- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Engineering
- Environmental Manag. and Sustainability
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Innovation
- ISO 14000
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Problem Solving
- Process Capability
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Six Sigma
- Small Business
- Software Quality
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Best Practices
- Total Quality Management
- Compliance
- Information Management
- Customer Requirements
- Economic Case for Quality
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....
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...
Quality Focus Good for Business
Premier Inc., a San Diego-based healthcare alliance, is a 2006 recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) in the service category. The firm credits employee involvement, experience gained while earning a state quality award, and...
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 Size Does Not Fit All
It has been said that academia has lagged behind practice in the development of quality management methods and philosophies, yet academia has done a good job of propagating these concepts. Now academic research has developed two new concepts that will...
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...
A Bare Bones Look at the Bottom Line
A basic premise of the quality revolution is that quality increases profits. While customers generate profit in the traditional way, quality focuses on money not spent as the result of improved practices. Quality alone, however, does not guarantee...
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...
The Importance of Building Social Capital
Maintaining the integrity of the supply chain is critical in times of economic instability. An investment in social capital among organizations within the supply chain is mutually beneficial. The affinity group provides a strategy for developing...
Develop a Process Based Management System
An ISO 9001 team charged with developing a process based quality management system needs a thorough understanding of the company's current business management system in order to avoid conflict and unnecessary paperwork. While the QMS development team...
Simple Tools Improve Complicated Processes
The combined use of simple lean/Six Sigma tools has enabled Wausau Window and Wall Systems in Wisconsin to benefit customers and shareholders by trimming costs and improving cycle times. The method uses fact based analytical tools and methodologies that...
PetroChina's Strategic Planning Focused on Quality
PetroChina is a consortium of numerous previously state-owned small- to medium-sized oil companies. Despite modernization efforts taken to reposition itself in the global market, PetroChina faced strong competition from both foreign and domestic sources...
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...
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...
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....
Making Stakeholders a Strategic Asset
Employees and business partners have an important role to play in organizational improvement. Quality models indicate that managing stakeholders to enhance their value generation capability can be a winning strategy....
The Message Is Clear
Information and Analysis Data and information are gathered, integrated and categorized into two types of measures: perfor- MALCOLM BALDRIGE NATIONAL QUALITY AWARD Global marketing and sales group Sector management Reviews Customer and market analysis Com...
Best Practices in Process Management
Process improvement tools have been used to evaluate business processes ranging from employee satisfaction to customer help desk support....
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....
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...
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...
Do Teams and Six Sigma Go Together?
Team involvement is an integral part of any successful Six Sigma implementation. Research shows that Six Sigma rates high in providing an organization with improvements in productivity, cost of quality, work flow, and cycle time reduction. Survey...
13 Steps to Certification in Less Than a Year
Ultratech Stepper (UTS), a manufacturer of photolithography equipment, became both ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 14000 certified in less than a year at a cost under $200,000, using only two employees to manage the effort part-time. UTS's quality steering...
Simple Quality for Smaller Organizations
Involving everyone in an organization in a sustainable quality process requires that management understand that the process is both simple and difficult. Paul Revere Insurance Group and UICI Insurance Company each began their quality efforts with the...
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...
New Industry Specific Quality Certification
The Canadian secondary wood products manufacturing industry is made up largely of small enterprises with little access to capital, a history of low-paying jobs, and a poorly educated workforce. Global competition in the sector is fierce, and quality...
Column: Career Corner: Link Employee Surveys and Quality
Because employee surveys often miss important information, here are five suggestions for making them more effective and less burdensome:
- Research who is conducting surveys, when and why.
- Track back to strategy.
- Clearly define what you...
7 Steps to Improved Safety for Medical Devices
Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 1 I 37 Sample HACCP Control Chart Incorporating Injection Molding Verification Procedures TABLE 2 1 Raw material receiving Foreign material in resin Effective supplier audit Audit pass Audit by trai...
Journey to the Baldrige
Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 1 I 51 Journey to the Baldrige For winners of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the coveted honor is just one step in their ongoing quest for performance excellence by Debbie Phillips- Do...
Column: Emerging Sectors: Cleaning Up With SPC
Statistical process control is playing a role in a huge environmental project at a nuclear weapon production site
The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Hanford Nuclear Site played a pivotal role in the nation's defense beginning in the 1940s when it was created as part of the Manhattan Project. The current environmental clean-up...
