Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence (CMQ/OE)

WHO SHOULD CERTIFY?

The Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence is a professional who leads and champions process-improvement initiatives - everywhere from small businesses to multinational corporations - that can have regional or global focus in a variety of service and industrial settings.

A Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence facilitates and leads team efforts to establish and monitor customer/supplier relations, supports strategic planning and deployment initiatives, and helps develop measurement systems to determine organizational improvement.

The Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence should be able to motivate and evaluate staff, manage projects and human resources, analyze financial situations, determine and evaluate risk, and employ knowledge management tools and techniques in resolving organizational challenges.

The Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence evolved from the certified quality manager as a way to broaden the scope of the examination. The Quality Management Division surveyed certified quality managers and other recognized subject matter experts.

The survey results indicated that not only had the Body of Knowledge for quality managers changed, but the name of the program itself must be updated to reflect the broader scope of this position. With the approval of the ASQ Certification Board, the Certified Quality Manager program became the Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence program.

Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence (CMQ/OE)

ASQ CMQ/OE Exam Summary:

Exam Name	ASQ Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence
Exam Code	CMQ/OE
Exam Fee	USD ASQ MEMBERS - $468 NON-MEMBERS - $568 RETAKES - $368
Exam Duration	270 Minutes
Number of Questions	180
Passing Score	550/750
Format	Multiple Choice Questions
Schedule Exam	Book Your Exam
Books	Certified Manager Of Quality/Organizational Excellence Certification Preparation The Certified Manager Of Quality/Organizational Excellence Handbook, Fourth Edition
Sample Questions	ASQ Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence Exam Sample Questions and Answers
Practice Exam	ASQ Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence (CMQ/OE) Practice Test

ASQ Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence Syllabus Topics:

