- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Engineering
- Environmental Manag. and Sustainability
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Inspection
- ISO 14000
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Metrology
- Problem Solving
- Process Capability
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Function Deployment
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Safety
- Six Sigma
- Small Business
- Social Responsibility
- Software Quality
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Total Quality Management
- ISO 22000
- ISO 26000
- Compliance
- Information Management
- Customer Requirements
- Economic Case for Quality
- Change Management
- Continuous Improvement
Critical Stage
Has Six Sigma been a good thing? While this is a straightforward question, there isn’t a simple answer....
Expert Answers: September 2009
Accountability ... defining cost reduction ... honing in on confidence intervals....
The Right Move
Shortcomings in both measurement systems and traditional methods for assessing customer satisfaction affect the ability of most firms to directly link quality improvements to changes in financial performance....
Pyramid Power
The next evolutionary step for Six Sigma could be a method called 6TOC (pronounced “six-tock”) that combines principles of lean Six Sigma with the theory of constraints....
Know Thyself
There are two schools of thought when it comes to improvement: project-centric improvement and culture-centric improvement. Traditional thought says these approaches have their separate places. But PCI and CCI are inextricably linked....
Online Figures Schooley
Radiology transport w/ o phone calls Map emergency downtime plan for TSystem Midlevel in Triage, Improvement Measurement: # MLP Discharges daily Action Item List from 2/ 6/ 08 National MD goals Room to MD ( 22 min), MD to dispo ( 74 min) Post times in ME...
No Longer Waiting for Answers
The emergency department at Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, NC is often stretched beyond capacity. Patient volume in the 43-bed ED has jumped 34% in the past four years, and more than 86,000 people are expected to seek care there this year....
Futures Study
Forces of Change From All ASQ Futures Studies Table 1 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 Changing values Partnering Quality must deliver bottom- line results Globalization Globalization Globalization Learning systems Management systems will increasingly absorb the...
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....
Online Baranzelli sidebars
IDOT developed an internal quality system audit team to determine whether the new QMS conforms to planned arrangements, to the requirements of the ISO 9001 and to the QMS requirements established by the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT), and is...
Small Business, Big Feat
Efforts to continuously improve employee and customer satisfaction, and business practices led PRO-TEC to a Baldrige award. The company has incorporated many best management practices, including lean manufacturing and continuous improvement, and relied on...
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....
3.4 per Million: Data Dependability
As quality or Six Sigma professionals, we have been taught to address the issue of data accuracy and integrity from the statistical viewpoint....
Two Are Better Than One
Management need and my personal curiosity recently led me to take a closer look at the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). My work pointed out similarities and differences between SOX and ISO 9001....
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....
Better Safe Than Sorry
Last year’s record number of product recalls, especially recalls of children’s toys, drew worldwide attention to product safety and defective products. The recall stories topped newscasts and made headlines in newspapers coast to coast....
One Good Idea: Upon Further Review...
Often, a product release occurs without the company taking a crucial step—performing a product release readiness review to determine whether the product is ready for release and whether the company is prepared to lend its full support to the product....
Strong Foundation, Solid Future
In the wake of the scandals five years ago that shook consumer confidence in business leaders and the economy, I co-wrote an article about the resurgence of social responsibility on the corporate landscape and increased public awareness on the topic....
A Gold Medal Solution
By using quality tools, a team from Boeing came up with solutions that eliminated the unsafe conditions that occurred during installation of the details in aircrafts' tailcones....
Back to Basics: An Appreciation for Documentation
Isn’t completing the task more important than completing the paperwork? Why do organizations spend valuable time and resources generating and maintaining paperwork systems?...
The Remedy for a Data Dilemma
In 1994, Bellin Health volunteered for a pilot assessment managed jointly by the Baldrige National Quality Program and the Joint Commission. This assessment helped Bellin focus on developing an integrated measurement system....
Career Corner: Corporations Tout Social Responsibility
The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award has added “governance and social responsibilities” to its leadership criteria, codes of conduct are more prevalent, and ethics has taken on new importance in corporate training and business school curricula. In ...
Expert Answers: January 2008
Soft dollars and the bottom line ... Process maps: Where do you end?...
ASQ Team Says QMS and EMS Standards Support SOX
The intent of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was to make the financial system of control more transparent and to reduce the incidence of corporate fraud. It soon became evident, however, that compliance with the law’s auditing requirements would be...
