- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Engineering
- Environmental Manag. and Sustainability
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Innovation
- ISO 9000
- Laboratory
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Metrology
- Problem Solving
- Process Capability
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Function Deployment
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Safety
- Six Sigma
- Small Business
- Social Responsibility
- Software Quality
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Best Practices
- Total Quality Management
- TL 9000
- ISO 26000
- Certification/Registration (management system Standards)
- Risk Management
- Information Management
- Customer Experience Management
- Food Safety
- Economic Case for Quality
- err
Measure for Measure: High Risk, No Reward
The pressure to reduce calibration costs may put inspection, measurement and test equipment (IM&TE) users at odds with a company’s ISO 9001 requirements, as well as good laboratory shop practices....
Statistics Roundtable: Divide and Conquer in Reliability Analyses
All product is not created equal. Some units are more likely to fail in service than others. Thus, in reliability evaluations, you need to identify subpopulations with different failure susceptibility....
Spring Into Action
Last year, I was presented the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. It was a great honor for all of us at General Systems Co.—and for all of us in the quality profession—to be recognized for our efforts related to total quality and innovation....
Ask, and Ye Shall Receive
Journalists are experts in managing conversational flow and encouraging people to open up and provide vital information. Their techniques can serve auditors well as they navigate the frustrating quagmire of audit and assessment interviews....
Career Corner: Risks, Relationships and Rewards
Employers, employees and independent contractors alike have been affected by the turbulent economy. We see it all around us, whether at firms we own, organizations at which we work or businesses we patronize. Nonprofits are experiencing the same types...
Watershed Moment
Cargill Corn Milling North America approached its Baldrige site visit in 2008 with the same level of preparation any organization would, but with the unique perspective that comes with rebuilding your operation after surviving a natural disaster....
It Doesn't Add Up
Bewildered economists offer many theories as to what ultimately led to today’s financial woes. Analysts attempt to untangle how so many factors and variables—banks, mortgages and government oversight—contributed to the mess....
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....
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....
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....
The Right Mix
Six Sigma offers a framework for process improvement based on objective data. W. Edwards Deming once said, “In God we trust: All others bring data.” For many Six Sigma practitioners, that’s become their undying motto....
Perspectives: First, Do No Harm
Healthcare costs in the United States are increasing at staggering rates. In fact, last year’s employer health insurance premiums increased by 5%, which is two times the rate of inflation....
Career Corner: Survive and Thrive
No sector is immune. Manufacturing, IT, finance, healthcare, education, publishing and retail are being affected by conditions that range from slowdown to slow-motion collapse....
Know Thyself
There are two schools of thought when it comes to improvement: project-centric improvement and culture-centric improvement. Traditional thought says these approaches have their separate places. But PCI and CCI are inextricably linked....
Out of Sight ... Out of Mind
The purpose in sharing this story is to publicize a growing gap in quality-system coverage caused by outsourcing and to share some of the challenges of fixing it. The story is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent....
Statistics Roundtable: Predicting Success
Considering that a phase three efficacy clinical trial for a potential new product could cost nearly $100 million, spending time in simulation activities before fully committing to developing a new product has proven to be worthwhile for more companies....
Career Corner: Looking Out for No. 1
Finding work during a recession is a challenge but not an impossibility. But, whether you are unemployed and seeking work, or currently employed and seeking a better job or career path, it is your responsibility to get results....
Cause and Effect
Cause and effect tree analysis—also known as fault tree analysis—begins with a known event, referred to as the top event, and describes possible combinations of events and conditions that can lead to this event....
The Power of Balance
Many organizations face tremendous challenges in calculating trade-off relationships and the point of balance when determining their cost of quality. Experts don’t always agree, compounding the difficulty....
Expert Answers: January 2009
Indirect measures of customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction can include the number of referrals and recommendations made by customers, market share, sales, repeat sales and customer retention. Some companies can make use of customer satisfaction data p...
Calculated Decision
When suppliers create control charts and run capability analyses, they assume their data follow a normal distribution. However, the natural distribution of these quality characteristics—and hundreds more like them—is not the normal distribution....
Salary Survey 2008: Part 1, Section 12: Salary by Industry
U.S. and Canadian survey respondents are a lot alike when it comes to the industries in which they work....
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...
The Quality Professional as Organizational Gardener
Many quality professionals understand that the answers to these questions require the ability to envision their organizations as living entities, existing within their understanding of systems theory. We work with organizations and people, not on organiza...
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...
Smooth Approach
Traditional internal audits fulfill a need for companies with fresh ISO 9001 implementations. But for organizations with mature systems, an innovative approach called an appreciative internal quality audit can take them beyond compliance to excellence....
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 ...
Flip the Switch
Have you found the root cause yet? We frequently ask or hear others ask that question. Root cause analysis is a familiar subject. You might assume that quality professionals would have a clear understanding of the technique. But many don't....
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....
Bright Idea
There is an opportunity to apply statistical process control where it can have an impact on our daily lives by providing warning signs of pending outages, signal waste and process problems in the world’s largest machine: the North American power system....
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....
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....
