- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Innovation
- ISO 14000
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Metrology
- Problem Solving
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Sampling
- Six Sigma
- Social Responsibility
- Software Quality
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- ISO/TS 16949
- Compliance
- Certification/Registration (management system Standards)
- Risk Management
- Customer Experience Management
- Customer Requirements
- Economic Case for Quality
- err
- Continuous Improvement
Statistics Roundtable: Divide and Conquer in Reliability Analyses
All product is not created equal. Some units are more likely to fail in service than others. Thus, in reliability evaluations, you need to identify subpopulations with different failure susceptibility....
Attitude Shift
In a used-car dealership group based in Richmond, VA, a lean culture change took place that started with a redesign of its process for reconditioning used cars and ended with numerous benefits, some of which it didn't expect....
Expert Answers: November 2009
The TOPS way of getting to the root cause ... Repair vs. rework...
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....
Ask, and Ye Shall Receive
Journalists are experts in managing conversational flow and encouraging people to open up and provide vital information. Their techniques can serve auditors well as they navigate the frustrating quagmire of audit and assessment interviews....
Quality in the First Person: Make a Pit Stop
With each passing day, it seems as though the economy get a little worse. The stock market, unemployment rates and layoffs all paint a grim picture of the current state of the nation. While everyone is looking for an end to the economic crisis...
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?...
Standards Outlook: The Right Approach
The process approach is at the heart of a quality management system (QMS) defined by ISO 9001. And, as everyone knows, it’s necessary to have the old ticker checked out from time to time....
Measure for Measure: Conscientious Calibrations
There are compelling reasons for an organization to get certified to a standard, but one that gets overlooked is the impact on the environment....
PDSA Leads to Top Accolades
Force field analysis. Two-way communication. SWOT analysis. These terms are likely familiar to quality professionals in the manufacturing, service and possibly even healthcare fields. But to those in education? It’s unlikely....
Statistics Roundtable: Drudgery to Strategy - a Statistical Metamorphosis
Think back to your Stats 101 course. You entered the first session laden with apprehension— induced by survivors’ horror stories—and your worst fears were confirmed....
Back to Basics: Table Talk
There are many ways to determine how successful a process or project is. These methods normally involve detailed metrics and may include cycle-time reduction, number of process steps and customer satisfaction. However, the more improvement projects there...
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....
Career Corner: A Step at a Time
Based on a quick perusal of the business press headlines and the top 10 best seller lists of business books, I have concluded two things are absolutely essential for the move from employee to consultant....
Measure for Measure: Be Honest
I realized early in my career in metrics and metrology that doing the best I could meant bringing a sense of honesty and integrity to my work. In truth, they are the foundations for making a quality measurement....
In a Perfect World
During an interview with QP, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill speaks about the U.S. healthcare system, the signs of economic calamity everyone ignored, and the U.S. government's resistance to the quality way of thinking....
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....
Back to Basics: Sample Wise
Selecting the correct sample size is often the most difficult aspect of any project. Rules of thumb are important because they promote discussion that facilitates the selection of a more optimum sample size....
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....
Standards Outlook: Major Upgrades
The new fourth edition of the Chrysler, Ford and General Motors (GM) Potential Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) Reference Manual, which was released last year, is a significant upgrade from the third edition published in 2001....
Expert Answers: April 2009
Auditing your new company ... ISO 9001 coverage ... Dealing with wishy-washy management....
Small Change, Big Impact
Little has changed in the fourth edition of ISO 9001, which was issued late last year by the International Organization for Standardization. ISO 9001:2008 contains no new requirements, so the transition should be painless for most organizations....
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....
FMEA Minus the Pain
Failure mode effects analysis has stood the test of time as a powerful risk assessment tool for products, processes and systems....
Statistics Roundtable: In a Certain Way
Whenever we estimate a population parameter from a sample, in addition to providing a point estimate, we should also include an interval to characterize the associated uncertainty....
Out of Sight ... Out of Mind
The purpose in sharing this story is to publicize a growing gap in quality-system coverage caused by outsourcing and to share some of the challenges of fixing it. The story is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent....
A Simple Plan
For more than 100 years, U.S. manufacturers have advanced equipment and manufacturing technologies to constantly monitor progress and drive process improvement....
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....
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....
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...