Deployment: Start Off on the Right Foot
Deploying lean Six Sigma can produce fantastic results that are worth all the hard work of deployment. Managing change, securing leadership commitment, managing talent, and getting the right accountability will make the difference between a...
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....
Standards Outlook: ISO 14001 Hits 10-Year Mark
It has been 10 years since the ISO 14001 standard on environmental management systems (EMSs) was first published....
Career Corner: Full-Time Quality Manager or Part-Time Quality Consultant?
As companies become leaner and the workforce becomes older, it seems the use of highly qualified quality assurance consultants would be an attractive alternative to hiring full-time regular quality managers....
3.4 Per Million: How to Identify and Select Lean Six Sigma Projects
Lean Six Sigma is a powerful method for improving existing products, processes and services. Six Sigma was developed by Motorola in 1987. Motorola’s Six Sigma yielded significant financial results...
10 Quality Basics
In an overview designed to give quality newcomers a glimpse of the knowledge they need to succeed, ten regular Quality Progress contributors write on 10 basic quality topics that are fundamentals essential to surviving in a quality role. Topics covered...
Back to Basics: It's Just Paperwork?
Understanding the need for document control
When I was a teenager, my mother gave me a diary and a bit of advice: "Say what you think, but be careful what you write."...
Statistics Roundtable: Turning Shewhart?s Challenge Into Opportunity
Statisticians must step forward and lead management to become more statistically minded.
Nearly 70 years ago, quality pioneer Walter Shewhart threw down the gauntlet: "The long-range contribution of statistics depends not so much on getting a lot of highly trained statisticians into industry as it does...
Quality Goes to College
Higher education is seeing increased interest in quality management methods in response to the federal government's recommendation that they embrace the culture of continuous innovation and quality improvement. An overview is given of the types of...
Deliver Great Service By Listening and Adapting
The customer service systems of most companies worldwide are seldom adaptable enough to handle diverse situations. To avoid giving customers the impression that their contacts are a waste of time, an organization must have an actionable voice of the...
One Good Idea: 60 Minutes To A Solution
We’ve all been in those meetings. You know the type: Everyone knows what the problem is. Lots of ideas are chewed on and spit out. The group shares anecdotal experiences about the problem, but nobody records anything....
Career Corner: Has Information About Quality Become a Liability?
While having lunch with a good friend not long ago, I gained unique insight into a very real concern for those of us in the quality profession and the organizations we work with....
The Power of Process Orientation
Hidden barriers to the success of continuous improvement programs exist in most companies and often transcend tactics applied to produce cultural change. These cultural conditions are not always obvious, but their symptoms include organizational silos...
Standards Outlook: Developing the Voluntary Healthcare Standard
The new Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) voluntary standard for healthcare delivery is in its second review, with an anticipated launch no later than early 2008. AIAG also is pursuing partners for the publication from the healthcare sector....
12 Keys to Career Success
As the number of manufacturing jobs continues to decline in the United States, many quality professionals have become concerned about job security and opportunities to attain career success. But like Joseph Juran and W. Edwards Deming before them, each...
Lean Lessons: Keeping Lean Alive
We know we cannot stand still in the face of global competition. Our rivals are not standing pat--they are improving their processes and systems to catch up or overtake us. If we do not improve, sooner or later our customers will prefer our rivals....
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...
Standards Outlook: Do Environmental Management Systems Improve Performance?
The debate regarding the value of environmental management systems arises from a lack of comparable, quantifiable data demonstrating companies with a formal EMS produce less environmental emissions, discharges and waste than companies without one....
International Outsourcing: Value vs. Economics
International outsourcing has become the easy way out for many organizations seeking to stay competitive in a global economy, whereas establishing a lean Six Sigma organization requires sustained and consistent hard work. Proponents say outsourcing is...
Quality in the First Person: What Comes First--People or Process?
The respective roles of people and processes form one of the more intriguing relationships in quality work: Quality improvement efforts frequently reveal viewpoints emphasizing either people or processes, which can be challenging to......
Selling Quality Ideas to Management
Many great ideas fall by the wayside because management does not accept them. This may be because the idea must compete with other priorities or the owner doesn't do enough to sell the idea to management. Three effective ways to enhance an idea are to...
Oklahoma School District Goes Over the Top
In 2005, the Jenks Public Schools in Oklahoma became one of only seven organizations to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for education since the category was instituted in 2001. Its data revealed that JPS was already ranked among the best...
