- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Design of Experiments
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Innovation
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Metrology
- Problem Solving
- Process Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Six Sigma
- Small Business
- Social Responsibility
- Software Quality
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Theory of Constraints
- Total Quality Management
- TL 9000
- Compliance
- Certification/Registration (management system Standards)
- Information Management
- Customer Requirements
- Economic Case for Quality
- Continuous Improvement
3.4 per Million: Digging the Holistic Approach
Few will argue we live in a dynamic world where change is accelerating. What often goes unnoticed is that along with this rapid change, there is the opportunity and the need to improve....
Tune Up
Six Sigma has many meanings. In its simplest context, Six Sigma can be defined statistically as the attempt to achieve near-perfection by having no more than 3.4 errors per million opportunities, or being 99.997% correct (or defect-free)....
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....
Online Sidebar Creasy
The evolution to 6TOC includes its predecessors, Six Sigma, lean manufacturing, lean Six Sigma and the theory of constraints...
Standards Outlook: Dynamic Duo
Lean and Six Sigma are two methods aimed at improving the quality of an organization’s operations and its financial results. Both concentrate on customer satisfaction and improved business performance....
Online Sidebar 3.4 per Million: Nine Steps to Align Projects With Business Needs
To achieve maximum efficiencies and financial results in turbulent business and financial markets, executives and senior managers must revisit their business models to make certain measurements lead to the right behaviors....
3.4 per Million: Control and Grow Your Enterprise
To achieve maximum efficiencies and financial results in turbulent business and financial markets, executives and senior managers must revisit their business models to make certain measurements lead to the right behaviors....
Statistics Roundtable: Make Data Matter
Is data analysis an art or a science? Arguments exist for both sides, and many people simply come down in the middle: it’s both....
Drill Deep for Strategic Alignment
Internal auditors must understand an organization’s strategy and how each process fits into that strategy. Internal auditing for strategic alignment and execution requires that the auditor understand the organization’s desired strategy and how each proces...
Driven by Metrics
Performance metrics are a necessary part of managing an organization. However, they have good and bad impacts on individual behavior, so organizations need to find ways to maximize the good while minimizing the potential damage....
The True Test of Loyalty
The customer loyalty field has experienced much technological innovation, such as automated reporting portals and integration of attitudinal and behavioral data in customer relationship management applications, over the past decade....
Statistics Roundtable: The Reality of Residual Analysis
In the world of statistics textbooks, independent random samples of size 30 from a normal distribution are a dime a dozen—the norm rather than the exception....
Statistics Roundtable: In With the Right Crowd
First, the good news: The importance of statistics related to the way the world does business has never been greater. Now, the bad news: The statistician and quality professional might become the proverbial middle man who gets cut out by these advances....
A Framework for Business Ethics
Profit maximization is, of course, the main and foremost objective for any commercial organization. Most modern organizations realize that to survive in today’s competitive arena, customers have to be satisfied....
Statistics Roundtable: More is Better
Central to the core goals of Six Sigma and other quality improvement initiatives is the idea that reducing variation in processes is a vital part of successfully enhancing customer satisfaction and bottom-line results....
Career Corner: Ready, Aim, Fire
Within an organization, the three elements and the outcome are typically something like policy + strategy + tactical plan = goal attainment. Specifically, “ready, aim, fire.” Think of this approach as you would an arrow hitting a target. You might say a w...
Statistics Roundtable: Back to the Future
Now more than ever, we need to use the kind of critical thinking and deeper process knowledge that predates the explosion of technology and software. By identifying and applying key aspects of the data mining process and then using them in novel...
Standards Outlook: Output Really Does Matter
Auditing is a key component of systems that provide confidence in organizations’ competence, ability and honesty in meeting requirements. For decades we have been using audits for this purpose...
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...
Quality Glossary
Five years after it published its first glossary of quality terms, ASQ has revised that glossary with updated definitions and new entries, many from the lean glossary published in 2005. This reference of terms, acronyms, and prominent figures in the...
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...
Internal Customer Service: Has It Improved?
A recent survey of organizations conducted by the Metrus Group shows a dramatic improvement in internal customer service (ICS) since a similar survey conducted in 1993. Respondents to the survey believe that high levels of ICS are important to their...
Statistics Roundtable: Process Variation: Enemy and Opportunity
As the giants of scientific management and the quality movement long ago pointed out, work takes place in a series of interconnected processes....
Statistics Roundtable: If You're Not Keeping Score, It's Just Practice
Despite the fundamental importance of measurement and measurement systems, statisticians and quality professionals engaged in process improvement and quality studies frequently find numerous gaps, including:...
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...