On the Same Page
Memorial Hermann’s first priority has always been to deliver quality healthcare (see sidebar, "About Memorial Hermann"). Every hospital in the Memorial Hermann system also has developed self-directed Medicare action plans. For hospital systems like Memori...
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....
Flip the Switch
Have you found the root cause yet? We frequently ask or hear others ask that question. Root cause analysis is a familiar subject. You might assume that quality professionals would have a clear understanding of the technique. But many don't....
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...
Geared Toward Innovation
The role of innovation is being vigorously debated among quality professionals and in society at large. It is therefore appropriate that innovation has been elevated to one of the most important strategic issues for the quality profession....
Expert Answers: September 2008
Information management systems ... The benefits of binomial probability plotting....
Back to Basics: A Newfound Affinity
While it might be more typical for companies to use affinity analysis for strategic planning, nonprofits and other organizations should not pass up the opportunity to use it in planning strategies for success....
In the Know
More and more organizations are choosing outsourcing as a necessary means of remaining competitive in the global economy. Quality professionals must consider building a body of knowledge completely dedicated to the subject of quality in outsourcing....
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....
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...
Raising the Bar
Now more than ever, companies must measure and manage their quality costs to compete at a high level in today’s global marketplace....
From the President: Quality and the Three Conversations
For generations of authors, that intimidating D-word—deadline—makes even the bravest among us cringe. So when QP’s editor reminded me at a recent board meeting that the due date of this column, my first as ASQ president, was quickly approaching...
Quality in the First Person: Traffic Jam
This audit led me in a direction that I would never have dreamed of—and left me with a spectacular story to tell....
Back to Basics: Outputs versus Outcomes
When project objectives are set, the term “deliverables” is often used to specify those tangible things produced by the project. Two key factors, however, are often overlooked....
Customer Servicemen
Customer Feedback is a key component of improvement. The challenge has always been finding the most effective way of procuring it....
Helping Ease the Transition
Six Sigma and process improvement projects include implementation steps that typically alter workflow and deployment of labor to create a more effective and efficient process. New connections and relationships are established that reinforce new methods....
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....
Career Corner: Do You Deserve a Raise?
Do your homework: Know what metrics your boss is measured by, the financial status of your company, the factors in the external environment that are impacting the company, your personal worth to the company (past, present and future) and how your personal...
3.4 per Million: Test Drives and Data Splits
Prediction models are one of a Six Sigma practitioner’s best friends for improving processes. The more complicated and persistent the quality problem, the more useful prediction models can be....
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....
Testing the Limits of Team Development
The stages of team development are well known. Not as defined are practical techniques for moving through the process quickly without sacrificing performance. There are examples of how this can be done, including ASQ’s exam review workshops....
The Great Debate
Two auditors meet over breakfast. One is a quality management system (QMS) auditor and the other an environmental management system (EMS) auditor....
Career Corner: Managing a Multigenerational Workforce
Those who manage staff know how difficult it can be. People bring their different personalities to a group, along with varied personal, educational and professional backgrounds....
Navigate Your Career Path With QP’s Annual Salary Survey
45 Section 6 Salary by Number of Work Hours Online Section 7 Salary by Nonexempt vs. Exempt Status Online Section 8 Salary by Number of Years of Quality Experience and Highest Level of Education Online Section 9 Salary by Number of Years in Current Posit...
Salary Survey-Regular Employee and Self-Employed Consultants Results
45 Section 6 Salary by Number of Work Hours Online Section 7 Salary by Nonexempt vs. Exempt Status Online Section 8 Salary by Number of Years of Quality Experience and Highest Level of Education Online Section 9 Salary by Number of Years in Current Posit...
Exercise a Process Improvement Approach for Your Own Personal Wellness
The human body can be viewed as a system of processes in which the output of one process is an input to another. One quality practitioner applied the concepts of systems thinking, process thinking and process management to improve his own health,...
Avoid Random Acts of Improvement With Baldrige
Organizations can use the best project execution methods, such as Six Sigma and lean, but be disappointed with the results if key strategic goals are not addressed. Improvement efforts should begin by first considering the characteristics of the...
Using FMEA to Assess Outsourcing Risk
Although outsourcing is a growing trend among U.S. businesses, there are risks involved and not everyone benefits from such arrangements. The advantages of outsourcing must be weighed against risks and go beyond cost savings. Without a systematic...
