Assignment 1

Zero Snowboarding is a company which will provide ‘green’, reliable and stylish snowboards for individuals who want to enjoy the slops and make sure that future generations can too. Its goal is to provide creative, safe, innovative and inexpensive snowboards to its customers while still maintaining exceptional quality. At Zero we understand that snowboarders want to be ‘green’, but can’t always afford to be.

Zero believes that the goal of excellence and performance comes from a keen sense of quality in everything that it does and all of those it employs. This level of high quality is to be achieved through a modern Total Quality Management (TQM) business approach. Zero will strive to focus mainly on exceeding customer needs, providing outstanding service, and dependability. Giving customers more than what they expect and achieving it at a viable cost is of great importance and will provide an increase in customer satisfaction, positive feedback, free advertising by word of mouth and help to cement a great reputation as an inventive leader in the industry. Outstanding service will ensure that the customer satisfactory manner. Also at Zero we believe in providing a security to our customer that our snowboards will be created in a ‘green’ and efficient manner.

Zero strives for a global status. In order to achieve this it will ensure to follow the eight ISO 9000:2000 series principles. Zero focus mainly on customer focus, involvement of people and continued improvements in order to meet its quality needs, ensure customer satisfaction and innovative atmosphere in a growing global market.

The following methodology used on this project is based on the CIMprg model and method. CIMpgr method is a graphical form used for analyzing, specifying, designing, implementing / integrating, operating, maintaining / supporting, and project managing systems. It offers simple solutions for modeling current enterprises as well as creating new and better quality systems, products, and organizations.

The CIMpgr model systematically illustrates the relationships between the objects, their functions and entities through a set of diagrams and is usually layered in a tree-like manner depicting a parent-child relationship (Figure 1).

This can be thought of as a collection of carefully coordinated objects that describe a system or design. The top of this tree is a high level description of the process or system. It is considered the parent layer or A0 and includes the attributes of the object, which are grouped into inputs, outputs, controls, and resources. An example of the A0 layer is shown below in Figure 2.

The subsequent layers are the child layers (A1, A2, etc.) which then describe in more detail the system components in the parent diagram by identifying the major activities involved. It can be looked somewhat like an organizational chart where A0 describes the groups or divisions A1, A2, etc. and A2.1, A2.2, A2.3, etc. describes those that make up the group A2. An example of a child diagram is shown in Figure 3.

These layers or child diagrams can be described in greater detail by further child diagrams of their own. By using the CIMprg models companies can develop, analyze, design, and integrate internal and external processes, activities, or operations of systems. This will help reduce waste, increase efficiency, and enable decision making and operation control to be proactive and adapt to rapid changes forced by outside and inside forces.

Through object-oriented process modeling, Zero has gained a better understanding of the resources, outcomes, and key processes. With this understanding, Zero can now look to improve upon future snowboards and get them to market quicker with total quality. Modeling the system also helps to establish clear responsibility and accountability for key activities. It could also help make Zero a more ‘green’ sustainable system by eliminating waste.

All areas of the modeling will need to be updated over time as the company grows and changes. Inputs, outputs, controls, and resources may also need to be added or changed as more of information is gathered about the system. The order of importance will also be able to become more accurate while more is learned about the system. Discovery of new technologies may also affect the modeling. These changes are part of the process to continually improve and achieve better quality.

Total Quality Management 3D eBook, CIMware USA, Inc., and CIMware Ltd. UK

Jesse Huffman. "Board Makers Offer the Green Option." The New York Times. January 2, 2009. Feburary 6, 2009. <http://travel.nytimes.com>

Monson Snowboards. "Snowboard Construction: How to Make a Snowboard." Snowboarding.com. Feburary 26, 2009. <http://wwwsnowboarding.com>