of its distribution process is to send out a survey twice a year to a subset of its current customers, asking the customers to rate the speed of deliveries, the accuracy of invoices, and the quality of the packaging of the products they have received from Wallace.

a. Describe the process studied.

b. Describe the variables of interest.

c. Describe the sample.

d. Describe the inferences of interest.

e. What are some of the factors that are likely to affect the reliability of the inferences?

Short answer

a. The entire procedure of distribution of pipes, valves, and other items performed by the Wallace Company of Houston

b. Speed of the deliveries, the quality of packaging, as well as the accuracy of invoices.

c. A subset of the current customers of the organization

d. Studying the quality of the distribution process

e. Sample size and the number of respondents

Step-by-step solution

Identifying the process

The process that the researcher is interested in is theentire process of the distributionof the Wallace Company of Houston. The items they deal in are pipes, valves as well as fittings. These parties are refining, chemical as well as petrochemical industries.

Determining the variable of interest 

The variable here is thespeed of the deliveries along with the accuracy of the invoices. In addition to this, the third variable that the researcher is interested in is thequality of packaging.

Describing the sample 

Thesubset of the current customers of the Wallace company of Houston, among them who responded to the survey that the organization conducts twice a year.

Explaining the inferences 

Theinferences of interest are thequality of the distribution processby considering the pace of deliveries, the precision of invoices, and the quality of packaging.

Elucidating the factors affecting the reliability of the inferences 

The sizeof the sample and people who responded to the survey, when

augmented, will increase the reliability of the inferences. If more people respond to the survey, then inferences will be drawn from a large sample, making it more credible.