Use Distribution Analysis To Understand Your Data Source
Distribution analysis - the process of examining a data set to understand its characteristics - uses a variety of tools that are often not used to their fullest extent. A procedure is presented as a guide to performing distribution analysis while...
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...
Getting and Keeping Top Managers Involved
Sometimes, I get questions such as, how do I get my top managers to understand the value of ISO 9001 implementation?...
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....
Unintended Consequences
The process approach embodied in ISO 9001 emphasizes the actual activities of an organization that would result in providing a product or service that continuously meets the customer's needs....
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...
Lean Glossary
A glossary defines terms commonly associated with lean...
A Statistician Looks at Inventory Management
A major problem facing companies today is how to promptly deliver products to customers without tying up too much capital in the form of inventory buffers. The incorporation of statistical models into supply chain management tactics helps in sizing and...
Six Sigma and the Bottom Line
The cost of poor quality is a key criterion for the selection of Six Sigma projects. The economic effects of Six Sigma can be impressive, but must be evaluated relative to a company's cost structure and revenues. While defects and other quality metrics...
The Legacy of Ishikawa
Kaoru Ishikawa was a prime mover of quality in Japan who believed in quality through leadership. His six quality concepts form the basis for a holistic approach that is the unique Japanese approach to quality improvement. Ishikawa’s focus on...
Multivariate Thinking
Statistical thinking has helped industry become more aware of the benefits of using statistical procedures....
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....
Column: Standards Outlook: Strategies for Improving Business Performance
Most organizations face dozens of extraordinary conditions in today's business environment, including aggressive competitive strategies from their opposition, daunting regulatory situations and the pressures of...
Quality, Not Quantity, of Management
This article is from the book The Power of Management Capital: Utilizing the New Drivers of Innovation, Profitability, and Growth in a Demanding Global Economy, available through Quality Press, item number
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,...
A Quality Manual For the Transition and Beyond
However, QUALITY PROGRESS I MARCH 2003 I 29 Number Process title, ISO 9001: 2000 1994 1 Audit process Yes 2 Balanced scorecard No 3 Corrective and preventive action process Yes 4 Communication process No 5 Contract review process Yes 6 Customer property ...
The Loyalty Elephant
There is an old parable about a group of blind men describing an elephant. Lacking vision, they must use their sense of touch to understand what an elephant looks like. Recent articles about the differences between customer satisfaction, customer value...
Column: Statistics Roundtable: Process modeling: find the critical few
Finding the critical few X's allows you to better control and optimize a process
With the widespread use of Six Sigma has come a renewed interest in developing statistical models and using regression analysis. Now is a good time to rethink your strategies for developing models. In particular, I believe it is...
Column: Standards Outlook: Quality Management System vs. Quality Improvement
What should we tell the CEO?
A column by James Harrington, a former company COO began, "All quality programs, whether TQM, Six Sigma or ISO 9000, require an organization to shift away from the status quo."
The article was about resistance to change, but the choice of words of a...
College and University Programs in Quality
A list is provided of more than 100 colleges and universities offering courses, programs, and degrees in quality related fields. The list is both alphabetical and geographical and indicates the type of institution and certificates or degrees offered....
Should You Transition to ISO 9001:2000?
With the deadline little more than a year away, indications are that fewer than 20 percent of organizations whose business and quality objectives include compliance to the ISO 9000 standards have made the transition. Six ISO 9000 experts present their...
Quality Glossary
A handy reference is provided of quality terms, acronyms, and key people in the history of quality. Information is derived from a variety of sources and compiled by the editorial staff of the American Society for...
Peter F. Drucker: Delivering Value to Customers
Before Peter F. Drucker published his seminal book defining management as a formal discipline, there was no coherent body of knowledge addressing management issues. Drucker rejects the commonly held belief that the purpose of business is to make a...
From Quality to Business Success
Quality professionals have made little progress in communicating how to convert quality tools and methods into a foundation for sound business management. The model "quality as a profit center (QPC)" makes the case that every facet of a quality...
Column: One Good Idea: Eight Steps to a New Performance Measurement System
Performance is an important part of any measurement based management system
This column is adapted from the authors' book Performance Measurement Explained, published by ASQ Quality Press in...
My process is too variable--now what do I do?
How to produce and use a successful multi-vari study
How to produce and use a successful multi- vari study by Ronald D. Snee Process Schematic FIGURE 1 The process Process outputs Controlled variables Customer Process inputs Uncontrolled noise variables Manufacturing Process Variables TABLE 1 Process input...
Column: Statistics Roundtable: My Process Is Too Variable--Now What Do I Do?
How to produce and use a successful multi- vari study by Ronald D. Snee Process Schematic FIGURE 1 The process Process outputs Controlled variables Customer Process inputs Uncontrolled noise variables Manufacturing Process Variables TABLE 1 Process input...
