- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Design of Experiments
- 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 Management
- Quality Tools
- Reliability
- Six Sigma
- Small Business
- Social Responsibility
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- TL 9000
- ISO/TS 16949
- Information Management
- Customer Requirements
- Economic Case for Quality
- err
Moving Right Along
Art is knowledge kept in the artist’s mind. Science is knowledge that is documented. The goal of any lean organization is to transfer art to science: tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge. Applying lean to aid in the process of control is vital....
Critical Stage
Has Six Sigma been a good thing? While this is a straightforward question, there isn’t a simple answer....
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)....
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....
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....
Get Your Checkup
For nearly 20 years, lean and Six Sigma improvement initiatives have been in the quality spotlight, helping thousands of organizations in the United States and elsewhere. But, are hospitals truly embracing the lean and Six Sigma movement?...
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....
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....
Prepared for Battle
Organizations need to remember that while the impact of a recession may be significant from a psychological perspective, the application of sound quality management principles has a much more significant effect on an organization’s success....
Easy as 1, 2, 3 (4, 5)
Visual memory aids can be very useful. For example, we can use our five fingers to remember the five major sections of the ISO 9001 standard....
Standards Outlook: Effective Audit Programs
Today's organizations need to be agile and responsive to the changing requirements in private and public business sectors. Properly directed, internal audit program resources can help an organization stay focused and uncover improvement opportunities....
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....
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....
Quality in the First Person: From Class to Career
“Stauffer, on Monday morning, you will either be in that total quality leadership (TQL) class, or in front of the captain, explaining why you were not there!” With these words, my division officer inadvertently put my life on a different course....
Salary Survey 2008: Part 1, Section 3: Salary by Number of Years Experience in the Quality Field
Year in and year out, general salary survey results have shown respondents’ salaries increase as their experience in the quality field increases. This year is no exception....
Salary Survey 2008: Part 1, Section 16: Salary by Highest Level of Education
More than 90% of all the survey respondents have furthered their education past high school. Most often, they reported that their highest level of education is a bachelor’s degree, with 44.7% earning one....
Salary Survey 2008: Part 1, Section 1: Salary by Job Title
The vast majority of respondents who participated in this year’s salary survey are full-time regular employees—in other words, they work 36 or more hours per week for a company or organization....
Salary Survey 2008: Part 1, Section 6: Salary by Number of Work Hours
If you work more than 40 hours per week, you’re not alone....
Salary Survey 2008: The Complete Report
51 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 in Current Position Online Section 9 Salary by Number of Years in Current Position and in the Quality Field Onli...
Total Quality, Total Commitment
An innovative approach to quality helped A.V. Feigenbaum create the concept of total quality management. Indeed, Feigenbaum’s quality contributions have been praised by U.S. business leaders and quality professionals around the globe. Armand V. Feigenbaum...
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...
Online Sidebars Sanders
Increasing movement from quality of product to quality of management and the organization. The systems approaches the quality profession has evolved through ISO 9000 and other management system standards will be valued by organizations looking to bring qu...
What's Up?
Study participants outlined the forces, four scenarios in which they might play out, and the implications to quality, organizations and the profession. Study participants were asked to envision the implications of the key forces and scenarios for quality ...
Standards Outlook: What's Really Important
By the end of this year, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is expected to issue a new version of ISO 9001....
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....
Newer Better Faster
The Small Business Administration has indicated that the majority of innovations are consistent with the continuous improvement commonly used in the define, measure, analyze, improve and control (DMAIC) Six Sigma method....
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....
Who's Keeping Score?
There’s one tool you won’t find for sale at Sears. One of the retail giant’s divisions has started using a quality management tool extensively to maintain and improve its own quality management system....
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....
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....
Mind Your Meetings
Managers and executives spend an inordinate amount of time in the estimated 11 million meetings held in the United States every day....
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....
Expert Answers: January 2008
Soft dollars and the bottom line ... Process maps: Where do you end?...
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...
Standards Outlook: Auto Industry Drives to Improve Healthcare
The U.S. auto industry has been challenged by its need to compete in a global marketplace while burdened by healthcare expenses for workers and retirees....
