- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Engineering
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Inspection
- ISO 14000
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Metrology
- Problem Solving
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Function Deployment
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Safety
- Six Sigma
- Social Responsibility
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Best Practices
- Total Quality Management
- TL 9000
- ISO/TS 16949
- ISO 22000
- ISO 26000
- Compliance
- Certification/Registration (management system Standards)
- Risk Management
- Information Management
- Customer Requirements
- Food Safety
- Economic Case for Quality
Measure for Measure: High Risk, No Reward
The pressure to reduce calibration costs may put inspection, measurement and test equipment (IM&TE) users at odds with a company’s ISO 9001 requirements, as well as good laboratory shop practices....
Building a Consensus
A new tool, the consensus chart, can drive improvement activities identified during the development or operation of a quality system process....
Danger Zones
I’ve often been asked to identify the toughest questions in the Baldrige criteria. Which questions make or break an assessment? What answers does an examiner seek that aren’t explicitly asked for in the criteria? What questions are the hidden jewels?...
World of Confusion
U.S. manufacturers of medical devices must comply with U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) labeling requirements and also face the challenge of labeling in multiple languages if they want to sell their products in the global marketplace....
Gimme Five
By integrating 5S into the culture of your lab, you will see landmark improvements in the performance of those who work there, while setting an example of excellence for your entire organization to follow....
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....
Progress Report
Six Sigma has been a hot topic discussed and implemented globally in the business world, nonprofit organizations and even governments. There is comparatively less research, however, into how to assess the maturity of Six Sigma implementation....
Dare to Care
Healthcare is the third-largest area in the Standard & Poor’s 500, behind only financial services and IT. Considering the amount of knowledge, labor and materials devoted to the industry, there's no doubt healthcare is a major economic force in society....
A Frank Discussion
The Pittsburgh section has been an ASQ stalwart. It was one of a handful sections that co-founded ASQ in the 1940s. Because of the concentration of manufacturing in the area, Pittsburgh has always been home to many ASQ members—and a hotspot for quality....
Riding the Storm Out
Virtually everyone and every organization has been touched in some way by today’s turbulent economy. Smaller budgets, unexpected layoffs and workplace shake-ups have become commonplace....
A Lean Six Sigma Breakthrough
The relationship between lean and Six Sigma may appear to be simple, but in practice it may be more challenging because there are so many ways to piece the two together....
Keeping Score
Like most of you, I’ve seen the “latest, greatest thing” introduced in organizations — repeatedly. We observe initial excitement for the new strategy, bursts of employee training, spotty implementation and eventual abandonment of the new approach....
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....
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....
The Quality Professional as Organizational Gardener
Many quality professionals understand that the answers to these questions require the ability to envision their organizations as living entities, existing within their understanding of systems theory. We work with organizations and people, not on organiza...
Standards Outlook: Automakers Shift Manual Into Another Gear
The Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) published the second edition of the Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) and Control Plan Reference Manual this summer....
Smooth Approach
Traditional internal audits fulfill a need for companies with fresh ISO 9001 implementations. But for organizations with mature systems, an innovative approach called an appreciative internal quality audit can take them beyond compliance to excellence....
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...
Starting From Scratch
Graduate students studying quality developed the Quality Systems Development Roadmap to help organizations do this, using application templates from the Lean Six Sigma Quality Transformation Toolkit. However, new companies, organizations without an enterp...
Expert Answers: August 2008
Flushing out flatness ... Corrective vs. preventive actions....
Standards Outlook: Ensuring Supplier Quality
I've worked in the medical device and pharmaceutical/biotechnology industries, and I've concluded that when it comes to quality, the medical device world is at least 20 years ahead of its drug-world cousin....
Strength in Numbers
Finding resources to pursue quality improvement and organizational excellence is the greatest challenge confronting most organizations today, including universities and professional organizations....
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...
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....
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....
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....
Back to Basics: A Call for Improvement
It’s a common perception that customer phone support is a resource-draining operation. This misconception results in many call center cost reduction projects but few process improvement initiatives. Basic tools can be used to improve a call center....
Eyes on the Dashboard at Mercy Health System
Patient satisfaction has been a component of Mercy Health System’s dashboard system for about six years, so when emergency department satisfaction into the red zone in late 2005, it immediately set off an alarm....
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....
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 ...
Classroom Lessons Learned
Public education often tries to emulate the successful methods of industry. However, the experience of a school district in California offers several lessons about achieving continuous improvement in the corporate world....
