May 2007
Quantifying Machinery Availability Loss
Possibly the most misunderstood and abused metric in performance based manufacturing is machine availability. When examining quality, performance, costs, and cycle time improvements, it is assumed that any performance metrics take into account a...
Benchmarking Goes to School
In 2004, Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, started a benchmarking project to improve the quality of its housing allocation services. A multi-functional team began its work by mapping existing residence application processes to establish a baseline,...
Six Sigma at Cigna
In 2002, Cigna Corp., a provider of employee healthcare and insurance benefits, launched a grass-root driven quality program based on Six Sigma. Leadership made it clear that the approach would be holistic and would require behavioral changes and a...
Reaching Out to CEOs
Interested in promoting quality as an agent of profit and prosperity, ASQ asked the Pittsburgh section to participate in a pilot run of the Economic Case for Quality by surveying local business leaders to determine how they perceived the impact of...
Financial Control and Quality
The case for quality should be easy to make, but it is not always obvious to top management who must be aware of and control the corporation’s finances in order to comply with federal regulations. There are two aspects to measuring financial control -...
Reach for the Stars
CelsiusTech Australia, a systems and software supplier, has long had a commitment to quality, but believes there is always room for improvement. The company decided to create an improved approach to the plan-do-check-act cycle to help new employees...
The Quality Diet: Building a Healthy Business
Quality is not always an easy sell. As a result, the challenges facing a quality professional trying to help a company are a lot like those facing a dietitian trying to help a client succeed with a diet. Quality professionals could even be called...
- Career Corner: The Making of a Knowledge Worker [Open Access]
- Back to Basics: It's Just Paperwork? [Open Access]