Quality Tools, Teamwork Lead Boeing Team to a System Redesign
A team from Boeing, as well as members of the Air Force and suppliers, worked to fix the C-17's inert gas generating system that previously needed constant repairs. Using quality tools, the team identified cause and came up with the best solution for...
Career Corner: The New Job Security
Security is an international issue that crosses borders. In today's asymmetric war on terrorism, everyone and everything are possible targets....
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...
Deployment: Start Off on the Right Foot
Deploying lean Six Sigma can produce fantastic results that are worth all the hard work of deployment. Managing change, securing leadership commitment, managing talent, and getting the right accountability will make the difference between a...
Career Corner: Full-Time Quality Manager or Part-Time Quality Consultant?
As companies become leaner and the workforce becomes older, it seems the use of highly qualified quality assurance consultants would be an attractive alternative to hiring full-time regular quality managers....
3.4 Per Million: How to Identify and Select Lean Six Sigma Projects
Lean Six Sigma is a powerful method for improving existing products, processes and services. Six Sigma was developed by Motorola in 1987. Motorola’s Six Sigma yielded significant financial results...
Six Sigma at Cigna
In 2002, Cigna Corp., a provider of employee healthcare and insurance benefits, launched a grass-root driven quality program based on Six Sigma. Leadership made it clear that the approach would be holistic and would require behavioral changes and a...
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...
Financial Control and Quality
The case for quality should be easy to make, but it is not always obvious to top management who must be aware of and control the corporation’s finances in order to comply with federal regulations. There are two aspects to measuring financial control -...
Standards Outlook: Why a New ISO 9004?
In the rush that is today's business environment, we often worry more about details than we do the big picture....
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...
Quality in the First Person: Quality on the Front Lines
"Always remain in a rigid state of flexibility" is the one thing about quality that has definitely stuck with me all these years. After checking the internet and finding no information on who might have coined that phrase, I shall claim it as mine....
Career Corner: Has Information About Quality Become a Liability?
While having lunch with a good friend not long ago, I gained unique insight into a very real concern for those of us in the quality profession and the organizations we work with....
Switching From Improvement to Innovation on the Fly
Proceeding with an improvement methodology when it becomes obvious the process lacks the potential to achieve the desired capability can be damaging to an organization's continuous improvement initiatives. Goals will not be reached, and the resulting...
You Can Go Home Again
Jamie Houghton's love for Corning brought him out of retirement and back to the company when it was fighting for survival, due to the decline of the telecommunications industry and decreased demand for Corning's fiber optics. When Houghton returned to...
Salary Survey – 2006
Regular Employee - Section 6. Salary by Number Of Work Hours
$ 0 Average salary ( Canadian dollars) $ 20,000 $ 40,000 $ 60,000 $ 80,000 $ 100,000 $ 120,000 Average number of work hours per week ( percentage of respondents) 50,000 35 or fewer hours ( 0.8%) 65,439 36 to 40 hours ( 27.5%) 69,134 41 to 45 hours ( 36.5...
Salary Survey – 2006
Regular Employee - Section 5. Salary by Six Sigma Training
org FIGURE B 75,849 85,781 108,852 104,311 106,579 72,734 Highest level of Six Sigma training completed ( percentage of respondents) Green Belt ( 16.6%) Black Belt ( 15.1%) Master Black Belt ( 3.3%) Champion ( 1.4%) Executive ( 1.1%) None ( 62.5%) $ 0 $ ...
Salary Survey – 2006
Full Survey
44 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' Quality Experience and Highest Level of Education Online Section 9. Salary by Number of Years in Current Pos...
Salary Survey – 2006
Regular Employee - Section 10. Salary by Number Of Employees Overseen
FIGURE A Salary by Number of Employees Overseen for U. S. Respondents $ 0 Average salary $ 20,000 $ 40,000 $ 60,000 $ 80,000 $ 100,000 $ 120,000 Number of employees overseen ( percentage of respondents) 68,727 0 ( 44.1%) 73,369 1 to 2 ( 12.4%) 78,626 3 t...
