- Auditing
- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Design of Experiments
- Engineering
- Environmental Manag. and Sustainability
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Inspection
- ISO 14000
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Metrology
- Problem Solving
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Function Deployment
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Reliability
- Six Sigma
- Social Responsibility
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Theory of Constraints
- TL 9000
- ISO/TS 16949
- Compliance
- Risk Management
- Information Management
- Customer Experience Management
- Customer Requirements
- Economic Case for Quality
- Change Management
- Continuous Improvement
3.4 per Million: The Right Decision
As the Six Sigma Academy led large deployments at Allied Signal, GE and other organizations in the 1990s, one of the great benefits realized was linking define, measure, analyze, improve and control-based project improvement to financial performance....
Back to Basics: Measures that Matter
What do you measure in your organization? Sales results? Operating costs? Profit? Employee or customer satisfaction? Perhaps you measure the number of programs your department delivers or the number of attendees at those programs. You probably have a...
Managing Expectations
One condition is vital for initiating, implementing and sustaining a viable quality initiative: management support. Surprisingly, very few articles and books on quality even mention this need, let alone what to do if support isn’t there....
Starting Line
So, you’ve volunteered (or, as one of my coworkers says, you’ve been “volun-told”) to lead your company through the implementation of ISO 9001. Now what do you do?...
Score One for Improvement
Five years ago, Intel’s IT organization decided to improve internal customer satisfaction and the efficiency of IT projects with a CMMI-based process improvement activity to develop standard processes for project management....
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)....
Expert Answers: August 2009
Deciding on a survey strategy ... Gauging the maturity of your quality management system....
3.4 per Million: Perusing Process Performance Metrics
Often, I have students ask for clarification about the subtopic level in the 2007 Six Sigma Black Belt body of knowledge, which deals with process performance metrics....
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?...
Expert Answers: July 2009
Setting up a corrective action document ... Dock-to-stock for medical devices ... Questions about confidence intervals....
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...
All Ears
Imagine you are presenting the analysis and findings of a critical operational issue or proposed improvement project to senior management. You feel confident because you’ve thoroughly measured and analyzed the data....
Statistics Roundtable: Player Rankings
The coefficient of variation, sometimes called the relative standard deviation, is often used to assess the quality of an assay, the diversity in organizations or as a benchmark for ranking....
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....
Career Corner: Are You Recession Proofed?
An observation I have made over the years is that organizations seem to make cuts in two specific areas when economic times are tough. The first department cut is safety, and the second is quality....
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....
Riding the Storm Out
Virtually everyone and every organization has been touched in some way by today’s turbulent economy. Smaller budgets, unexpected layoffs and workplace shake-ups have become commonplace....
Online Sidebar Creasy
The evolution to 6TOC includes its predecessors, Six Sigma, lean manufacturing, lean Six Sigma and the theory of constraints...
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....
Statistics Roundtable: Grab the Brass Ring
Remember going to the amusement park and riding the carousel or merry-go-round? During the ride, there was sometimes a brass ring you could grab from a dispenser.It took some dexterity to snatch the ring from the dispenser as the carousel rotated....
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....
Change That Sticks
Process improvement is gaining more attention as organizations face budget cuts, competition from developing markets overseas and a challenging economy....
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....
Online Back to Basics Figures
com 1 Column name Task Methods and Systems Sheet / online figure 1 Task Instruction Sheet / online figure 2 No. Operation Software and other tools Important steps Key points Reasons Logical segment of task process to advance the work. 2. Stop the flow ...
Human Touch
“No job is so important, nor service so urgent, that we cannot take the time to perform our work safely.” Those familiar with the old Bell System will remember this safety creed. It helped guide many decisions in potentially dangerous situations....
Off the Ground
None of the 4,000 fasteners that were hand drilled into the fuselage of any C-17 cargo plane was misaligned or had gone missing. For years, Boeing has been building these top-notch planes. It just wanted to build them better....
Online Sidebar 3.4 per Million: Nine Steps to Align Projects With Business Needs
To achieve maximum efficiencies and financial results in turbulent business and financial markets, executives and senior managers must revisit their business models to make certain measurements lead to the right behaviors....
3.4 per Million: Control and Grow Your Enterprise
To achieve maximum efficiencies and financial results in turbulent business and financial markets, executives and senior managers must revisit their business models to make certain measurements lead to the right behaviors....
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....
ISO-lating the Problem
When two healthcare organizations were searching for a way to better manage their activities, both turned to ISO 9001:2000 in the hope that the standard could organize their practices and help them improve service to patients....