Column: Frontiers of Quality: Make the View Worth the Climb
Focus training on delivering better business results
When upper managment sees training as a cost rather than an investment, it is easy to justify cutting that cost. However, using a Six Sigma paradigm to look at training as a means to improving performance in a specific project allows a...
Big League Quality
Today, the company manufactures wood bats, aluminum bats and hockey sticks in six plants in the C Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I A U G U S T 2 0 0 1 I 27 Q U A L I T Y AT P L AY Branding a bat with the famous Louisville Slugger trademark. Player Record...
Lessons Learned
Despite the difficulty of transferring technology and methodology from one culture to another, a team from Raytheon has successfully conducted Six Sigma based tactical transformation workshops for Raytheon Business units, their customers, and suppliers...
The Problems with Managing by Objectives and Results
Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I M A R C H 2 0 0 1 I 39 The Problems With Managing By Objectives and Results What your employees may not be telling you by Joseph F. Castellano and Harper A. Roehm Q U A L I T Y M A N A G E M E N T HILE MOST PEOPLE WOULD ag...
Business Process Orientation: Do You Have It?
The current business environment, characterized by global competition, demanding customers, and e-commerce, requires the best organizations to become faster, more flexible, and customer-focused. Process orientation and process reengineering are concepts...
Quality Professionals Around the World Share Similar Concerns, Experiences
The International Chapter of ASQ has grown from about 25 members in 1956 to more than 5,000 members in about 90 countries by 2000. Quality professionals worldwide want to hold on to a core set of principles, and similar challenges face the quality...
Integrating ISO 9001:2000 and the Baldrige Criteria
No single quality system, criterion, or philosophy will provide the solution to an organization's quality problems. A sound quality program can be implemented by an organization using ISO 9001:2000, the Baldrige Award and its criteria, and total...
Abatement of Business Risk Is Key to Six Sigma
A closer link to executive thinking
From this perspective, Six Sigma has the capacity and capability to deliver concurrently customer and provider satisfaction, the key ingredients of business success. The third vehicle for delivering breakthrough, managing for Six Sigma (MFSS), is the unde...
Tapping into People
Respironics, Inc., a manufacturer of medical equipment, wanted to assess the general well-being of its employees by surveying them. The development of the survey and the survey process led to the coverage of topics and the identification of uses for...
TQM's Human Resource Component
A survey of manufacturing firms in Georgia examined human resource (HR) factors and outcomes of implementing total quality management (TQM). Of about 350 firms receiving the survey, 91 produced usable results, 35 of these being from firms using TQM....
A Road Map for Quality Beyond Control
This final installment in the "Quality in the 21st Century" helps quality professionals deal with seven problems noted earlier. First, to avoid imposing the one best way, hierarchies and control systems like the ISO 9000 series should give way to...
Measurements and the Knowledge Revolution
Real-time delivery of valued knowledge provides strong support for enterprise operations. In the knowledge revolution, organizations can improve knowledge delivery with the right measurement and information systems. Successful organizations must use...
QS-9000 Customer Satisfaction Monitoring Isn't Working
Why customer satisfaction monitoring won't work Problems that small and midsize suppliers have monitoring customer satisfaction occur in four areas: � Transaction distance from the customer and the end product � The relationship with important customers ...
Implementing the Six Sigma Solution
Six sigma initiatives rely on quantitative, root-cause analyses and the comparison of customer requirements to business performance. Any business can use this method to solve its process problems. To do so, it must have good information about its...
Small-Business Evaluation and Support Services: A Model from the United Kingdom
Trafford Park's small businesses have been the focus of a European Regional Development Fund-sponsored project run by the Manchester School of Management at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology and the Trafford Park Business Fo...
Measuring People and Performance: Closing the Gaps
Quality Progress and Metrus Group surveyed a sample of ASQ members about people metrics and management at their companies. Findings from more than 800 respondents indicate that even though people measures are used in many companies, only about 30% of...
Technology and Performance Improvement: Intellectual Partners?
The intellectual capital of an organization's people can increase in usefulness and value when there are computerized tools that manage and streamline performance. This technology supports improvement initiatives while building an organizational...
What Does Your Customer Really Want?
The voice of the customer can be linked to a company's internal quality improvement efforts by paying attention to customer loyalty and value, which are driven by quality, price, and company image. The five steps to management of customer loyalty and...
Conducting an Organizational Self-Assessment Using the 1997 Baldrige Award Criteria
36. How well does the company recognize Figure 1. Scoring Sheet Assessment Category Weighting MBNQA Rating Totals Scores ( Your Score) Points Questions 1 through 5 110 Leadership Leadership Multiply score Total: 5 Score: by 11 Questions 6 through 11 Stra...