Salary Survey – 2006
Regular Employee - Section 2. Salary by Number Of Years' Experience in the Quality Field
org FIGURE C 5.7 13.9 80.3 Associate 9.6 25.6 64.8 Analyst 10.5 42.1 47.4 Champion 12.4 27.7 59.8 Coordinator 13.7 24.8 61.5 Black Belt 13.9 32.0 54.1 Technician 15.8 34.2 50.0 Software quality engineer 18.2 30.1 51.7 Process/ manufacturing/ project engi...
Lean Lessons: Moving and Controlling the Flow of Quality
Batch size reduction and rigorous inventory management are important in controlling costs and improving throughput. This can be achieved readily by converting a traditional manufacturing layout to a lean cellular/flow configuration....
Career Corner: Maximize the Use of Your Abilities
In the December 2005 edition of Quality Progress, former editor Debbie Phillips-Donaldson asked, “Does your organization make full use of your abilities?” If the answer is yes, good for you and your organization....
Lean Lessons: Keeping Lean Alive
We know we cannot stand still in the face of global competition. Our rivals are not standing pat--they are improving their processes and systems to catch up or overtake us. If we do not improve, sooner or later our customers will prefer our rivals....
Measuring the Cost of Quality for Management
Over the years, few organizations have adopted a reliable method for measuring and reporting cost of quality (COQ) and used it to improve operations. Since the avoidance of reduced profits from quality initiatives is seldom measured or reported by...
International Outsourcing: Value vs. Economics
International outsourcing has become the easy way out for many organizations seeking to stay competitive in a global economy, whereas establishing a lean Six Sigma organization requires sustained and consistent hard work. Proponents say outsourcing is...
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....
Core Roles in a Strategic Quality System
When establishing and maintaining a strategically viable quality system, senior management defines the roles played by groups, departments, or functions within the organization using risk/benefit analysis to determine the best fit in terms of logistics,...
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...
60 Years and Still Going Strong
This year the American Society for Quality marks its 60th anniversary with a special website devoted to its celebration. Thirteen surviving founders shared their insight into how the quality profession and ASQ have changed over the years. Responses to...
Promoting Quality In Your Organization
A 2004 survey of industry executives showed that while nearly all agreed that quality favorably influences profits, few had actually used quality methods. Quality professionals can play a significant role in supporting performance management initiatives...
So, You'd Like To Be an ASQ Fellow
Some of the benefits of becoming an ASQ Fellow include peer recognition, networking opportunities, and new levels of ASQ involvement. A candidate must be an ASQ Senior Member for at least five years before submission of the nomination and be able to...
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...
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...
After Six Sigma - What's Next?
A systematic scientific approach is fundamental to dealing with problems of variability that cause costly defects and quality problems. This idea has remained the foundation of numerous incarnations of quality management and is the basis of the current...
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...
Good News - If You're Ready
Futuring is a structured look ahead aimed at enhancing anticipatory skills. ASQ's most recent futures study, conducted in 2005, identified six key forces of change: globalization, innovation, outsourcing, consumer sophistication, value creation, and...
Salary Survey – 2005
Full 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' Quality Experience and Highest Level of Education Online Section 9. Salary by Number of Years in Current Pos...
Salary Survey – 2005
Regular Employee - Section 5. Salary by Six Sigma Training
QUALITY PROGRESS I DECEMBER 2005 I 45 FIGURE B FIGURE A 70,906 82,090 100,772 97,728 104,876 68,073 Highest level of Six Sigma training completed ( percentage of respondents) Green Belt ( 14.4%) Black Belt ( 13.1%) Master Black Belt ( 3.3%) Champion ( 1....
Salary Survey – 2005
Regular Employee - Section 1. Salary by Job Title
org Standard Minimum Maximum deviation Count Mean Median Full- time employees Analyst $ 24,500 $ 120,000 $ 19,048 132 $ 57,327 $ 54,500 Associate 15,000 106,000 20,593 49 54,119 52,000 Auditor 23,000 160,000 18,503 179 58,646 56,000 Black Belt 27,580 125...
