- Auditing
- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Design of Experiments
- Engineering
- Environmental Manag. and Sustainability
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Innovation
- Baldrige National Quality Program
- Inspection
- ISO 14000
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Problem Solving
- Process Capability
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Function Deployment
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Reliability
- Safety
- Six Sigma
- Small Business
- Social Responsibility
- Software Quality
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Best Practices
- Total Quality Management
- ISO/TS 16949
- Compliance
- Certification/Registration (management system Standards)
- Customer Requirements
- Food Safety
- Economic Case for Quality
- Change Management
- Continuous Improvement
Score One for Improvement
Five years ago, Intel’s IT organization decided to improve internal customer satisfaction and the efficiency of IT projects with a CMMI-based process improvement activity to develop standard processes for project management....
Watershed Moment
Cargill Corn Milling North America approached its Baldrige site visit in 2008 with the same level of preparation any organization would, but with the unique perspective that comes with rebuilding your operation after surviving a natural disaster....
Don't Just Talk the Talk
Many companies and organizations talk big about knowing the best way other businesses and groups can work to drive continuous and process improvement. Often, these businesses don’t take their own advice. Once in a while, however, a group comes along...
Entire Issue: July 2009
16. QP Seiche Sanders Editor Publisher William A. Tony editor Seiche Sanders AssociAte editor Mark Edmund AssistAnt editor Brett Krzykowski mAnuscriPt coordinAtor Valerie Funk editor At lArge Susan E. Daniels contributing editor Nicole Adrian coPY editor...
Take a Bite Out of Inefficiency
Providing consistent and effective service or product requires a consistent and effective framework for implementing, maintaining and improving tactical and strategic operations. Dentistry is no different....
Entire Issue: May 2009
W. Edwards Deming Probability of Detecting Three Standard Error Shift 1.0 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 Intraclass Correlation Coefficient I II III IV I EMP III EMP III DONALD J. WHEELER DONALD J. WHE...
Change That Sticks
Process improvement is gaining more attention as organizations face budget cuts, competition from developing markets overseas and a challenging economy....
Off the Ground
None of the 4,000 fasteners that were hand drilled into the fuselage of any C-17 cargo plane was misaligned or had gone missing. For years, Boeing has been building these top-notch planes. It just wanted to build them better....
Practice What You Teach
Many education institutions do not have a foundation conducive to sustainability efforts. For many, change will be cumbersome. Opportunities exist, however, and persistence will be an ally....
The Power of Balance
Many organizations face tremendous challenges in calculating trade-off relationships and the point of balance when determining their cost of quality. Experts don’t always agree, compounding the difficulty....
Contacts That Count
A team dedicated to improving member contact rates at Healthways Inc. pulled just about everything from its lean Six Sigma toolbox while working on a project and was recognized in ASQ’s International Team Excellence Award competition....
ISO-lating the Problem
When two healthcare organizations were searching for a way to better manage their activities, both turned to ISO 9001:2000 in the hope that the standard could organize their practices and help them improve service to patients....
A Dose of DMAIC
Ruby hospital, a multispecialty for-profit facility in Calcutta, India, was the first in Eastern India to embrace ISO 9001 and is the only one in the country to have successfully deployed a Six Sigma improvement program....
The Road to Improvement
Registration of public organizations to the ISO 9001 quality management standard can be difficult because of their complex operations and extensive documentation....
Incredible Journey
In response to personnel’s safety concerns and rising workers’ compensation costs, a team at Boeing’s C-17 site developed a solution to thwart injury and save money....
First-Person Narratives
The C-17 World-Class Safety Team was structured in a way that allowed members to have fun, work cooperatively with each other and work autonomously on their own. Participating on the World-Class Safety Team, preparing for the CTEA [California Team Excelle...
Who's Keeping Score?
There’s one tool you won’t find for sale at Sears. One of the retail giant’s divisions has started using a quality management tool extensively to maintain and improve its own quality management system....
It All Ties Together
At a time when gas costs have skyrocketed and companies across the board are doing their bit to be greener, a team of individuals from CSX Corp. came together to develop a solution to combat the large amount of fuel wasted while locomotives sat idling....
K'NEX Success
As a result of the recent lead scare, companies many have grown to trust—Fisher-Price, Mattel, J.C. Penney—found themselves on recall lists instead of in kids’ hands during the holidays. Some companies, however, were able to skirt the issue....