The Criteria: A Looking Glass to Americans' Understanding of Quality
Customer and Market Focus is Category 3 in the 1997 criteria of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. As the third of seven installments on the Baldrige criteria, this article describes the evolution of Category 3 and the need to understand...
The Criteria: A Looking Glass to Americans' Understanding of Quality
Strategic planning is Category 2 in the criteria of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. As the second installment on the seven categories, this article demonstrates the impact of strategic planning on change management and competitive...
Redefining a Process in 14 Steps
Process improvement requires prerequisites, people, and a series of redefinition deliverables. To satisfy prerequisites, the process should be understood, and it should need quality improvement. The organization should have the leadership, expertise,...
Using the Baldrige Award Criteria in College Classrooms
Customer focus and continual improvement are applicable to higher education. Support for such concepts comes from education-adapted Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria. Distractions to using these criteria in colleges and universities...
COQ Systems: The Right Stuff
Cost of quality (COQ) is a performance measurement system that supports the implementation of quality improvement programs. Developed by J. M. Juran and others in the early 1950s, these measurements of poor quality were promoted by the ASQC Quality...
Is This What's Really Going On?
Quality Progress readers respond to the Editorial Comment on "What's Going on at U.S. Universities" in the September 1996 issue. These 22 letters fall into three groups. Seven of the letters suggest that higher education responds to its markets by:...
Measuring for Excellence
Measurement is a key to continuous improvement at four winners of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Federal Express Corp. systematically collects large amounts of data for immediate and potential use. Its customer satisfaction measures...
Baldrige Award Celebrates Its 10th Birthday With a New Look
50 Quality Progress/ December 1996 Figure 1. Comparison of Categories, Items, and Point Values 1996 Categories/ Items Point Values 1.0 Leadership 90 1.1 Senior Executive Leadership 45 1.2 Leadership System and Organization 25 1.3 Public Responsibility an...
What Should Higher Education Be Teaching About Quality?
These results correspond closely with the three generally accepted core values of TQM: � Customer focus � Continuous process improvement � Teamwork and participation That is, respondents generally agree that college graduates should: � Have an understand...
Where Will They Fit In?
As organizations change, quality is becoming less of a department and more of a paradigm. The agile, customer-sensitive organization is moving away from the traditional quality assurance department. Instead, quality functions may be dispersed...
The Journey Might Wander a Bit. . .
As winners of the 1995 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA), Armstrong World Industries' Building Products Operations (BPO) and Corning's Telecommunications Products Division (TPD) have much in common. Both have adopted quality principles...
The Secrets of Improvement-Driven Organizations
A survey of 300 organizations in 15 industries showed sharp differences in management practices between the top and lower performers. The purpose of the survey was to identify best practices and the links among these practices. A population of 585...
The Continuing Quest for Excellence
Panel member Patrick Mene, vice president of quality, Ritz- Carlton Hotel Company, a 1992 Baldrige Award winner, said, " Even after receiving the Baldrige Award, the examiners' feedback and the criteria have played major roles in cutting cycle time by 50...
Leading the Duck at Mission Control
At Wainwright Industries, quality comes from the heart and the head. Symbolic of the emotion that drives the company is its stuffed duck mascot. It represents passion, teamwork, and market anticipation. Factual information is in Mission Control. On...
Aerospace and Defense Contractors Learn How to Make Their Businesses Soar
A strategic benchmarking study of 24 divisions in 17 companies identified characteristics of the most profitable companies. This analysis of the aerospace and defense industry by Price Waterhouse and a team of contractors collected more than 20,000...
Financial Kaizen: Lowering Hurdles to Long-Term Investments
1 Start $ 110,000 $ 110,000 1 100,000 $ 20,000 0.091 2 84,000 27,000 0.110 3 64,000 22,000 0.024 4 53,000 26,000 0.234 5 40,000 20,000 0.132 6 33,000 18,000 0.275 7 24,000 13,000 0.121 8 19,000 12,000 0.292 9 13,000 8,000 0.105 10 Salvage value 9,000 5,0...
1994 Baldrige Award Recipients Share Their Expertise
36 Quality Progress/ February 1995 How these accomplishments were achieved was briefly addressed during the ceremony by the award- winning companies' leaders: Joseph P. Nacchio, president of AT& T CCS; Earl A. Goode, president of GTE Directories Corp.; a...
The Dual Role of AT&T's Self-Assessment Process
Evaluations of business performance allow units of a company to share strengths and opportunities for improvement. Eighty percent of the organizations within AT&T have used the Chairman's Quality Award (CQA) to assess each other. Based on the Malcolm...
