Controlling Quarter

Production Control Quarter (hereinafter, the Quarter) is the first of four lectures of Operations Quadrivium (hereinafter, the Quadrivium):

• The Quarter is designed to introduce its learners to enterprise discovery, or, in other words, to concepts related to obtaining data needed to administer the enterprise effort; and
• The Quadrivium examines concepts of administering various types of enterprises known as enterprise administration as a whole.

The Quadrivium is the first of seven modules of Septem Artes Administrativi, which is a course designed to introduce its learners to general concepts in business administration, management, and organizational behavior.

Outline

The predecessor lecture is Compliance Research Quarter.

Concepts

• Controlling. Management function that involves monitoring, comparing, and correcting work performance.
• Controlling. Monitoring activities to ensure they are being accomplished as planned and correcting any significant deviations.
• Control process. A three-step process of measuring actual performance, comparing actual performance against a standard, and taking managerial action to correct deviations or inadequate standards.
• Range of variation. The acceptable parameters of variance between actual performance and the standard.
• Quality control (QC). 1) The process of monitoring specific project results to determine if they comply with relevant quality standards and identifying ways to eliminate causes of unsatisfactory performance. 2) The organizational unit that is assigned responsibility for quality control.
• Earned value (EV). The physical work accomplished plus the authorized budget for this work. The sum of the approved cost estimates (may include overhead allocation) for activities (or portions of activities) completed during a given period (usually project-to-date). Previously called the budgeted cost of work performed (BCWP) for an activity or group of activities.
• Earned value management (EVM). A method for integrating scope, schedule, and resources, and for measuring project performance. It compares the amount of work that was planned with what was actually earned with what was actually spent to determine if cost and schedule performance are as planned.
• Big data. The vast amount of quantifiable information that can be analyzed by highly sophisticated data processing.
• Critical incident. A way of evaluating the behaviors that are key in making the difference between executing a job effectively and executing it ineffectively.
• Concurrent control. Control that takes place while a work activity is in progress.
• Feedback control. Control that takes place after a work activity is done.
• Feedforward control. Control that takes place before a work activity is done.
• Quality. The ability of a product or service to reliably do what it's supposed to do and to satisfy customer expectations.

Practices

The successor lecture is Quality Assurance Quarter.