Bridging the Gap Between the Classroom and Real World
Two of the courses in Scott Hiler's business education classes at Paramus High School in New Jersey specifically cover international business and management systems that include lessons on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, total quality management, and ISO 9000....
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...
Standards & Registrars Directory
TS TR TL RS QS MD 9KS 14K 9K CR CE AU AS TR CS SPC QS 9KS 14K 9K CS VD6 TS TR TL SPC QS MD 9KS 14K 9K CS CE AU AS TS TR SPC 9KS 14K 9K CS AU AS TS QS MD 9KS 14K 9K CSD AU AS 9KS 9K CR AU VD6 TS TR SPC QS MD 9KS 14K 9K CS VD6 TS RS QS 9KS 14K 9K CSD CS AS...
Project Teams: How Good Are They?
Project teams have become the basic work units for most enterprises, but there are tough challenges, as illustrated by notable project failures featured in the media in recent years. A recent Quality Progress survey revealed a conflicting picture of...
Help Has Arrived
Change or pay a price for remaining the same. This saying applies to life in general and the auditing profession in particular....
What Organizations Can Learn From Hurricane Katrina
In the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina, many outsiders became aware the City of New Orleans had a comprehensive emergency management plan (CEMP) with an annex specific to hurricane preparedness....
Feigenbaum's Enduring Influence
Armand V. Feigenbaum was one of the first engineers to recognize financial performance as an indicator of poor quality. Together with W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran, he established the intellectual framework for quality as a discipline worthy of...
QFD in a Managed Care Organization
The application of quality function deployment (QFD) in the healthcare industry has been limited because the healthcare product is intangible and ill defined. Recently, however, a managed care organization used QFD to redesign its member handbook. QFD's...
Baldrige - Just What the Doctor Ordered
The Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) University Hospital Hamilton's commitment to quality has won it the 2004 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the healthcare category. Part of the hospital's existing quality program is its five pillars of excellence...
Environmental Communication Standard on the Horizon
Is your organization holding an open house, issuing an environmental or sustainability report or responding to requests for information on environmental risks?...
Quality in the First Person: Old Ideas Find a New Industry
I work in the software industry. My world changes quickly, and it can be hard to keep up. As the software industry is still quite young, many of its employees are not yet as indoctrinated into the quality world as are people in other industries....
Quality in the First Person: Dead Man's Shoes
The responsibility for quality assurance is sometimes bestowed upon reluctant recipients who don't really understand quality. However, basic quality assurance factors don't change between business sectors. The real issue is to get people to listen and...
Quality in the First Person: Quality Shots
Quality tools that are vital to process management can be used in almost every field of activity, including sports. A player's performance in a basketball game is subject to variation that must be controlled and reduced. An example focusing on...
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...
Two Controls, One Result
In the three years since the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), implementing organizations have begun to realize that operating with separate SOX controls is expensive, and they are now looking for a way to integrate SOX controls into their...
Lean Thinking for Knowledge Work
Productivity in the service sector trails manufacturing by a wide margin. Since the early 1990s, the Toyota Production System (TPS) has been heralded as the standard for manufacturing environments, but early attempts to apply it to nonproduction work...
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...
A Foundation of Trust
Relational based quality teaches organizations to build a foundation of trust based on core values, human dignity and environmental consciousness. Five guiding principles offer a strategy for organizations to enhance their business processes, corporate...
Sarbanes-Oxley and ISO 9000
Critics say ISO 9000 doesn't measure up to robust quality programs such as Baldrige Award criteria, lean and Six Sigma, and they complain about the law's excessive documentation requirements. Yet by providing records and internal controls, the...
A Deming Inspired Management Code of Ethics
In today's business environment, executive management's narrow focus on productivity can produce ethical, moral and legal consequences. While there are codes to prohibit discrimination based on race or gender, they fail to address conduct that is legal....
Healthcare Agreement Revision Nears Release
The first revision of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) International Workshop Agreement (IWA 1) should be released this month if all goes according to plan....
Statistical Leadership
Statisticians, as we have known them for almost half a century, may become an endangered species....
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...
Can the Gurus' Concepts Cure Healthcare?
Representatives of the movement for quality in healthcare present the views of four quality gurus as they apply to managing cost and improving the quality of healthcare. Don M. Nielsen says Philip Crosby's emphasis on prevention and zero defects has led...
