Quality Assurance & Improvement Flashcards
7 cards from real CARS practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Quality Assurance & Improvement flashcards as text
A client SLA requires accounts to be 'attempted within 72 hours of assignment.' In QA reporting, which data point verifies SLA compliance?
Answer: Timestamp of the first documented field or skip attempt after assignment received
The timestamp of the first documented attempt after assignment receipt is the definitive data point for measuring against a 72-hour SLA requirement.
Which statistical tool is MOST useful for identifying whether a spike in consumer complaints is due to a systemic process failure versus random variation?
Answer: Control chart (SPC chart)
A statistical process control (SPC) chart plots data over time with control limits to distinguish between natural variation and assignable cause variation requiring intervention.
In asset recovery, 'dollar-weighted recovery rate' differs from 'unit recovery rate' because it:
Answer: Weights recovery performance by outstanding balance, reflecting financial impact more accurately
Dollar-weighted recovery rate accounts for balance size, giving higher-balance accounts proportionally more impact on the metric and better reflecting financial performance.
A CARS professional conducting a vendor audit finds that an outsourced storage lot lacks required signage for personal property notification. The BEST immediate action is:
Answer: Document the deficiency, notify the vendor, set a remediation deadline, and suspend new assignments pending correction
Proper vendor management requires documented deficiency notice, a remediation timeline, and suspension of new business until compliance is confirmed to limit liability exposure.
Which of the following best describes 'first-pass quality' in a recovery operation?
Answer: The percentage of completed tasks that require no rework or correction
First-pass quality measures how often work is completed correctly on the first attempt, without requiring rework, corrections, or re-processing.
Under a continuous improvement framework, 'kaizen' events applied to asset recovery would MOST likely focus on:
Answer: Rapid, focused team-based improvement of a specific process over a short timeframe
Kaizen events are intensive, short-duration workshops where cross-functional teams identify and implement immediate improvements to a specific process.
A recovery company's error rate on personal property inventories has increased from 2% to 8% over three months. A fishbone diagram would help identify:
Answer: The root causes across categories such as people, process, equipment, and environment
A fishbone (Ishikawa) diagram maps potential root causes across major categories, helping teams systematically explore all contributors to a quality problem.