Quality in the First Person: All Roads Lead to Quality
At 17, most high school students are trying to decide what they want to do with their lives. At graduation, I never would have thought that in 10 years I would work in quality assurance....
K'NEX Success
As a result of the recent lead scare, companies many have grown to trust—Fisher-Price, Mattel, J.C. Penney—found themselves on recall lists instead of in kids’ hands during the holidays. Some companies, however, were able to skirt the issue....
Better Safe Than Sorry
Last year’s record number of product recalls, especially recalls of children’s toys, drew worldwide attention to product safety and defective products. The recall stories topped newscasts and made headlines in newspapers coast to coast....
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...
Career Corner: Company of One
The authors offer practical tips for career and life management success. Then, I learned job success was based on project success—mastering the cost and quality sides of work. Harry Beckwith and Christine Beckwith, You, Inc.: The Art of Selling Yourself, ...
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...
Measure for Measure: Short Supply
ASQ’s Measurement Quality Division (MQD) and the National Conference of Standard Laboratories International (NCSLI) have partnered on several projects to promote and enhance the metrology field with an education and training outreach program for...
Statistics Roundtable: A Preference for Parity?
You rarely hear coaches encourage their teams to get out there and tie. So why do banks, restaurants, consumer goods companies and others try so hard to match their competition?...
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...
QMS Certification: Down With Disillusionment
Conformity assessment and international standards that cover products and quality and environmental management systems provide mechanisms to ensure the quality of goods and services, but a recent survey reveals that the various certification bodies...
Standards Outlook: Too Much Talk, Not Enough Auditing
I was attending a local community volunteers meeting when I was approached by a member. He knew I was involved in the standards community, so he told me his company just received its ISO 9001 management system certification....
Salary Survey-Regular Employee and Self-Employed Consultants Results
45 Section 6 Salary by Number of Work Hours Online Section 7 Salary by Nonexempt vs. Exempt Status Online Section 8 Salary by Number of Years of Quality Experience and Highest Level of Education Online Section 9 Salary by Number of Years in Current Posit...
Statistics Roundtable: Back to the Future
Now more than ever, we need to use the kind of critical thinking and deeper process knowledge that predates the explosion of technology and software. By identifying and applying key aspects of the data mining process and then using them in novel...
Part 1 Section 12 Salary by Industry
Transportation and aerospace products 13.7 77,999 19.1 68,500 Other products 4.2 76,782 5.9 78,104 Service sector Construction services 1.0 $ 82,756 0.9 $ 107,375 Consulting and other professional, scientific and technical services 6.4 94,405 8.0 77,166 ...
Exercise a Process Improvement Approach for Your Own Personal Wellness
The human body can be viewed as a system of processes in which the output of one process is an input to another. One quality practitioner applied the concepts of systems thinking, process thinking and process management to improve his own health,...
Eight Steps to Sustain Change
Improvement projects often focus on a problem, its measurement, analysis, and eventual solution, but fail to consider how improvements will be permanently integrated into the daily routine. Resistance is a natural response to change, but it can be...
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...
Standards Outlook: TL 9000 Measurements Handbook Release 4.0
The Quality Excellence for Suppliers of Telecommunications (QuEST) Forum is the global society dedicated to the quality of telecom products and services. The forum has developed and maintained a single common set of telecom...
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...
Statistics Roundtable: It's Not Always What You Say, But How You Say It
The Youden plot has proven extremely useful in the analysis and interpretation of data generated by interlaboratory studies. It’s always easy to understand and motivates others to take action if...
Small Business Leadership: Creating the Culture of the Firm
Every business has its own culture that starts slowly and evolves over time as the business becomes more successful and grows. For a small business, it is initially the founder who determines the culture of the firm and the way employees work and...
Nanotechnology: A Big Little Frontier for Quality
Nanotechnology is a field of applied science that deals with arranging particles...
Six Sigma, Value and Competitive Strategy
Aligning Six Sigma deployment with an organization’s strategy is complicated by the fact that most organizations have three levels of strategy – corporate, strategic business unit (SBU), and competitive. The tools of Six Sigma are most effectively...
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...
Statistics Roundtable: Reliability Assessment by Use-Rate Acceleration
Statistical evidence is often needed to show that a proposed product meets or exceeds its reliability goals. Many times, such evidence must be obtained in a compressed time period....
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...
Statistics Roundtable: Turning Shewhart?s Challenge Into Opportunity
Statisticians must step forward and lead management to become more statistically minded.
Nearly 70 years ago, quality pioneer Walter Shewhart threw down the gauntlet: "The long-range contribution of statistics depends not so much on getting a lot of highly trained statisticians into industry as it does...
Building a Better Fantasy Baseball Team
Fantasy baseball is a popular game giving sports fans the opportunity to display their baseball expertise in competition with other fans. The game fosters careful planning and research in hopes of outsmarting the rival team. By looking at fantasy...
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...
It's in the Genes at Cummins
When asked why diesel maker Cummins used Six Sigma to explain new health insurance benefits to its employees, the response was that Six Sigma is part of Cummins' DNA. Six Sigma methods helped ensure a smooth enrollment process, particularly for union...