Map Quest
Raytheon Six Sigma is a proprietary six-step process that Raytheon Co., a defense and aerospace systems supplier, has embedded into its culture. It was developed by an internal team that was guided by the company’s top leadership....
Launch to Quality
After using different quality methods with limited success, the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Indian Head Division, implemented lean Six Sigma in 2004. Through all of this, leadership demonstrated a steadfast commitment to fully implementing lean Six Sigm...
Good Vibrations
Modern quality management principles define quality as customer satisfaction with product and service. SCGC has a web page where guitar owners can have questions about their guitars answered by Hoover or Roberts. With employee empowerment accompanying goo...
Quality Tools, Teamwork Lead Boeing Team to a System Redesign
A team from Boeing, as well as members of the Air Force and suppliers, worked to fix the C-17's inert gas generating system that previously needed constant repairs. Using quality tools, the team identified cause and came up with the best solution for...
Improving the Internal Audit Experience
Employees don’t always understand how audits relate to ensuring the use of good business processes. Many don’t realize the significant process improvement benefits that can be achieved from an internal audit experience. Cerner Corp. developed...
Agency Files Away Inefficiency, Saves Taxpayers a Bundle
Caseworkers for the SunCoast Region of the Florida Department of Children and Families won a silver medal in the 2007 International Team Excellence Competition by redesigning its paper based document filing and retrieval system and bringing it into...
Don't Throw Out the Baby With the Bath Water
Public school accountability prompted by the No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to assess the quality of educational delivery and make changes to assure student academic success, as well as establish a process for continual improvement....
Retrospective Analysis of a Designed Experiment
Design of experiment (DOE) techniques have been successfully used by India’s Department of Defense Production to optimize the process parameters for a plastic injection-molded part used in the manufacture of tank deterrents. The goal was to get...
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...
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...
Quality Focus Good for Business
Premier Inc., a San Diego-based healthcare alliance, is a 2006 recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) in the service category. The firm credits employee involvement, experience gained while earning a state quality award, and...
It's in the Genes at Cummins
When asked why diesel maker Cummins used Six Sigma to explain new health insurance benefits to its employees, the response was that Six Sigma is part of Cummins' DNA. Six Sigma methods helped ensure a smooth enrollment process, particularly for union...
Merging Quality Cultures in Contract Manufacturing
When EPIC Technologies acquired the Siemens Electronic Manufacturing Center operations in Johnson City, Tennessee, it became necessary to merge its quality culture with those of its new subsidiary while continuing to keep its original customers happy....
Hospital Reduces Medication Errors Using DMAIC and QFD
The medication error rate at Illinois' Alton Memorial Hospital was low when compared to national statistics, but the hospital knew cost savings would be significant if this statistic was lowered even further. A multidisciplinary team sought the help of...
You Can Go Home Again
Jamie Houghton's love for Corning brought him out of retirement and back to the company when it was fighting for survival, due to the decline of the telecommunications industry and decreased demand for Corning's fiber optics. When Houghton returned to...
Extending School Improvement Beyond Curriculum
Successful schools must meet the needs of multiple stakeholders - students, parents, teachers, administrators, taxpayers, and the community in general. And all this must be accomplished at different grade levels and divergent subject areas. Therefore,...
Getting Credit for Service
Experian Marketing Services (EMS) considers quality management a critical part of its commitment to its clients. Last year EMS looked to ISO 9001 certification as a way to extend its established project management program. EMS identified more than 100...
Uniform Maker Sews Up Success With Scorecard
Operadora Ganso Azul S.A. de C.V. is an ISO 9001 sewing factory in Mexico facing growing competition for China. In 2000 when the company began operating as a maquiladora producing uniforms for police officers and firefighters, rapid expansion created...
Using a FMEA in a Service Setting
ISO 9001 requires organizations to take preventative action to avoid the occurrence and reoccurrence of nonconformities. A failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is a tool that allows users to predict potential for failure and plan for control through...
Shifting Quality Into High Gear
Park Place Lexus (PPL), located in the Dallas metropolitan area, is the first automobile dealership to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Determined not to be just another car dealership, PPL leaders looked outside the industry to...
Employee and Patient Focus Earns the Baldrige
Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo, Michigan has a vision of becoming a national leader in healthcare quality. In the 1990s, it began using the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria as a tool for improvement and self-evaluation, and in...