I. Leadership (28 Questions)
A. Organizational Structures	- Define and describe organizational designs (e.g., matrix, flat, and parallel) and the effect that a hierarchical management structure can have on an organization. (Apply)
B. Leadership Challenges	1. Roles and responsibilities of leaders - Describe typical roles, responsibilities, and competencies of people in leadership positions and how those attributes influence an organization’s direction and purpose. (Analyze) 2. Roles and responsibilities of managers - Describe typical roles, responsibilities, and competencies of people in management positions and how those attributes contribute to an organization’s success. (Analyze) 3. Change management - Use various change management strategies to overcome organizational roadblocks, assess impacts of global changes, achieve desired change levels, and review outcomes for effectiveness. Define and describe factors that contribute to an organization’s culture. (Evaluate) 4. Leadership techniques - Develop and implement techniques that motivate employees and sustain their enthusiasm. Use negotiation techniques to enable parties with different or opposing outlooks to recognize common goals and work together to achieve them. Determine when and how to use influence, critical thinking skills, or Socratic questioning to resolve a problem or move a project forward. (Create) 5. Empowerment - Apply various techniques to empower individuals and teams. Identify typical obstacles to empowerment and appropriate strategies for overcoming them. Describe and distinguish between job enrichment and job enlargement, job design, and job tasks. (Analyze)
C. Teams and Team Processes	1. Types of teams - Identify and describe different types of teams and their purpose, including process improvement, self-managed, temporary or ad hoc (special project), virtual, and work groups. (Understand) 2. Stages of team development - Describe how the stages of team development (forming, storming, norming, performing) affect leadership style. (Apply) 3. Team-building techniques - Apply basic team-building steps such as using ice-breaker activities to enhance team introductions and membership, developing a common vision and agreement on team objectives, and identifying and assigning specific roles on the team. (Apply) 4. Team roles and responsibilities - Define and describe typical roles related to team support and effectiveness such as facilitator, leader, process owner, champion, project manager, and contributor. Describe member and leader responsibilities with regard to group dynamics, including keeping the team on task, recognizing hidden agendas, handling disruptive behavior, and resolving conflict. (Analyze) 5. Team performance and evaluation - Evaluate team performance in relation to established metrics to meet goals and objectives. Determine when and how to reward teams and celebrate their success. (Evaluate)
D. ASQ Code of Ethics	- Identify and apply behaviors and actions that comply with this code. (Apply)
II. Strategic Plan Development and Deployment (22 Questions)
A. Strategic Planning Models	- Define, describe, and use basic elements of strategic planning models, including how the guiding principles of mission, vision, and values relate to the plan. (Apply)
B. Business Environment Analysis	1. Risk analysis - Analyze an organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and risks, using tools such as SWOT. Identify and analyze risk factors that can influence strategic plans. (Analyze) 2. Market forces - Define and describe various forces that drive strategic plans, including existing competition, the entry of new competitors, rivalry among competitors, the threat of substitutes, bargaining power of buyers and suppliers, current economic conditions, global market changes, and how well the organization is positioned for growth and changing customer expectations. (Apply) 3. Stakeholder analysis - Identify and differentiate the perspectives, needs, and objectives of various internal and external stakeholders. Ensure that the organization’s strategic objectives are aligned with those of the stakeholders. (Analyze) 4. Technology - Describe how changes in technology can have long-term and short-term influences on strategic planning. Identify new and upcoming technologies that may impact business strategy and quality, such as automation, autonomation, Quality 4.0, cloud computing, or machine learning. (Understand) 5. Internal capability analysis - Identify and describe the effects that influence an organization’s internal capabilities: human resources, facilities capacity, and operational capabilities. Analyze these factors in relation to strategy formation. (Analyze) 6. Legal and regulatory factors - Define and describe how legal and regulatory factors can influence strategic plans. (Understand)
C. Strategic Plan Deployment	1. Tactical plans - Identify basic characteristics of tactics: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-specific, and how these are linked to strategic objectives. Evaluate proposed plans to determine whether they meet these criteria. (Evaluate) 2. Resource allocation and deployment - Evaluate current resources to ensure they are available and deployed in support of strategic initiatives. Identify and eliminate administrative barriers to new initiatives. Ensure that all internal stakeholders understand the strategic plan and have the competencies and resources to carry out their responsibilities. (Evaluate) 3. Organizational performance measurement - Develop measurements and ensure that they are aligned with strategic goals, and use the measures to evaluate the organization against the strategic plan. (Evaluate) 4. Quality in strategic deployment - Support strategic plan deployment by applying continuous improvement and other quality initiatives to drive performance outcomes throughout the organization. (Create)
III. Management Elements and Methods (31 Questions)
A. Management Skills and Abilities	1. Principles of management - Evaluate and use basic management principles such as planning, leading, delegating, controlling, organizing, and allocating resources. (Evaluate) 2. Management theories and styles - Define and describe management theories such as scientific, organizational, behavioral, learning, systems thinking, and situational complexity. Define and describe management styles such as autocratic, participative, transactional, transformational, management by fact, coaching, and contingency approach. Describe how management styles are influenced by an organization’s size, industry sector, culture, and competitors. (Apply) 3. Interdependence of functional areas - Describe the interdependence of an organization’s areas (human resources, engineering, sales, marketing, finance, research and development, purchasing, information technology, logistics, production, and service) and how those dependencies and relationships influence processes and outputs. (Understand) 4. Human resources (HR) management - Apply HR elements in support of ongoing professional development and role in quality system: setting goals and objectives, conducting performance evaluations, developing recognition programs, and ensuring that succession plans are in place where