Fit and Flow of Quality
68 I Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 1 F I T A N D F L O W O F Q U A L I T Y Contain defects 10 Control plan High RPN* FMEA*** Preventing Low process capability QAD** robustness test Traveler Reaction plan Product verification Process...
Listen to the Workers
Open communication and employee involvement help make TQM a success
One of the most important elements to consider when embarking on a total quality management (TQM) program is recognizing that TQM is an employee involvement process. The following case studies, one occurring within a TQM environment and one taking place o...
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...
Column: One Good Idea: Listen to the workers
[Abstract from article]
All too often, managers get so caught up in their day-to-day activities that they fail to listen to the workers. This can result in missing the bottom-line successes that TQM offers. These case studies, one occurring within a...
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...
Identify Big Payback TQM Projects
For example, obsolete buyer inventory, low buyer inventory levels and value of buyer inventory all have the same underlying issue--buyer inventory. Suppose a team of supplier personnel, buyers and customers was assembled to discuss possible TQM initiative...
Column: One Good Idea: Identify Big Payback TQM Projects
Suppliers have difficulty identifying the best TQM projects to work on. Instead of simply asking them, brainstorm a quantity of possible projects and then sort these projects by how hard they are to do plus how large a payback they will yield with a...
The Search For Quality
Why An Orthopedic Practice Became ISO 9002 Registered
Big industry is ISO 9000 (or QS-9000 in the case of automakers) driven, so WRO selected ISO 9002 as a management system model for its practice. The entire practice management system, including the quality system, was redeveloped to conform to the ISO 9002...
Measuring Performance after Meeting Award Criteria
A survey and financial analysis of winners, applicants, and non-applicants of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) and state quality awards investigated the impact of the award criteria on company performance. This study built on a 1991...
The Critical Role of Quality in the Tourism System
A systems approach to understanding the tourism industry reveals four components: output, feedback, input, and throughput. Inputs to the tourism system are those found in the typical Ishikawa diagram: methods, money, materials, and manpower....
ISO 9000 Revisions Are Key to Knowledge Age Excellence
36 I Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I J U L Y 1 9 9 9 I S O 9 0 0 0 R E V I S I O N S A R E K E Y T O K N O W L E D G E A G E E X C E L L E N C E Steps to Gain Added Value From ISO 9000 Because many companies would flunk ISO 9000 basics, let alone know ho...
How a Team Can Grow
Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I J U N E 1 9 9 9 I 53 How a Team Can Grow Goal is to become self- directed by D. Keith Denton EAM MANAGEMENT IS A BIG DEAL, WITH EVERY ORGANIZATION seeming to be implementing some form of it. Assembly workers, for instance...
Small Service Firms Face TQM Implementation Challenges
A survey questionnaire mailed to 1,000 small and medium-sized service firms in the United States plus 20 follow-up interviews examined the status, usefulness, and limitations of total quality management (TQM). Firms with 500 or fewer employees were...
Don't Count TQM Out
A study of about 600 award winning firms examined the relationship between financial performance and the implementation of total quality management (TQM). TQM has been criticized lately as ineffective, a perception based on short-term thinking,...
Quality and Nonprofit Organizations
Focus on service delivery means doing good things
They both have markets, business processes that produce (we hope) value-added products and services, and individuals or organizations that provide the funds necessary for the organization to operate. The quality of our internal processes and the service p...
Putting Quality in Knowledge Management
Rapid access to expertise within an organization is a purpose of knowledge management. Quality professionals have critical leadership and educational roles in the harvesting of that knowledge and in the management of corporate memory. Knowledge is...
Using ISO 9000 to Go Beyond Industry Norms
For United Airlines' (UAL) Engine Maintenance division, benefits of the ISO 9001 registration process have included improvements in efficiency, employee involvement, accountability, and technical publication accuracy. The division obtained ISO 9001...
UPS: Its Long-Term Design Delivers Quality Millions of Times Each Day
Quality improvement at United Parcel Service (UPS) has been driven by: effective communication with its employees; superior work processes; and investment in technology. The most recent UPS improvement initiative has been a 36-month migration strategy...
Benchmarking Your Plant Against TQM Best-practice Plants: Part 3 of 4
The Tennant Co. plant is the third of four world-class operations described in a series of articles on quality practices. The total quality management structure at Tennant includes a quality manager, a senior vice president of industrial markets, and...