Six Sigma Delivers On-Time Service
Six Sigma success isn't limited to manufacturing organizations alone. ServiceMaster's American Residential Services (ARS) Service Express improved customer satisfaction by a unique application of Six Sigma techniques. After an initial learning period,...
Engaging Physicians in Lean Six Sigma
Healthcare is one of the most difficult industries in which to install a quality system because of the confusing role of physicians, yet few process changes can be fully optimized without engaging physicians. One reason physicians resist change is that...
Mitigate SOX Risk With ISO 9001 and 14001
The CEO and CFO of your company face risks every day. Of course, there are always the financial and competitive risks. But now, because of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), those officers must certify......
Where's the Money?
Proving system and process auditing is a value added service has been a topic of considerable interest recently....
Lean Thinking for Knowledge Work
Productivity in the service sector trails manufacturing by a wide margin. Since the early 1990s, the Toyota Production System (TPS) has been heralded as the standard for manufacturing environments, but early attempts to apply it to nonproduction work...
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...
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...
Volunteer Trains Black Belts in Romania
A retired quality management consultant relates his experiences as a volunteer trainer of Black Belts in Romania, Europe's poorest country. Under the sponsorship of NCH Advisors, a management company that administers investments made in Romania by...
Compliance and Ethics Group Formed
Recently I learned about a new organization, the Open Compliance and Ethics Group (OCEG). I immediately found its website (www.oceg.org) and was impressed....
TS 16949 – Where Did It Come From?
TS 16949 is an international fundamental quality management system specification for the automotive industry based on ISO 9000. It was developed at the request of automotive suppliers from the Big Three automakers' quality system assessment manuals,...
A Deming Inspired Management Code of Ethics
In today's business environment, executive management's narrow focus on productivity can produce ethical, moral and legal consequences. While there are codes to prohibit discrimination based on race or gender, they fail to address conduct that is legal....
Driving Organic Growth at Bank of America
The American Customer Satisfaction Index has shown that customers view banks and other financial institutions as a commodity, and consequently, they have no reason to establish a relationship with any one bank. In 2001 executives at Bank of America saw...
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...
A Roadmap For Change
This excerpt is from the book Juran Institute's Six Sigma Breakthrough and Beyond. The book is available from Quality Press, item P1089. Copyright restrictions do not allow its individual sale or its placement on My ASQ....
A Solid Foundation
Any discussion of implementing Six Sigma is typically accompanied by a conversation around top management buy-in and the fiat that it is a top-down initiative. They are independent issues, so I'll separate them for discussion and clarity....
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....
Unsung Heroes of Quality
Not many dedicated quality professionals attain the media-bestowed title of guru. Quality Progress readers respond to a call for examples of outstanding, but frequently overlooked, quality leaders. The eleven persons described represent diverse fields...
The Metamorphosis of the Quality Professional
Over the next decade, quality professionals can expect to see their roles increasingly absorbed into project management and other areas. To survive in this environment, quality professionals will have to acquire new competencies....
Quality Challenges in Global Companies
Quality management system implementation in multinational corporations is often hindered by factors related to cultural differences among its affiliates. A survey indicates major factors affecting QMS implementation include cultural limitations,...
Managing Project Quality
Quality professionals who normally deal with ongoing processes need to know how to manage project quality effectively. Quality initiation and quality closure stages, unique because of the temporary nature of such projects, are often neglected. Failure...
Quality From Scratch: A Model for Small Business
Whether a company is large or small, quality programs are vital to assure customer, stakeholder, and employee satisfaction. Many small businesses, however, may find limited resources and conflicting priorities make the quest for organizational...
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,...
100 Years of Juran
An interview with Joseph M. Juran reveals an inspirational story of his struggle to overcome the challenges of emigration, childhood poverty, and the Great Depression to become one of quality’s leading gurus....
What Do CEOs Think About Quality
Quality professionals can count on the support of the American Society for Quality when justifying the cost of quality to upper management. ASQ has conducted a survey of top executives in manufacturing, service, healthcare, and education to determine...
A Close Shave
An excerpt from Joseph M. Juran’s memoirs, Architect of Quality, is of particular interest to quality professional because of the far-reaching consequence of this particular analysis regarding tests to evaluate the quality of shaves....
