- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Environmental Manag. and Sustainability
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Innovation
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrology
- Process Capability
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Six Sigma
- Social Responsibility
- Software Quality
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Theory of Constraints
- Total Quality Management
- Information Management
- Food Safety
- Change Management
Online Figures Jing
QP 2 Pure bonding / online Figure 5 Part one Part one Part two Part two Left distance Right distance Step one Step two Heat DMAIC Mind- set / online Figure 4 30- 50 10- 15 4- 8 KPIVs 8- 10 KPIVs Critical KPIVs 3- 6 Key leverage KPIVs Inputs variables Mea...
Driven to Succeed
Strategic planning is an important element in quality management, as evidenced by the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria. A strategic plan is the aim of an organization that helps to reduce variation related to possible strategic outcomes....
Quality in the First Person: SPC: Not Just for Geeks
I fell into quality the old fashioned way: I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. At the time, computers were becoming important tools, and I was one of the few people in the plant who knew how - or even wanted - to operate one....
Make Healthcare Lean
The principles of lean manufacturing are as applicable to healthcare as they are to the automobile industry. However, unlike manufacturing, healthcare management structures are not usually hierarchical, and hospitals generally are not-for-profit. Value...
Make Work Cells Work for You
The standard practice of dispersing production processes among geographically separate shops creates a potential for quality problems. These problems and their root causes are lost between intra-shop inventories and the number of potential flow...
The Triple Top Line
Quality and sustainability are intertwined and provide win/win/win solutions for both the short-term and long-term effects of design on social responsibility, environmental performance and business results. These elements comprise a triple bottom line....
Create a Lean, Mean Machine
"Lean" has been defined as a systematic approach to identifying and eliminating waste through continuous improvement. Lean focuses on value added flow of resources from the customer’s point of view. To compete in today’s economy a company must...
Lean and Six Sigma -- A One-Two Punch
To keep profits growing in these days of flat revenues, manufacturers are paying more attention to the advice of Poor Richard (a.k.a. Benjamin Franklin): A penny saved is a penny earned....
Running Like a Bottled Tornado
Many experts have extolled the benefits of transforming hierarchical, autocratic organizations into adaptive, self-organizing learning organizations. Their descriptions of these organizations are often complex and confusing, calling for a new analogy...
15 Waste Scenarios
When an effective model is not used to facilitate change, 15 scenarios of waste may result. While some models used for assessment are better than others, the important thing to consider is that the change initiative be based on the assessment’s...
Do Performance Appraisals Work?
Since 1989 when Glenroy Inc., a small Wisconsin manufacturing firm, abandoned its performance appraisal and merit pay system in favor of market based pay grades and company-wide noncompetitive bonuses, few organizations have followed suit. Some quality...
How to Achieve Operational Excellence
Quality improvement systems can contribute to operational improvements, but they cannot eliminate operational costs arising from deviations and nonconformances caused by human error. In order to grow in today's competitive business environment,...
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....
Process Mapping's Next Step
The sophisticated technology of process simulation is explained from a nontechnical viewpoint. Simulation technology enables the accurate analysis of complex business processes. The key benefit is that all the analysis and testing take place in a...
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...
Curriculum Assessment - A Systems Approach
Curriculum assessment (CA) is receiving a lot of attention as more educational institutions focus on the quality of their academic programs. Institutions that don't have formalized plans for integrating CA activities into their cultures, however, will...
Penn State's Commitment to Quality Improvement
Penn State University's commitment to continuous quality improvement (CQI) began in 1991 when former executive vice president and provost John Brighton and former president Joab Thomas created a university council on continuous quality improvement...
Design for Six Sigma: 15 Lessons Learned
Despite its growing popularity, Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is a difficult transition for most companies. Six Sigma professionals from a number of major corporations share their experiences switching from a deterministic to a probabilistic design...
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...
Learning From Mistakes
Through 42 I Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I J U N E 2 0 0 1 L E A R N I N G F R O M M I S TA K E S Current State Value Stream Map FIGURE 1 Yearly forecast Monthly orders Turn 01 I = 37,516 107 days I = 1,270 3.6 days I = 1,612 4.6 days I = 841 2.4 days ...
ISO 9000 at the Front Line: A Book Excerpt
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 33 ISO 9000 at the Front Line: A Book Excerpt Training and empowering workers on the standard leads to continuous improvements by William A. Levinson S T A N D A R D S LL TOO OFTEN MANAGERS AND EXECUTIV...
Exploiting the World's Most Recognized Standard
Exploiting the Benefit of the World's Most Recognized and Best Practiced Standard1 are provided throughout this article to demonstrate how effective these colors can be to simplify, increase the effectiveness of and harmonize systems and reports in the f...
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...
Service Quality and Higher Education Do Mix
In 1996, Indiana University Southeast recognized that it would have to begin competing for students and needed to establish a reputation for providing high-quality experiences for all of its students. The university's first step toward its goal was to...
Different Roads to Auto Quality: The Experts Speak Out
Product quality has become increasingly important in the automotive industry, but the definition of the term and the best ways to achieve product quality remain subjects of debate. Quality has been defined in a number of ways in the rapidly changing...
Quality for the Long Haul at Gerber
For the Gerber Products Co., quality has been a major part of the company's history of trust, commitment, and goodness. Even as early as the original efforts of Daniel and Dorothy Gerber in the 1920s, attention was paid to manufacturing processes and...
Baldrige and the Human Equation In Health Care Mergers
This preliminary research was used to create a draft survey that was presented to an employee opinion survey team, which was responsible for the entire survey process. The ECI uses the results of multiple questions about employee loyalty to the organizati...
