UGC-NET (June 2025) · India · National Testing Agency
Original practice questions written to the published syllabus · not past papersWhat quality means for food and farm products, how it is managed and measured, and the national and international standards that govern trade.
In the exams: agribusiness management PhD entrance and fellowship examinations, quality management (present)
How our questions for UGC-NET spread across the units of Quality Management & Food Standards. Difficulty: 15 easy, 15 medium, 1 hard.
| Total quality management | 10 | |
| Concepts of quality | 8 | |
| ISO standards | 6 | |
| Statistical quality control | 6 | |
| Grades and standards | 1 |
Choose an answer, then open the working. Each explanation says why the right answer is right and why the others are not.
Which quality thinker defined quality as 'fitness for use'?
A. Joseph Juran
Juran's definition is fitness for use. Crosby's is conformance to requirements, the one most often confused with it; Taguchi defined poor quality as loss to society.
Further reading: Juran's Quality Handbook
Philip Crosby defined quality as:
B. Conformance to requirements
Crosby: conformance to requirements. Fitness for use is Juran; loss to society is Taguchi; 'what the customer says it is' is associated with Feigenbaum.
Further reading: Crosby, Quality Is Free
'Quality is free' and the performance standard of 'zero defects' are associated with:
C. Philip Crosby
Crosby's four absolutes include zero defects as the performance standard and the price of nonconformance as the measure. Feigenbaum coined total quality control; Shewhart developed the control chart.
Further reading: Crosby, Quality Is Free
Quality circles and the cause-and-effect (fishbone) diagram were popularised by:
D. Kaoru Ishikawa
Ishikawa promoted quality circles and company-wide quality control and popularised the fishbone diagram. Taguchi is known for the loss function, Shingo for poka-yoke.
Further reading: Ishikawa, Guide to Quality Control
A spice packer logs 300 complaints: foreign matter 120, torn pouches 80, short weight 40, caking 30, colour 20, others 10. What share of complaints do the two largest categories account for, as a Pareto chart would show?
C. 66.7%
Cumulative share of the top two = (120 + 80)/300 = 66.7%. Foreign matter alone is 40%; the top three reach 80%. The Pareto principle directs effort to the vital few first. 26.7% is torn pouches alone (80/300).
Further reading: Juran; Ishikawa
The Deming Prize was instituted in 1951 by:
C. The Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers
JUSE created the Deming Prize in 1951. BIS instituted the Rajiv Gandhi National Quality Award; EFQM runs the European excellence model; ISO does not give quality awards.
Further reading: JUSE
Which list gives the seven quality management principles underlying ISO 9001:2015?
A. Customer focus, leadership, engagement of people, process approach, improvement, evidence-based decision making, relationship management
These are the seven principles in ISO 9000:2015. Zero defects is Crosby's; PDCA is a cycle, not the principles; the last list mixes cost-of-quality terms and Garvin's dimensions.
Further reading: ISO 9000:2015
A fruit packhouse finds 45 defects in 1,500 crates. Each crate has 4 defect opportunities (grade, weight, label, damage). What is the DPMO?
D. 7,500
DPMO = 45/(1,500 x 4) x 1,000,000 = 7,500. Ignoring opportunities gives 30,000 (a per-unit rate); 0.75 is the defect percentage; multiplying by opportunities gives 120,000.
Further reading: Pyzdek, The Six Sigma Handbook
Under the conventional 1.5-sigma shift, a six-sigma process produces about how many defects per million opportunities?
B. 3.4
3.4 DPMO assumes a 1.5-sigma drift. 0.002 DPMO is the centred six-sigma figure; 233 corresponds to 5 sigma and 66,807 to 3 sigma.
Further reading: Pyzdek, The Six Sigma Handbook
The phases of a Six Sigma improvement project (DMAIC) are:
C. Define, measure, analyse, improve, control
DMAIC is define, measure, analyse, improve, control. DMADV (define, measure, analyse, design, verify) is used for new designs.
Further reading: Pyzdek, The Six Sigma Handbook
Ten here, 31 in the app. The Laisha app has every practice question we have written to UGC-NET in this subject, marked as you go, with timed papers, a jump-to-unanswered list and a certificate when you pass at 70 per cent.
Free for ten days, then one subscription of US$10 a month. We would rather say so here than have you find it later.
An AI operating system for agriculture: free guides, manuals and tools written for every country.