Conflict and Complexity
Fourteen years before the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after launch in 1986, NASA unknowingly set in motion a series of events that culminated in the tragic disaster that stunned the proud space agency and rocked a nation....
Ghysels Online Sidebar: What Students Think
Jan. feature/SD EDUCATION School District Offers Ideas for Continuous Improvement by Maurice Ghysels In 50 Words or Less In implementing a process of continuous improvement, a California school district learned lessons that are applicable to industry. M.G...
A Less Costly Billing Process
Applying lean Six Sigma techniques can identify root causes, streamline the billing process and reduce errors. After describing the concepts of lean and Six Sigma, this article illustrates how companies can apply lean Six Sigma techniques to identify root...
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...
Achieve Compliance Through CI
Using Six Sigma tools for continuous improvement (CI) is a proven method for meeting or exceeding FDA requirements for medical devices. Optical Integrity Inc., a manufacturer of medical devices, used the Six Sigma define, measure, analyze, improve...
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...
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...
Living Inside China's Quality Revolution
Quality processes in China today continue to be influenced by remnants of ancient policies and practices. When Huawei Technologies, one of China’s largest telecommunications manufacturers, recently declared its intention to become the Toyota of the...
Conformity or Sustainability? That Is the Question
Sustainability is an enterprise’s ability to survive and prosper in a rapidly evolving environment, and the essence of sustainability is performance results. Any expenditure of resources that does not generate value produces a net loss and impaired...
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,...
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 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...
Building Task Cohesion to Bring Teams Together
Traditional, homogeneous teams made up of members of the same gender, race, and age tend to be more cohesive and more successful and effective in problem solving, but such sameness can produce bland and predictable solutions. On the other hand, a team...
Standards Outlook: New Version of TL 9000 Released
The global telecommunications industry, an important part of the global economy, will reach $1.3 trillion in revenues by the close of 2007....
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....
Look for Trouble
Organizational excellence depends on people, but human error remains a persistent problem. Most of what people do throughout the day follows a pattern of recognition, selection, and action, with very little conscious thought, leaving the mind free for...
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....
Linking the Supply Chain to TQM
In today's environment of global outsourcing, supplier quality management must transform itself from simply measuring supplier compliance to gathering knowledge, managing risk, and executing project management. Total quality management (TQM) ensures...
Don't Forget the People
Standard practice in quality management has been focused on establishing good systems for quality, but many organizations see these efforts fall short of objectives. The problem is the lack of linkage between the way the workforce perceives and...
Empowering Employees to Pull the Quality Trigger
The successful implementation of a quality management system calls for a shift in decision making from quality managers to shop floor operators empowered to initiate a corrective action in the event of a quality event. While the widespread use of data...
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...
Building Quality at Veridian Homes
Veridian Homes in Madison, Wisconsin uses several quality methods to improve productivity while reducing impact on the environment. To achieve its goal of promoting and coordinating quality throughout the company, the company employed the National...
How to Fail the ISO 9001 Driver's Test
An ISO 9001 audit can be likened to the process of getting a driver's license when you think of the auditor as a department of motor vehicles tester who must examine your vehicle and its key operators before granting certification. ISO 9001 requires...
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....
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...
One Good Idea: Improve Product Development Using IPD
As with many processes at IBM, product development can be summarized with the three-letter abbreviation IPD--Integrated Product Design. Simply put, IPD is a systematic process for product development....
No Longer Lost in Translation
Language barriers and communication delays can disrupt a company's plans to survive and thrive in a global economy. The pursuit of quality also depends on bridging the communication gap. Without communication there can be no bridge from quality theory...
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...
Standards Outlook: Supply Chain Management Remains Aerospace Challenge
The aerospace industry is in the process of shedding new light on the customer-supplier relationship, especially in the never ending quest to deliver defect free, safe and reliable product....
Back to Basics: Best Practices in Auditing
Organizations conduct audits to examine a business process and evaluate the process’s compliance with internal and external requirements. They also use audits to implement continuous improvements. Internal and supplier audits allow management 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...
Advancing From Compliance To Performance
Poor ethics has recently been recognized as a controllable factor that can either make or break and organization. If organizations would practice ethics as a logic-based discipline and quality problem, they would reach higher levels of performance that...
Standards Outlook: New Ideas and Expanded Use
With more than a half million organizations certified or registered to ISO 9001 and 14001, many say the development of management system standards (MSSs) has ended. But wait; is this really where things end? I would say the answer is no....