Back to the Future
The ASQ Foresight 2020 project has generated scenarios on the future of quality and the role of the quality professional. Facilitated by the Institute for Alternative Futures, the project is a successor to ASQ's first futures study, which had 2010 as...
Old Tools - New Uses: Equipment FMEA
A preventive maintenance program can benefit from the modification of process FMEA (failure mode effects analysis) into maintenance FMEA. Before implementing the FMEA itself, it is necessary to: assemble an FMEA team well represented and led by...
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...
Improving Customer Satisfaction through Mass Customization
The voice of the customer is needed for development of customized products. Mass customization combines the mass production of traditional manufacturing with large-scale output of one-of-a-kind products. Customer involvement in mass customization can...
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...
Statistical Gymnastics Revisited
A debate on one approach to short-run control charts
Summarizing the results by the medians and the first and third quartiles, I found: 10 Subsamples true median Q1 Q3 x0 0.0027 0.0067 0.0028 0.0157 x1 0.2225 0.2289 0.1119 0.3962 x2 0.9295 0.9324 0.8460 0.9757 v0 0.0027 0.0029 0.0023 0.0054 v1 0.1177 0.122...
Quality in Commercial Food Processing
Standards of Identity define a product's name, quality, fill, and permitted ingredients for specific foods such as ketchup, Law Year Enacted Federal Meat Inspection Act 1906 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act 1938 Oleomargarine Act 1950 Pesticide Amendment 195...
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...
Sales Process Engineering: An Emerging Quality Application
Systematic exploration of events that precede and follow a sale can generate opportunities for improvement. This process orientation toward sales is the key to sales process engineering. For example, a business-to-business sales process can include...
Outsourcing: Opportunity or Burden?
Contract manufacturing is a type of outsourcing that provides a customer with all the services and goods typically produced by manufacturers. By one estimate, contract manufacturing grew more than 20% between 1995 and 1997, but its advantages must be...
Intelligence Everywhere: How Technology Can Enlighten and Empower
Automation linked with human insight enhances quality deployment. Information technology and quality are means to pursuing organizational goals. They support evolution of the workplace toward the ideal of a paperless environment in which wisdom and...
Creating More Effective Meeting Facilitators
Ten recommendations for trainers cover the planning and implementation of meetings. First, trainers should be aware of the meeting style of the organization and thereby help facilitators increase the productivity of meetings. Second, the training...
Benchmarking Your Plant Against TQM Best-Practices Plants: Part 2 of 4
The Rosemount Plant of the Emerson Electric Company is the second of four world-class operations described in a series of articles on quality practices. Rosemount has combined flexible manufacturing with total quality management (TQM) techniques and...
The Control Chart Dilemma
Group target X bar and group range charts are control charts appropriate for statistical process control (SPC) in today's complex manufacturing environment. These charts overcome three shortcomings of traditional SPC methods. These limitations are:...
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...
Considerations for Global Supplier Quality
Assessment of international suppliers occurs in two steps: initial investigation and supplier visit. In the initial investigation, data are gathered about the company and the country. This includes background information on the company as well as...
Lessons Learned from Alexander the Great
Logistics planning, knowledge of the competition, innovation, and a single point of control were elements of success for Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) They also should be key characteristics of modern organizations. Alexander incorporated...
Product Assurance Structure and Management
The main components of product assurance are: cost-of-quality management; just-in-time training; product assurance planning; and quality and reliability tool application. Product assurance applies simultaneously to hardware and software aspects of...
Changing Concepts and Management of Quality Worldwide
In the global marketplace, total quality systems and processes have affected many companies over the decades, while current trends are changing how quality is viewed and managed. Quality is a common, internationalized concept in today's business...
Insights Into Improving Organizational Performance
The continuous quality improvement (CQI) implementation at Cheshire Medical Center has produced its share of lessons learned. It is important for senior and middle management to buy into and lead the initiative. They can communicate by displaying...
Crocodile or Dinosaur?
For an organization to change, it must know where it is. Is its management culture more like an adaptive crocodile or a dying dinosaur? Crocodile organizations are eager to learn, grow, and continuously improve. Guided by a shared vision, the...
An Incentive Compensation Plan With an Eye on Quality
A quality incentive pool has motivated employees to increase product yield beyond 90% at Varian X-Ray Tube Products. The already good 90% yield and subsequent increases in market share and profit resulted from a quality improvement program. This...
The Eastman Way
People management motivates employees and reinforces their positive behaviors. At Eastman Chemical Company employee focus is the Eastman Way, which is part of a quality journey that began in the late 1970s. Early steps in the journey included:...
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...
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...
Implementing a Supplier Scorecard Program
Improving supplier performance is crucial in the highly competitive and customer-driven electronics industry. Conner Peripherals has used a supplier scorecard program to track the work of its vendors. Such a program requires internal support from...
Focus the Strategy to Achieve Results
Some might believe that only the first option is appropriate, but all three responses are inappropriate because they: � Separate the organization into the good, the bad, and the ugly � Encourage establishing safe, easily reached goals ( first two options...
The Conference Method of Redesign
Restructuring of an organization can be accomplished efficiently by a sociotechnical analysis. The technique is based on Fred Emery's and Eric Trist's Future Search Conference. A case study of the conference method used groups and subgroups to...
Waving the White Flag
The supplier-distributor relationship in the semiconductor industry has been improved by joint development of an industry survey. In the past, each supplier annually surveyed its own distributors, but this is inefficient and ignores the need of...
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...