3.4 per Million: Assessing the Effectiveness of Controls Under Uncertainty
Sequential sampling and logistic regression techniques offer useful strategies....
The International Growth of Quality
Human, economic, and technological changes in the international arena require that businesses deliver high quality value to customers. Fundamental to any business's competitive strength is its ability to understand and implement the language of quality....
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....
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...
The Power of Process Orientation
Hidden barriers to the success of continuous improvement programs exist in most companies and often transcend tactics applied to produce cultural change. These cultural conditions are not always obvious, but their symptoms include organizational silos...
Salary Survey – 2006
Regular Employee - Section 12. Salary by Industry
Transportation and aerospace products 14.6 73,759 20.6 68,287 Other products 4.0 74,926 5.2 65,466 Service sector Construction services 0.8% $ 84,698 0.7% $ 93,375 Consulting and other professional, scientific and technical services 6.7 86,784 7.5 85,001...
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...
One Good Idea: Bringing the Fishbone Diagram Into the Computer Age
The cause and effect, or fishbone, diagram is an established problem solving tool. It is particularly suitable for use by cross functional teams, helping a group organize a problem's potential root causes in an easily understandable visual format....
Challenges in RFID Enabled Supply Chain Management
Supply chain management is the fastest growing application of radio frequency identification devices (RFID), but few organizations are equipped to deal with the accompanying flood of information. Most definitions of RFID emphasize the technological...
Linking the Supply Chain to TQM
In today's environment of global outsourcing, supplier quality management must transform itself from simply measuring supplier compliance to gathering knowledge, managing risk, and executing project management. Total quality management (TQM) ensures...
A Second Look at 5S
While Six Sigma has largely replaced 5S (lean), that doesn't mean that 5S doesn't have the potential to deliver benefits beyond cleaning up the shop floor. 5S is an idea that can change the perception of the workplace and provide a foundation for all...
Statistics Roundtable: Different Roads to Take for Data Analysis
For most of us with some formal training in statistical methods - from a single course to an advanced degree - the starting point of this part of our education typically began with classical or frequentist methods for analyzing data....
Empowering Employees to Pull the Quality Trigger
The successful implementation of a quality management system calls for a shift in decision making from quality managers to shop floor operators empowered to initiate a corrective action in the event of a quality event. While the widespread use of data...
Statistics Roundtable: A Way to Generate Control
A regression model can be a useful tool for monitoring a process. In an earlier article, we suggested using a regression model to study the linear relationship among the variables of a multivariate process....
Documenting a Process - With a Side of Cole Slaw
Barbecue is an art, but it is also a process that can be documented and perhaps even reproduced. A dedicated group of friends conducted a controlled barbecue experiment in an effort to document the cooking method that has guided their efforts over the...
Beyond PDCA - A New Process Management
The ISO 9001 quality management standard calls for the use of the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) model for managing processes. The author questions why check is included in the cycle when the goal is to reduce the need for verification activities. Current...
Career Corner: Three R's for Quality Professionals
While talking with the president of a growing service company, I learned he had some painful connections to the concept of quality professionalism. The words he associated with those who had "quality" in their job titles were overwhelmingly negative....
Statistics Roundtable: Different, Equivalent or Both?
In conventional tests of statistical significance, the investigator tries to reject the null hypothesis of no difference between two groups. If the investigator fails, then the hypothesis groups cannot be rejected....
Statistics Roundtable: How to Analyze Reliability Data for Repairable Products
Leveraging powerful - yet simple - methods for reliability data analysis of repairable products or systems can help you stay on the right track....
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,...
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...
Measure for Measure: Appraiser Variation in Gage R&R Measurement
In part one of this column, I said if our data analysis is inaccurate, it does not represent the true quality characteristics of the part or product being measured, even if we're using quality improvement tools correctly....
Statistics Roundtable: Monitor Your Industrial Processes.
Models are often developed in industry to characterize and explain a process because they can show how process variables are interconnected and interrelated. Historically, two particular methods have been used to construct models to...
Making Social Responsibility the Standard
In 2003 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) responded to pressure from large multinational enterprises by forming an advisory group to consider the need for a corporate social responsibility (CSR) standard. The result is ISO 26000:...
Measure for Measure: Improved Gage R&R Measurement Studies
Many manufacturers are using tools like statistical process control (SPC) and design of experiments (DoE) to monitor and improve product quality and process productivity. However, if the data collected are not accurate and precise, they do not...
Statistics Roundtable: What and When To Randomize
One of the most highly stressed principles of statistical design of experiments is the need for proper randomization. Unfortunately, it is sometimes misunderstood and misapplied....
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...
Lean Lessons: All About Lean
Lately, lean has been receiving a lot of attention from quality professionals, management and the media. After getting its start in manufacturing, it has now migrated to nonshop floor activities in sales, customer service, accounting, HR......
TRIZ: A Creative Breeze for Quality Professionals
TRIZ, a systematic approach to creative thinking originating in Russia, can help quality professionals develop new approaches and solutions to quality problems. Its creator, Genrich Altshuller, wanted a systematic approach based on the rules of...