Making It Look Over Easy
Sunny Fresh Foods was the first food company to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1999. The manufacturer of egg based products won the award again in 2005, this time applying in the manufacturing category, having outgrown the small...
Steady Does It For DynMcDermott
DynMcDermott Petroleum Operations (DM) holds the maintenance and operations contract for the Department of Energy's strategic petroleum reserve. High DOE expectations prompted DM's Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award journey ten years ago when DM...
Big Improvements for Small Parts
National Semiconductor Corporation is a process-driven manufacturer looking for additional ways to cut costs. Having experienced dissatisfaction with an earlier continuous improvement program, it became clear that reducing costs while maintaining...
Six Sigma Delivers On-Time Service
Six Sigma success isn't limited to manufacturing organizations alone. ServiceMaster's American Residential Services (ARS) Service Express improved customer satisfaction by a unique application of Six Sigma techniques. After an initial learning period,...
ISO 9000 In Service: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
When the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began requiring ISO 9001 certification for its new business contracts, claims processing contractor Palmetto GBA decided to pursue certification for its existing contracts as well. Getting a...
Next Level Leadership
Soon after the Texas Nameplate Co. (TNC) won its first Baldrige Award in 1998, president and CEO Dale Crownover was already discussing how to improve TNC in a Baldrige way so the company could reapply for the award as soon as it was eligible. Now, not...
Narrow Focus Provides Widespread Benefits
The vision of the University of Northern Colorado's Monfort College of Business (MCB) was to provide Colorado's best undergraduate business program. To accomplish this, the college eliminated all graduate programs, including the state's largest MBA...
Improve Schools With Empowerment Based Models
Most school administrators have been slow to adopt the quality practices mandated by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Only three school districts have received the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award since the sector's entry. Top-down approaches for...
Genentech Error Proofs Its Batch Records
Like other firms subject to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation, Genentech must provide complete and accurate documentation of processes. In September 2003 an error-proofing project was launched by the good manufacturing practices core team at...
A Recipe For Excellence
The roots of the Bama Companies' 2004 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award go back to a Texas kitchen in 1927. Today the third-generation family owned business makes frozen baked goods for fast food and casual dining restaurants using the same...
A Bare Bones Look at the Bottom Line
A basic premise of the quality revolution is that quality increases profits. While customers generate profit in the traditional way, quality focuses on money not spent as the result of improved practices. Quality alone, however, does not guarantee...
Ghosts in Your Process? Who Ya Gonna Call?
Even when using the DMAIC process, root causes of poorly performing processes can be extremely difficult to find and eliminate. In his book Manufacturing Solutions for Consistent Quality and Reliability, Robert Traver proposes a nine-step process for...
Lean Six Sigma Reduces Medication Errors
Medication errors are a serious threat in the healthcare industry. One mid-sized hospital interested in quality management in several areas undertook a Six Sigma project to determine what policy and practice changes might be needed to remedy the...
Back to the Future at Ford
The U.S. automotive industry, and U.S. industry in general, have seen significant change over the past thirty years, and the results haven’t always been positive. While specific details differ, Ford Motor Company's experience with the major system...
Quality Intervenes at a Hospital
The Nebraska Medical Center, the state's largest teaching hospital, began implementation of Six Sigma in 2002 in response to a decline in patient volume in its interventional radiology department. A Six Sigma team was assembled to address problems in...
Building Customer Satisfaction With Quality
Competition in the marketplace has forced Grayson Homes of Ellicott City, MD to refocus its operating strategy from a family company culture to a team culture stressing mutual respect. A new strategy with a business model approach was devised that...
Five Lessons From a U.S.-English Merger
Seeking to increase its presence in the global economy, a U.S. company ran into unexpected difficulties when it tried to implement its proven quality system at its newly purchased English subsidiary. Differences in language and work styles, consistency...
Simple Tools Improve Complicated Processes
The combined use of simple lean/Six Sigma tools has enabled Wausau Window and Wall Systems in Wisconsin to benefit customers and shareholders by trimming costs and improving cycle times. The method uses fact based analytical tools and methodologies that...
PetroChina's Strategic Planning Focused on Quality
PetroChina is a consortium of numerous previously state-owned small- to medium-sized oil companies. Despite modernization efforts taken to reposition itself in the global market, PetroChina faced strong competition from both foreign and domestic sources...