Continuous Process Improvement the Quick Step Way
Eliminating waste and reducing the time between order receipt and payment receipt characterize the Quick Step method of continuous process improvement. Quick Step principles include: implementation of simple, small projects via quick and creative...
The Criteria: A Looking Glass to Americans' Understanding of Quality
Then, you have to create an environment Figure 1. New Category Order and Names 1997 Categories/ Items Point Values 1 Leadership 110 1.1 Leadership System 80 1.2 Company Responsibility and Citizenship 30 2 Strategic Planning 80 2.1 Strategy Development Pr...
Achieving Performance Excellence
Ten core values support the criteria of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. They are vital for optimization of performance in any organization. First, customer-driven quality requires that employees listen to and act on the demands of...
Implementing Quality One Class at a Time
From the Deming philosophy, the following principles were derived as the basis for improving the Manufacturing Processes course: 1. Consumer satisfaction ( students as evaluators of the course) 2. Employee involvement ( students as participants in the co...
It's Time for Quality
Reengineering of the individual medical underwriting unit at Time Insurance Company involved teamwork and the redesign of key business processes. A reengineering team consisting of two consultants and nine Time employees led the way through this...
Give Success a Chance
Accumulated savings in that period was about $ 320,000, with the return on investment being about 80- to- 1. In addition, production volume increased by 35%. Even more satisfying to top management, however, was the cultural change in the organization, as...
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:...
Research for the Next Generation of Quality
In this, the first far- reaching study of quality practices undertaken in the concrete pipe industry, a research team from the University of Arkansas that includes principal investigator John E. Delery and co- investigators Kevin D. Hall, G. Douglas Jenk...
Unions and Quality Professionals Need to Work Together to Avoid Tragedy
Unions and quality professionals can attack the problem of employment security. Unions like the United Auto Workers know that quality increases the survivability of industries and the security of jobs. Therefore, they have supported employee...
Everyone Benefits from Guaranteed Employment Security
A strong relationship was found between: � Quality and advanced work systems that include employment security � Productivity and employment security � Productivity and no past layoffs Of this study, economists Eileen Applebaum and Peter Berg of the Econo...
Survival for Quality and Unions
Collaborative efforts by quality professionals, labor personnel, and other stakeholders can strengthen job security and avoid wasteful layoffs. The quality profession is evolving through waves of values that emphasized first the scientific method and...
What's the Long-Term Cost of Short-Term Profits?
Convincing management of CWA's value In looking to the future, we are convinced that worker participation and quality improvement are key strategies to improving our members' employment security, and our experiences have shown that the desire of employee...
Implementing the ISO 9000 Standards in Belgium
In Belgium, 290 companies participated in a study of ISO 9000 certification. About 30% of the respondents were in the chemical and petrochemical sectors. Another 13% were in the iron industry. External motivations were the most important reasons for...
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...
Self-Directed Work Teams: A Guide to Implementation
Highly trained members, more resources and cross-functional skills, greater decision-making power, and improved information access can raise the level of teamwork. Self-directed work teams (SDWTs) have these characteristics. Implementations of SDWTs...
Xerox 2000: From Survival to Opportunity
At Xerox, a new Management Model and a Managing for Results process are helping to transform its Leadership Through Quality program into the Xerox 2000 Leadership Through Quality program. The updated initiative integrates the organization's many...
Math Programming's Potential to Aid TQM Implementation
Communication, problem solving, and employee morale can benefit from mathematical programming techniques. Improvements in these three behavioral areas support total quality management (TQM). This is a bonus of math programming, the usual function of...
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...
Leaders on Leadership
Chief executive officers (CEOs) at Quality Forum XI and at a Business Week symposium described the roles of quality leaders. An executive leader provides direction and vision for employees. Continuous awareness of the vision comes through two-way...
9000 Standards?
Both suppliers and customers can benefit from standards. Registration to ISO 9000 helps a supplier: establish the foundations of a quality system; stand out from non-registered competitors; and gain entry to markets otherwise closed. The European...
Implementing Deming's Fourth Point
Acceptable quality distribution (AQD) and quality-based incentive pricing (Q-pricing) should replace the acceptable quality level (AQL) approach in procurement. This is how to satisfy W. Edwards Deming's 4th point on avoiding price as the sole...