appropriate. (Apply) 5. Financial management - Read, interpret, and use various financial tools including income statements, balance sheets, and product/service cost structures. Manage budgets and use the language of cost and profitability to communicate with senior management. Use potential return on investment (ROI), estimated return on assets (ROA), net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), and portfolio analysis to analyze project risk, feasibility, and priority. (Analyze) 6. Risk management - Identify the kinds of risk that can occur throughout the organization, from such diverse processes as scheduling, shipping/receiving, financials, production and operations, employee and user safety, regulatory compliance and changes. (Apply) 7. Knowledge management (KM) - Use KM techniques in identifying core competencies that create a culture and system for collecting and sharing implicit and explicit knowledge among workers, stakeholders, competitors, and suppliers. Capture lessons learned and apply them across the organization to promote best practices. Identify typical knowledge-sharing barriers and how to overcome them. (Apply)
B. Communication Skills and Abilities	1. Communication techniques - Define and apply various modes of communication used within organizations, such as verbal, non-verbal, written and visual. Identify factors that can inhibit clear communication and describe ways of overcoming them. (Apply) 2. Interpersonal skills - Use skills in empathy, tact, friendliness, and objectivity. Use open-minded and non-judgmental communication methods. Develop and use a clear writing style, active listening, and questioning and dialog techniques that support effective communication. (Apply) 3. Communications in a global economy - Identify key challenges of communicating across different time zones, cultures, languages, terminology, and business practices, and present ways of overcoming them. (Apply) 4. Communications and technology - Identify how technology affects communications, including improved information availability, its influence on interpersonal communications, and etiquette for e-communications. Deploy appropriate communication methods within virtual teams. (Apply)
C. Project Management	1. Project management basics - Use project management methodology and ensure that each project is aligned with strategic objectives. Plan the different phases of a project: initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling, and closure. Ensure the project is on-time and within budget. Consider alternate project management methodologies (linear, evolutionary, or iterative) as it apply to the project. (Evaluate) 2. Project planning and estimation tools - Use tools such as risk assessment matrix, benefit-cost analysis, critical path method (CPM), Gantt chart, PERT, and work breakdown structure (WBS) to plan projects and estimate related costs. (Apply) 3. Measure and monitor project activity - Use tools such as cost variance analysis, milestones, and actual vs. planned budgets to monitor project activity against project plan. (Evaluate) 4. Project documentation - Use written procedures and project summaries to document projects. (Apply)
D. Quality System	1. Quality mission and policy - Develop and monitor the quality mission and policy and ensure that it is aligned with the organization’s broader mission. (Create) 2. Quality planning, deployment, and documentation - Develop and deploy the quality plan and ensure that it is documented and accessible throughout the organization. (Create) 3. Quality system effectiveness - Evaluate the effectiveness of the quality system using various tools: balanced scorecard, internal audits, feedback from internal and external stakeholders (including stakeholder complaints), warranty/return data analytics, product traceability and recall reports, and management reviews. (Evaluate)
E. Quality Models and Theories	1. Quality management standards - Describe and apply the requirements and basic principles of ISO 9000-based standards used to support quality management systems. (Apply) 2. Performance excellence models - Define and describe common elements and criteria of performance excellence models such as the European Excellence Award (EFQM), Excellence Canada, ASQ International Team Excellence Award (ITEA), or Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA). Describe how their criteria are used as management models to improve processes at an organization level. (Understand) 3. Other quality methodologies - Describe and differentiate methods such as total quality management (TQM), continuous improvement, and benchmarking. (Apply) 4. Quality philosophies - Describe and apply basic methodologies and theories proposed by quality leaders such as Shewhart, Deming, Juran, Crosby, Feigenbaum, and Ishikawa. (Apply)
IV. Quality Management Tools (30 Questions)
A. Problem-Solving Tools	1. The seven classic quality tools - Select, interpret, and evaluate output from these tools: Pareto charts, cause and effect diagrams, flowcharts, control charts, check sheets, scatter diagrams, and histograms. (Evaluate) 2. Basic management and planning tools - Select, interpret, and evaluate output from these tools: affinity diagrams, tree diagrams, process decision program charts (PDPCs), matrix diagrams, prioritization matrices, interrelationship digraphs, and activity network diagrams. (Evaluate) 3. Process improvement tools - Select, interpret and evaluate tools such as root cause analysis, Kepner-Tregoe, PDCA, six sigma DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, control), and failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA). (Evaluate) 4. Innovation and creativity tools - Use various techniques and exercises for creative decision-making and problem-solving, including brainstorming, mind mapping, lateral thinking, critical thinking, the 5 whys, and design for six sigma (DFSS). (Apply) 5. Cost of quality (COQ) - Define and distinguish between prevention, appraisal, internal, and external failure cost categories and evaluate the impact that changes in one category will have on the others. (Evaluate)
B. Process Management	1. Process goals - Describe how process goals are established, monitored, and measured and evaluate their impact on product or service quality. (Evaluate) 2. Process analysis - Use various tools to analyze a process and evaluate its effectiveness on the basis of procedures, work instructions, and other documents. Evaluate the process to identify and relieve bottlenecks, increase capacity, improve throughput, reduce cycle time, and eliminate waste. (Evaluate) 3. Lean tools - Identify and use lean tools such as 5S, just-in-time (JIT), kanban, value stream mapping (VSM), quick-changeover (single-minute exchange of die), pokeyoke, kaizen, standard work (training within industry), and productivity (OEE). (Apply) 4. Theory of constraints (TOC) - Define key concepts of TOC: systems as chains, local vs. system optimization, physical vs. policy constraints, undesirable effects vs. core problems, and solution deterioration. Classify constraints in terms of resources and expectations as defined by measures of inventory and operating expense. (Understand)