Perspectives: Adapting to Troubled Times
Quality personnel should recognize the economic climate as an opportunity to demonstrate the impact quality can have. It’s up to them to adapt their skills, techniques, tools and leadership styles to help their companies navigate the troubled waters....
A DMAIC Makeover
Define, measure, Analyze, improve and control (DMAIC) is the common roadmap for Six Sigma projects. But there are potential weaknesses in this roadmap that could be addressed with a simple, proven adjustment to DMAIC....
Perspectives: In Crisis, Give Credit to Quality
The financial industry needs a quality framework for manufacturing and controlling complex mathematical models, technological systems and financial data. Therefore, if Congress enacted strict quality standards for financial data and its distribution, the ...
Talent Show
When an HR team determined it could save its company millions of dollars through stronger retention of customer service (representatives, leadership raised a collective eyebrow and quickly asked HR to make it happen....
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...
Career Corner: Something Worth Catching
CAGS stands for capability + adaptability + growthability + sustainability. It’s a formula for success in any field....
3.4 per Million: Putting It All Together
For companies that have been asking themselves how to achieve even more improvement, the answer lies in developing a comprehensive process management system that integrates three critical components....
Drill Deep for Strategic Alignment
Internal auditors must understand an organization’s strategy and how each process fits into that strategy. Internal auditing for strategic alignment and execution requires that the auditor understand the organization’s desired strategy and how each proces...
Driven by Metrics
Performance metrics are a necessary part of managing an organization. However, they have good and bad impacts on individual behavior, so organizations need to find ways to maximize the good while minimizing the potential damage....
Expert Answers: August 2008
Flushing out flatness ... Corrective vs. preventive actions....
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....
Career Corner: Laugh It Off
Assuring quality, and laughter, might seem at diametrically opposite sides of the human behavior spectrum. Many studies and articles have been published about the benefits of laughter and humor when managing people or projects, or when trying to overcome ...
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....
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....
Blurred Vision
Many quality professionals have noticed that business leaders still consider quality and business improvement to be separate topics. While this isn’t the case everywhere, it appears to have become more common....
Small Business, Big Feat
Efforts to continuously improve employee and customer satisfaction, and business practices led PRO-TEC to a Baldrige award. The company has incorporated many best management practices, including lean manufacturing and continuous improvement, and relied on...
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....
The True Test of Loyalty
The customer loyalty field has experienced much technological innovation, such as automated reporting portals and integration of attitudinal and behavioral data in customer relationship management applications, over the past decade....
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....
Two Are Better Than One
Management need and my personal curiosity recently led me to take a closer look at the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). My work pointed out similarities and differences between SOX and ISO 9001....
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....
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...
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....
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....
A Gold Medal Solution
By using quality tools, a team from Boeing came up with solutions that eliminated the unsafe conditions that occurred during installation of the details in aircrafts' tailcones....
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....
Launch to Quality
After using different quality methods with limited success, the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Indian Head Division, implemented lean Six Sigma in 2004. Through all of this, leadership demonstrated a steadfast commitment to fully implementing lean Six Sigm...
Classroom Lessons Learned
Public education often tries to emulate the successful methods of industry. However, the experience of a school district in California offers several lessons about achieving continuous improvement in the corporate world....
Ghysels Online Sidebar: What Students Think
Jan. feature/SD EDUCATION School District Offers Ideas for Continuous Improvement by Maurice Ghysels In 50 Words or Less In implementing a process of continuous improvement, a California school district learned lessons that are applicable to industry. M.G...
Career Corner: Ready, Aim, Fire
Within an organization, the three elements and the outcome are typically something like policy + strategy + tactical plan = goal attainment. Specifically, “ready, aim, fire.” Think of this approach as you would an arrow hitting a target. You might say a w...
Back to Basics: Building a Quality Team
A series of simple yet effective actions can help you, the quality leader, direct change and build momentum by tying company objectives to operating profit....
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...
Improving the Internal Audit Experience
Employees don’t always understand how audits relate to ensuring the use of good business processes. Many don’t realize the significant process improvement benefits that can be achieved from an internal audit experience. Cerner Corp. developed...
Turbocharge Your Preventive Action System
A layered process audit (LPA) is an ongoing chain of simple verification checks to make sure a defined process is followed correctly. This powerful management tool can improve safety, quality and cost savings by amplifying problem solving systems and...
Build Loyalty Through Experience Management
Connecting emotionally with customers requires an organization to create a total customer experience that differentiates the organization from the competition. This is important because customers’ overall experiences with the organization and the...
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...
Lean Lessons: Lean Kaizen in the 21st Century
Adapted from a chapter of Lean Kaizen, the author offers key takeaways from the Toyota Production System (TPS). He describes how the kaizen method is the foundation of the The Toyota Way and how it emphasizes efficiency, problem solving and...