Improving Service Quality at Honda
Spotting defects in problem solving, decision making, or project management are fundamental to providing high quality service and support. As a provider of financial services, leasing support, and various sales and marketing-related services to Honda...
A Class Act
Responding to Motorola's challenge to the American education system to produce student capable of competing in the global marketplace, Community Consolidated School District 15 in Palatine, IL began a journey resulting in its winning the 2003 Malcolm...
Two Hospitals Prescribe Performance Excellence
Florida's Baptist Hospital Inc. (BHI) and Saint Luke's Hospital (SLH) in Kansas City, Missouri were recipients of the 2003 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the healthcare category. In addition to its new mission to provide world-class patient...
Use Basic Quality Tools To Manage Your Processes
The 2000 revision of ISO 9001 stresses the importance of process in a company's quality system. However, many firms operating under the traditional hierarchical view of structure have found it difficult to make the transition. The experience of a...
Stoner: Built on a Strong Foundation
Stoner Inc., a manufacturer of cleaning, lubrication, and coating products, was the 2003 winner of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the small business category. The company is run with only two operational levels: the leadership team that...
The Image and Reality of Excellence
Medical device manufacturer Medrad Inc. was the only company in the manufacturing sector to receive the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for 2003. The company has been involved with Baldrige since the award’s inception fifteen years ago....
Three C’s + Q = Success
When Bill Thomas left the corporate world to start his own company manufacturing khaki pants patterned after the original World War II U.S. Army issue pants, he found it difficult to find suppliers for the materials required to make the product...
At Your Service
"Boeing Aerospace Support (AS) and Caterpillar Financial Services Corp. (CFSC), 2003 winners of Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards in the service industry, have proven once again that quality pays rather than costs. As Baldrige award applicants,...
Good Supplier Management Aids New Products Launch
Unisys Corporation, once a vertically integrated company that designed and manufactured most of what was needed to support its products, has changed its focus to providing cost effective solutions to its customers. Since this change requires reliance on...
ISO 9001 Takes On a New Role – Crime Fighter
In July of 2003 the Phoenix Police Department’s Records and Identification Bureau (RIB) became the first law enforcement organization in the U.S. to achieve ISO 9001 registration as a means of reinforcing its reputation as a reliable information...
The Quality of Learning
Quality in education can be difficult to measure because the educational process differs from manufacturing in certain intrinsic ways. The University of the Pacific’s school of dentistry uses a competency-based approach to education that assumes...
A Software Company’s TL 9000 Success Story
When Ulticom, a small software product company, set out to establish a quality management system it considered a number of international standards before pursuing registration to TL 9000, the telecommunications quality management standard based on ISO...
Beyond Standards
A quality management system model for the healthcare industry based on ISO 9000 is preventing bureaucratic barriers from channeling resources away from customer service. The Sparrow Health System’s Sparrow Adult Outpatient Rehabilitation Services...
Climbing Mount Sustainability
This year marks an anniversary of sorts for Interface Inc., which produces about 40% of the world’s commercial carpet tiles. Ten years ago, I challenged my company to a new way of thinking: to embrace a new paradigm...
Get Staff Involved in Quality Initiatives
A case study in which a company in the public transportation services industry took on the issue of how a lean quality improvement staff could help the CEO aspire to new levels of business performance without a typical Six Sigma level budget....
Faster Test Results
Southside Hospital used Six Sigma to reduce test turnaround times from 68 hours to an average of 32 hours. The use of quality tools helped the hospital improve the sigma level for stress test turnaround....
Offense and Defense
To improve its quality, an enterprise must fight two battles. It must prevent new problems, such as wear and tear on equipment, increasingly stringent customer requirements, new product introductions and employee turnover, from affecting its processes....
Translate Know-What Into Know-How
Organizational change is a much more difficult challenge than we've been led to believe....
Improving Healthcare Quality Measurement
In November 2002, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a major report on healthcare quality. Leadership by Example: Coordinating Government Roles in Improving Healthcare Quality...
Move From Product to Customer Centric
Can a 50-year-old manufacturer of industrial products become a customer centric organization? How can a traditionally product centric company learn to listen systematically to its customers?...
Handling the Human Side of Change
Quality efforts and their accompanying flurry of training activities continue unabated in many organizations. Many have morphed to adapt to the current crazes of Six Sigma and lean....