A Not-So-Secret Recipe for Successful TQM
Companies that successfully implement TQM (total quality management) share ten characteristics. These characteristics are often seen in Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award winners, though the Baldrige Award is no guarantee of continued success....
Quality Is Helping Canadian Airlines International Get Off the Ground
Employee involvement and customer focus has enabled Canadian Airlines International to improve its customer service ranking from last to first in five years. An interview with chief executive officer (CEO) Kevin J. Jenkins highlights the company's...
Use Technology to Unleash the Potential of Your Quality Improvement Teams
More important, they showed that the addition of interaction further improves the success trend because individual judgment fosters objective evaluation: " The decision which results from group interaction may be considered emergent since it represents m...
The IRS and TVA Are Leading the Way
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) have been successful in reinventing government. This initiative, also known as the National Performance Review, is driven by political pressure, citizen concern, and the large...
What Do Managers Really Think of the ISO 9000 Registration Process?
Forty Colorado companies were surveyed about the ISO 9000 registration process. Each company was ISO-9000 registered, and the key ISO 9000 person at each firm answered the 22 open-ended survey questions. Results indicate that 85% of the firms sought...
Maintaining Focus Within Your Organization
When a company decides to apply for the Baldrige Award and all divisions are told to prepare for the award application process, the organization becomes consumed with winning the contest: The quality specialists and managers are trained in the award crit...
TQM: Flimsy Footing or Firm Foundation?
This special issue of Quality Progress analyzes total quality management (TQM). Three articles suggest why it sometimes fails. Causes include poor focus, inadequate leadership, and confusion between TQM tools and TQM philosophy. Seven articles are...
The Art of TQM
Senior executives should provide constancy of purpose and leadership. Inadequacies in these areas are major causes of TQM (total quality management) implementation failures. Poor pilot improvement efforts also add to TQM implementation failures. The...
What Went Wrong in U. S. Business's Attempt to Rescue Its Competitiveness?
Appropriate application of TQM (total quality management) and realistic expectations of its effects can prevent implementation failures. Definitions of TQM from the U. S. General Accounting Office and Department of Defense emphasize: employee...
Naval Station Mayport Jump-Starts Quality
TQL is defined as: " The application of quantitative methods and the knowledge of people to assess and improve ( a) materials and services supplied to the organization, ( b) all significant processes within the organization, and ( c) meeting the needs of...
What Does "Employee Involvement" Mean?
Cultural revolution takes time. It can occur efficiently if there is a balance between management style and employee involvement. This was a lesson learned at Glaxo Inc. during implementation of TQM (total quality management). An impediment to TQM...
Pennsylvania Builds Tomorrow's Work Force
School-business partnerships have brought quality improvement to the Lehigh Valley. The eighteen partnerships use an enhanced version of the Koalaty Kid program. Cross-functional project teams and project-by-project improvement have built on the...
Strategic Planning: The Missing Link in TQM
Integrating total quality management (TQM) into the business strategy of a company gives direction to its improvement efforts. This happens when the TQM philosophy and strategic planning become a single process. The process should be customer driven...
Support Group Decisions Via Computer Systems
Therefore, idea generation Table 1. Modules Within Group Decision Support System Software Programs GroupSystems TeamFocus GroupForum Electronic Brainstorming Electronic Brainstorming Electronic Brainstorming Electronic Discussion System Topic Commenter V...
Electronic Meeting Software Makes Communicating Easier
Technology can enhance the communication audit. Electronic meeting software (EMS) removes some of the problems associated with personal interviews. An EMS session is anonymous, thus reducing participants' risk. EMS also saves time, provides equal...
It's 10 p.m.: Do You Know Where Your Quality Program Is?
Shift operations require a 24-hours-a-day management system. Continuous quality improvement across all shifts relies on communication, participation, supervision, and training. Problems to overcome during evening and night shifts include: low...
Cyberquality: Quality Resources on the Internet
Online discussion lists, information sites, and news groups have information on quality topics. Discussion lists that cover quality topics include these forums: TQM-L (for discussions of total quality management in higher education); QUALITY (quality...
The Five Drivers of Total Quality
Service to customers, employees, and the business itself is the mission of the Menasha Corporation. A hierarchy of five drivers of quality implements this mission. People quality is the driver with the most influence. This requires selecting the...