C. Measurement: Assessment and Metrics	1. Basic statistical use - Use statistical techniques to identify when, what, and how to measure projects and processes. Describe how metrics and data gathering methods affect resources and vice-versa. (Apply) 2. Sampling - Define and describe basic sampling techniques such as random and stratified. Identify when and why sampling is an appropriate technique to use. (Understand) 3. Statistical analysis - Calculate basic statistics: measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode) and measures of dispersion (range, standard deviation, and variance). Identify basic distribution types (normal, bimodal, skewed) and evaluate run charts, statistical process control (SPC) reports, and other control charts to make databased decisions. (Evaluate) 4. Measurement systems analysis - Understand basic measurement terms such as accuracy, precision, bias, and linearity. Understand the difference between repeatability and reproducibility in gauge R&R studies. (Understand) 5. Trend and pattern analysis - Interpret graphs and charts to identify cyclical, seasonal, and environmental data trends. Evaluate control chart patterns to determine shifts and other trend indicators in a process. (Evaluate) 6. Process variation - Analyze data to distinguish between common and special cause variation. (Analyze) 7. Process capability - Recognize process capability (Cp and Cpk,) and performance indices (Pp and Ppk). (Understand) 8. Reliability terminology - Define and describe basic reliability measures such as infant mortality, end of life (e.g. bathtub curve), mean time between failures (MTBF) and mean time to repair (MTTR). Understand the value of estimating reliability to meet requirements or specifications. NOTE: Reliability calculations will not be tested. (Understand)
V. Customer-Focused Organizations (21 Questions)
A. Customer Identification and Segmentation	1. Internal customers - Define internal customers and describe the impact an organization’s treatment of internal customers will have on external customers. Evaluate methods for influencing internal customers to improve products, processes, and services and evaluate the results. (Evaluate) 2. External customers - Define external customers and describe their impact on products and services. Evaluate strategies for working with them and integrating their requirements and needs to improve products, services, and processes. (Evaluate) 3. Customer segmentation - Describe and assess the process of customer segmentation and its impact on aligning service and delivery to meet customer needs. (Evaluate) 4. Qualitative assessment - Identify subjective information such as verbatim comments from customers, observation records, and focus group output. Describe how the subjective information differs from objective measures and determine when data should be captured in categories rather than numeric value. (Analyze)
B. Customer Relationship Management	1. Customer needs - Use quality function deployment (QFD) to capture the voice of the customer (VOC) and examine customer needs in relation to products and services offered. Analyze the results to prioritize future development in anticipation of changing customer needs. (Analyze) 2. Customer satisfaction and loyalty - Develop systems to capture positive and negative customer feedback and experiences, using tools such as listening posts, focus groups, complaints and warranty data, surveys, and interviews. Use customer value analysis to calculate the financial impact of existing customers and the potential results of losing those customers. Develop corrective actions and proactive methods to improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention levels. (Create) 3. Customer service principles - Demonstrate strategies that support customer service principles: courtesy, politeness, smiles, cheerfulness, attention to detail, active listening, empathy, rapid response, and easy access for information and service. (Apply) 4. Multiple and diverse customer management - Establish and monitor priorities to avoid or resolve conflicting customer requirements and demands. Develop methods and systems for managing capacity and resources to meet the needs of multiple customers. Describe the impact that diverse customer groups can have on all aspects of product and service development and delivery. (Evaluate)
VI. Supply Chain Management (17 Questions)
A. Supplier Selection and Approval	- Define and outline criteria for selecting, approving, and classifying suppliers, including internal rating programs and external certification standards. (Analyze)
B. Supplier Risk Management	- Assess and manage supplier risk and the impact it may have on various internal processes of the organization. (Evaluate)
C. Supplier Communications	- Prepare and implement specific communication methods with suppliers, including regularly scheduled meetings and routine and emergency reporting procedures. Direct, communicate, and confirm explicit expectations so that the supplier is aware of critical product and delivery requirements. (Apply)
D. Supplier Performance	- Define, assess, and monitor supplier performance in terms of quality, cost, delivery, and service levels, and establish associated metrics for defect rates, product reliability, functional performance, timeliness, responsiveness, and availability of technical support. (Evaluate)
E. Supplier Improvement	- Define and conduct supplier audits, evaluate corrective and preventive action plans, provide feedback, and monitor process improvements. (Evaluate)
F. Supplier Certification, Partnerships, and Alliances	- Define, appraise, and implement supplier certification programs that include process reviews and performance evaluations. Outline strategies for developing customer-supplier partnerships and alliances. (Evaluate)
G. Supplier Logistics and Material Acceptance	- Describe the impact purchased products and services can have on final product assembly or total service package, including ship-to-stock and just-in-time (JIT). Describe the incoming material inspections process. (Understand)
VII. Training and Development (16 Questions)
A. Training Plans	- Develop and implement training plans that are aligned with the organization’s strategic plan and general business needs, including leadership training and alignment of personal development plans. (Create)
B. Training Needs Analysis	- Use various tools and techniques such as surveys, performance reviews, regulatory guidances, and gap analyses to identify and assess training needs. (Evaluate)
C. Training Materials, Development, and Delivery	- Use various tools, resources, and methodologies to develop training materials and curriculum that address adult learning principles and the learning needs of an increasingly diverse workforce. Describe various methods of training delivery: classroom, workbooks, simulations, computer-delivered, on-the-job, and self-directed. Use mentoring and coaching to support training outcomes. (Apply)
D. Training Effectiveness and Evaluation	- Assess training effectiveness and make improvements based on feedback from training sessions, end-of-course test results, on-the-job behavior or performance changes, and departmental or area performance improvements. (Evaluate)