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...
A Quest For Quality
Hamilton Health Services, a Canadian healthcare organization with a multi-site emergency room program, used quality facilitators in six continuous quality improvement projects over a period of one year. Quality facilitators provide resources needed to...
Rapid Knowledge Transfer: The Key to Success
Rapid knowledge transfer (RKT) involves the discovery, learning, creation, and reuse of knowledge that becomes intellectual capital that can be converted into value and profits. The concepts of RKT are applicable to quality management because its four...
Manage Complaints To Enhance Loyalty
Every customer complaint represents a chance to correct a flawed process, educate a customer, and strengthen loyalty. But unless management can quantify the return on investment of complaint handling, they won't see the link between complaint handling...
The House That Fraud Built
The downfall of several seemingly strong companies has recently occurred after the discovery of extensive and long-running management fraud. While the fraud may not have been readily apparent, certain key indicators act as early warning signs that can...
Let's Accentuate the Positive
As a quality practitioner, I have learned problem based management is pretty much the standard. So when I was introduced to a positive approach known as appreciative inquiry (AI), I was initially intrigued by it and eventually embraced it....
Change Healthcare Organizations From Good to Great
The Institute of Medicine estimates that the cost of the medical errors resulting in thousands of deaths each year and injury to thousands more is over $20 billion annually. While these figures are unacceptable, the good news is that the application of...
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...
The Future of Quality in Indianapolis
ASQ's Indianapolis Section 903 has typically focused on projects that could be completed within the year but, conscious of the effects of short-range planning, the section decided to develop a five-year strategic plan to increase responsiveness to the...
Six Ways To Benefit From Customer Complaints
Customer service is one of the few areas where service organizations can achieve an advantage in a competitive marketplace. Six ideas are presented to help organizations improve business performance through the handling of customer complaints....
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...
Seven Steps To Measure Supplier Performance
Most organizations use some type of supplier performance measure, yet few are satisfied with their supplier assessment capabilities and results. Quality professionals are under increasing pressure to avoid supplier problems and retain high performers....
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...
Developing Best in Class Processes at NASA
In addition to its well-known space activities, NASA performs many other engineering activities. Developing processes to ensure the quality and safety of systems is of paramount importance in achieving mission success. For this reason, NASA has created...
How To Prepare an Excellence Award Application
The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence represents the best business model in the world. Even if your company doesn't expect to win the award, submitting an application has many benefits. Whether your goal is to receive feedback, receive a site...
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...
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...
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...
Better Processes = Better E-Commerce
Successful e-commerce (EC) requires customer and supplier interaction to be seamlessly integrated with existing business processes. Quality professionals must keep this in mind when redesigning business processes, particularly in the service industry....
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....
Sarbanes-Oxley: Pain or Gain?
The Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) regulatory requirements passed by Congress in 2002 ensures investors are provided with accurate and reliable financial data on all publicly traded companies. Implementation of these requirements can be expensive and difficult....
Quality in the First Person
Five authors provide personal accounts of their quality experiences. In A Hunger for Quality, Robert Nix tells how a temporary job organizing files for a quality control manager turned into a permanent career in quality management. Certified Quality...
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...
A Tribute To Phil Stein
ASQ and the metrology community lost a powerful champion and a wonderful friend with the passing of Philip G. Stein....
Simplify Baldrige for Healthcare
The growing number of applicants for the Baldrige award in healthcare points to the need for a set of tools to help organizations assess themselves. A healthcare self-assessment matrix and opportunity for improvement worksheets are provided to help...
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...
Juran, Japan and the profession.
Celebration of Joseph Juran?s 100th birthday (Dec. 24, 2004) began in early May with an event sponsored by the Juran Institute. Quality Progress also ran a cover story profiling his contributions in its May 2004 issue....
Juran, Japan and the Profession
Celebration of Joseph Juran's 100th birthday (Dec. 24, 2004) began in early May with an event sponsored by the Juran Institute. Quality Progress also ran a cover story profiling his contributions in its May 2004 issue....
Who Attends ASQ Section Meetings and Events?
When the Jacksonville, Florida ASQ section was threatened with deactivation due to inactivity, dedicated volunteers used telephone surveys to determine what members wanted. Survey results made clear the necessity to set strategic objectives for planning...
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....
Twelve Ways to Add Value to Audits
Much has been said and done in the last couple of years related to organizational improvement and value added auditing....
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,...
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...