Managing Project Quality
Quality professionals who normally deal with ongoing processes need to know how to manage project quality effectively. Quality initiation and quality closure stages, unique because of the temporary nature of such projects, are often neglected. Failure...
Quality From Scratch: A Model for Small Business
Whether a company is large or small, quality programs are vital to assure customer, stakeholder, and employee satisfaction. Many small businesses, however, may find limited resources and conflicting priorities make the quest for organizational...
Effective White-Collar Teams: The New Quality Imperative
In nonmanufacturing environments, quality has not had the impact that it has had in production environments because the input, process, output equation is less visible and more difficult to measure. In today’s competitive environment,...
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...
The Where and Y: A 1-2-3 Model for Project Success
A Six Sigma project may take longer to establish if key players fail to provide Green and Black belts with appropriate definitions of problems and goals for improvement projects. While the purpose of a Six Sigma improvement project should be focused on...
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....
Six Sigma in Metaphor: Heresy or Holy Writ?
We begin by assuming everyone knows what Six Sigma is. Even in this forum of quality professionals, we know this to be untenable, although it seems likely this is not the first time readers have heard the term...
The Six Sigma Mambo
South Beach, Miami, starts to come alive about midnight. As I travel from club to club, I am mesmerized by the dancing. I have a desire to participate, but I don't know how to dance....
Translate Know-What Into Know-How
Organizational change is a much more difficult challenge than we've been led to believe....
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....
Column: Emerging Sectors: All Aboard the ISO 9000 Express
The Chicago Transit System, serving approximately 1.5 million riders every day in Chicago and 38 neighboring suburbs, is a vital component of Northeastern Illinois' economy. Operated by the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) and including buses, trains and...
Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate scandals such as those involving Enron and WorldCom may finally be awakening corporate America to its social responsibilities. Such scandals are creating concern about business ethics and governance....
Better Public Schools With ISO 9000:2000
Formal standards for learning in public schools are being implemented in the majority of states. The ISO 9000:2000 quality management standards provide a useful structure that can be successfully adapted for the education sector. The National...
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....
ISO 9000 Makes Integrated Systems User Friendly
Organizations need management systems that are based on processes or activities that help personnel understand what is essential to achieving continual improvement on a consistent basis....
Column: Standards Outlook: The White House Manages Green
Discussion of environmental management systems (EMS) implementation typically evokes corporate initiatives, such as the worldwide effort among many in the automotive industry to achieve ISO 14001 certification....
Lean and Six Sigma – Synergy Made in Heaven
The combination of Six Sigma and lean enterprise work can enhance the production experience. Workers have the empowerment and skill to recognize a problem and, if it cannot be resolved, shut down the line to eliminate the root cause. Six Sigma and lean...
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,...
An Integrated Approach System
What’s the best quality system? How would you answer this question? How would your colleagues?...
Baldrige: It’s Easy, Free and It Works
While many people consider the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria to be difficult, a harder task is learning how to manage opportunities for improvements instead of managing known strengths. While Baldrige may not have the answers, it...
Systems Thinking – An Uncommon Answer
Some of the common problems to be found in many business failures include too much focus on short-term gains, too much focus on quarterly profit statements, and a prevalence of long-term losses. One possible solution to these problems is systems...
Complexity Theory Simplifies Choices
Many business management and improvement methodologies provide finite structures for achieving success. Examples include the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award; the ISO 9001 standard; W. Edward Deming, who provided 14 points; and Six Sigma....
Quality Management Multiple Choice: What’s the best quality system?
Monitoring and recording the extent of transition experienced within a designated area assure Procedure ( general) Priority Reviewed Completed Record control Document control Internal audits Management review Corrective action Preventive action Monitorin...
QOS – A Simple Method for Big or Small
Although there are many quality initiatives in the marketplace, many of them involve a degree of hype. Ford Motor Company’s quality operating system (QOS) is recommended as one offering the most value for the money. A QOS assessment looks at...
Column: Career Corner: Be a Change Agent
The quality profession is no longer static but is in a state of unprecedented transition. Practitioners must begin to see themselves as change agents facilitating an ongoing organizational quality improvement process....
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....
Forming Virtual Teams
Despite the continuing growth of virtual teams, not all of them are successful. Reasons for negative attitudes toward virtual teams include lack of facial and body language cues, feelings of isolation, changes in operational norms, and demand for...
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...