Turn Your Customers Into Interns
You may have been here before: You just signed a contract to have a house built. You’re excited at the prospect and can’t wait to move in. Obviously, with the contract just signed, your move in date is far off....
Applying an Excellence Model to Schools
Students, parents and society are demanding much more of schools as education becomes more and more important for national economic competitiveness, growth and even survival....
The Message Is Clear
Information and Analysis Data and information are gathered, integrated and categorized into two types of measures: perfor- MALCOLM BALDRIGE NATIONAL QUALITY AWARD Global marketing and sales group Sector management Reviews Customer and market analysis Com...
Managing Supplier Relationships
Effective supply chain management (SCM) can provide companies the competitive edge by adding stability and predictability to their supply stream. Manufacturers can identify vendors that provide high quality service and developing close,...
A Model For Customer Service
Just using the Quality Progress editorial staff as one small example, you can see a rep needs to know editor Debbie Phillips- Donaldson handles the yearly editorial calendar and overall strategy; I edit the news pages, some features and certain columns; ...
Gain a Competitive Edge By Preventing Recalls
Product recalls are a serious problem for consumer products companies. Each year, thousands of products representing hundreds of millions of product units are recalled in the United States for safety reasons....
FMEA - the Cure for Medical Errors
St. Joseph’s Community Hospital in West Bend, WI, will close in the next few years to make room for a new hospital. This replacement facility will represent a breakthrough in hospital design. Inspired by the Institute of Medicine report To Err Is Human...
What I Learned On My Business Trip
Thanks in part to technological advancements and expectations that have been raised in part by companies, customers of all types of services are becoming more demanding. Customers also expect to be cared about as individuals and can harbor deep...
Capability Analysis of Complex Parts
Several years ago, Military Aircraft and Missile Systems Group (A&M), a division of the Boeing Company in St. Louis, made a strategic decision to focus on its main business—aircraft and missile assembly....
Print Perfect
Branch-Smith Inc., a fourth-generation printing company, had its origins in the unlikely success of a boy born without arms in 1868. The company as it exists today takes inspiration from founder Aaron Smith, who taught himself to type with his toes,...
Column: Emerging Sectors: Searching for Improvement
Management Search Inc. (MSI), a recruitment and employment placement firm with more than 50 employees across three states, began in 1983 as the idea of two men about how to build a better mousetrap....
Eastman Chemical's Success Story
There is also internal buy- in, which has led to enhanced internal relations, particularly between Eastman Chemical Co. 0 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 10,000 12,000 14,000 16,000 J F M A M J J A S O N D 1997 J F M A M J J A S O N D 1998 J F M A M J J A S O N ...
My Supplier’s Capability Is What?
One fine day at Skyko Industries, Brett, the commodity manager, approached Gail, the manufacturing manager, about a cost savings opportunity....
Column: Back to Basics: Process Improvement
Even minor changes can make an impact
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After her first attempt to lead a process-improvement team failed to yield workable strategies, the author used an example from her...
Use CMI Certification to Achieve Strategic Initiatives
Smith Tool Co. in Ponca City, Oklahoma incorporated ASQ’s certified mechanical inspector (CMI) certification into its strategic plan because it wanted to strengthen its self-inspection program. Self-inspection results in real-time feedback and...
Column: Career Corner: Resumes: Before and After
My friend Deming Juran Crosby (D.J. for short) and I go back a long way. He recently decided to look for a new job and wanted some feedback on his résumé. It looked all right to me, but I suggested D.J. get a more professional opinion....
From Good to Great
In his book "Good to Great," Jim Collins noted that good is the enemy of great. Central College in Pella, Iowa is a "good" college that faces the challenge of how to become a great institution. Central found its agent for change in David Roe, whose...
Rx for Excellence
SSM Health Care (SSMHC), the first healthcare winner of the Malcolm Baldrige Award, has been showing the world that a focus on continuous improvement can help the ailing healthcare sector. SSMHC operates as a private, not-for-profit system that owns,...
Lean and Six Sigma -- A One-Two Punch
To keep profits growing in these days of flat revenues, manufacturers are paying more attention to the advice of Poor Richard (a.k.a. Benjamin Franklin): A penny saved is a penny earned....
13 Steps to Certification in Less Than a Year
Ultratech Stepper (UTS), a manufacturer of photolithography equipment, became both ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 14000 certified in less than a year at a cost under $200,000, using only two employees to manage the effort part-time. UTS's quality steering...