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....
Career Corner: Adapt to Today's Risk Based Environment
Not long ago, during a discussion about innovation, a nontraditional student of mine told me that if my ideas were more than 18 months old, they were probably out of date....
Nanotechnology: A Big Little Frontier for Quality
Nanotechnology is a field of applied science that deals with arranging particles...
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...
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...
Reaching Out to CEOs
Interested in promoting quality as an agent of profit and prosperity, ASQ asked the Pittsburgh section to participate in a pilot run of the Economic Case for Quality by surveying local business leaders to determine how they perceived the impact of...
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...
NFL Teams Huddle Up Around Quality
Football has evolved to become big business, and with the big money comes the pressure for teams to win. Almost every NFL team today employs coaches and personnel dedicated to controlling the quality of actions on the field. NFL head coach Tom Landry is...
3.4 per Million: Assessing the Effectiveness of Controls Under Uncertainty
Sequential sampling and logistic regression techniques offer useful strategies....
Completed Staff Work Revisited
The principle of completed staff work gives your bosses what they need to do their jobs....
Measure for Measure: Managing the Measurement System
ISO 10012:2003 helps you plan your total measurement system....
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....
Standards Outlook: Coming Changes in Aerospace Standards
All parts of the aerospace industry--commercial, business, military and space--currently seem to be doing fairly well. You could say the industry has a lot of momentum....
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...
The Science in Six Sigma
The structure Six Sigma provides for managing an organization's improvement initiatives is more important than its conformance quality target. It also guides project leaders and offers an array of analysis tools. In addition to Six Sigma's DMAIC...
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....
One Good Idea: Bringing the Fishbone Diagram Into the Computer Age
The cause and effect, or fishbone, diagram is an established problem solving tool. It is particularly suitable for use by cross functional teams, helping a group organize a problem's potential root causes in an easily understandable visual format....
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...
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...
A Second Look at 5S
While Six Sigma has largely replaced 5S (lean), that doesn't mean that 5S doesn't have the potential to deliver benefits beyond cleaning up the shop floor. 5S is an idea that can change the perception of the workplace and provide a foundation for all...
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...
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...
Statistics Roundtable: A Way to Generate Control
A regression model can be a useful tool for monitoring a process. In an earlier article, we suggested using a regression model to study the linear relationship among the variables of a multivariate process....
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...
Use SPC for Everyday Work Processes
Despite the advantages of statistical process control (SPC), many organizational implementation efforts have not been successful or self-sustaining. This has nothing to do with the methodology, but is a case of using the right toolbox but the wrong...
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...
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...
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....
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...
8 Dimensions of Excellence
Despite a stated desire to be customer focused, most companies tend to measure process performance more intensely than the outcomes customers experience. The 8 Dimensions of Excellence expand and balance the definition of success, beginning with the...
3.4 per Million: Measurement System Analysis For Attribute Measuring Processes
To rephrase an old management proverb, "What gets measured can be improved." Six Sigma practitioners quickly come to appreciate the critical role of good measurement systems in initiating and sustaining process improvement. A good measurement system...
Your Customers Are Talking, But Are You Listening?
Few companies have a process to listen to their customers and act on the information. Without a method to measure how satisfied customers are, the door is left open to the competition. The listen, collect, analyze, learn, improve (LCALI) process can...
Link Satisfaction To Market Share and Profitability
Organizations seeking to link customer satisfaction data to profitability can choose from a variety of business outcome measures. However, the level of customer interaction varies among industries, making it difficult to link customer satisfaction to...
Quality in the First Person: You Can Call It Fred
My business partner and I were speakers at an ASQ Six Sigma conference when I ran into a colleague we had met the year before. She asked if I remembered our discussion from the previous year regarding the pushback many quality professionals get...
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...
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....
Control Charting at the 30,000-Foot-Level, Part 3
In my November 2003 "3.4 per Million" column (p. 67), I described a traditional and a 30,000-foot-level procedure for creating control charts and making process capability/performance metric assessments for a continuous response....
Quality Pros Break Through the Healthcare Barrier
Many quality professionals have been denied access to quality jobs in the healthcare sector because they lack medical backgrounds. One exception is Wisconsin's Marshfield Clinic, which has established a central department dedicated to helping the clinic...