Benchmarking in Hospitals: More Than a Scorecard
The term “benchmarking” as mentioned in hospital quality literature is not true benchmarking, but simply a comparison of outcome measures with industry averages. Benchmarking is an improvement process that measures an organization’s performance...
From One-Man Show to Baldrige Recipient
Mesa Products Inc., which manufactures and installs cathodic protection systems for underground piping and other metal structures, was the recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality award in the small business category in 2006. Mesa’s quality...
10 Quality Basics
In an overview designed to give quality newcomers a glimpse of the knowledge they need to succeed, ten regular Quality Progress contributors write on 10 basic quality topics that are fundamentals essential to surviving in a quality role. Topics covered...
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...
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...
Quantifying Machinery Availability Loss
Possibly the most misunderstood and abused metric in performance based manufacturing is machine availability. When examining quality, performance, costs, and cycle time improvements, it is assumed that any performance metrics take into account a...
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 -...
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...
Quality Goes to College
Higher education is seeing increased interest in quality management methods in response to the federal government's recommendation that they embrace the culture of continuous innovation and quality improvement. An overview is given of the types of...
Deliver Great Service By Listening and Adapting
The customer service systems of most companies worldwide are seldom adaptable enough to handle diverse situations. To avoid giving customers the impression that their contacts are a waste of time, an organization must have an actionable voice of the...
Using Statistics To Improve Satisfaction
Choosing which attributes to improve from customer survey data maximizes the use of resources and increases the chances of positive returns on your efforts. The Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance by ranks helps focus attention on what needs...
ASQ Certification Board Puts Quality Tools to Work
Recognizing the importance of customer satisfaction in strategic planning, the ASQ certification board recently used quality tools to develop customer requirements. To begin the process, a SIPOC (suppliers, inputs, outputs, and customers) diagram was...
Standards Outlook: New Version of TL 9000 Released
The global telecommunications industry, an important part of the global economy, will reach $1.3 trillion in revenues by the close of 2007....
Merging Quality Cultures in Contract Manufacturing
When EPIC Technologies acquired the Siemens Electronic Manufacturing Center operations in Johnson City, Tennessee, it became necessary to merge its quality culture with those of its new subsidiary while continuing to keep its original customers happy....
Lean Lessons: The Benefits of Kaizen and Kaizen Events
Kaizen is a Japanese word typically translated to "continuous improvement." Originally this word referred to subtle, gradual improvements that are made over time. A baseball analogy is hitting singles all game long to score runs....
Apply Six Sigma To Sales and Marketing
A common misconception regarding Six Sigma is that it applies only to manufacturing processes and that its fact-based problem solving methodology doesn't transfer to business processes such as marketing and sales. These people believe that a...
Hospital Reduces Medication Errors Using DMAIC and QFD
The medication error rate at Illinois' Alton Memorial Hospital was low when compared to national statistics, but the hospital knew cost savings would be significant if this statistic was lowered even further. A multidisciplinary team sought the help of...
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...
Look for Trouble
Organizational excellence depends on people, but human error remains a persistent problem. Most of what people do throughout the day follows a pattern of recognition, selection, and action, with very little conscious thought, leaving the mind free for...
Standards Outlook: Developing the Voluntary Healthcare Standard
The new Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) voluntary standard for healthcare delivery is in its second review, with an anticipated launch no later than early 2008. AIAG also is pursuing partners for the publication from the healthcare sector....
3.4 per Million: Control Charting at the 30,000-Foot-Level
In my "3.4 per Million" columns past, I first described a traditional and a 30,000-foot-level procedure for creating control charts and making process capability/performance assessments for a continuous response with multiple sampled subgroupings....
Lean Inspection Through Supplier Partnership
Incoming inspection is a nonvalue-added activity that does not improve a product, but only identifies products that do not meet standards. One way to reduce incoming inspection is to move from traditional sample inspection to a system in which the...
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...
3.4 Per Million: Deploying the 'D' in DFSS
As Six Sigma initiatives at many organizations have matured, the switch from reactive improvement - based on the DMAIC methodology - to proactive improvement - based on design for Six Sigma (DFSS) - has become pervasive....
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,...
Simple Tools for Complex Systems
Complex problems don't always require complex solutions. Pareto analysis and process mapping are examples of simple tools that can reduce the defects of a complex manufacturing process. A high-tech manufacturer of electromechanical devices put these...
A Community College's Long-Term Commitment
Committed leadership is essential to maintaining a focus on continual improvement in any organization. Dallas' Richland College proved this when, under the leadership of long-time president Steven Mittelstet, it became the first community college to...
