- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Design of Experiments
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- ISO 9000
- Laboratory
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Metrology
- Process Capability
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Function Deployment
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Sampling
- Six Sigma
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Total Quality Management
- Career Development
- Information Management
- Economic Case for Quality
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....
Statistics Roundtable: Interval Training
Choosing the right type of interval provides a means of supplementing an estimated quantity with an appropriate calibration of the uncertainty associated with that value....
Statistics Roundtable: A Remedy Using Residuals
It is common in industrial processes for input variables to be closely associated with output variables. You may frequently encounter two process variables tied together. For example, consider temperature and pressure....
Expert Answers: September 2009
Accountability ... defining cost reduction ... honing in on confidence intervals....
Statistics Roundtable: A Correlation Encounter
In a recent visit to the control room for a processing unit, a new process engineer asks the question: “Why doesn’t the correlation between the two process variables, x1 and x2, match the correlation as suggested by the theory?”...
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....
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....
Salary Survey 2008: Looking at the Numbers
Mean salary: The mean salary is the average salary for that particular group. Manager: Ensures the administration of the company’s quality, process and business improvement efforts within a defined segment of the organization. Quality engineer: Designs, i...
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...
Statistics Roundtable: More is Not Always Better
All other things being equal, if offered a choice between small or large sample sizes, the larger sample size is preferred. Or is it?...
Example Calculations Part I
Simple linear regression equation is of the form Y = mX + b....
Example Calculations Part II
A 95% confidence interval does not mean there is a 95% chance the particular interval you calculate captures the true value....
3.4 per Million: Test Drives and Data Splits
Prediction models are one of a Six Sigma practitioner’s best friends for improving processes. The more complicated and persistent the quality problem, the more useful prediction models can be....
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...
Part I Section 1 Salary by Job Title (Regular Employees)
Standard Minimum Maximum deviation Count Mean Median Full- time employees Analyst $ 30,000 $ 145,000 $ 19,951 206 $ 63,694 $ 60,000 Associate 21,000 200,000 26,118 96 61,756 56,500 Auditor 18,000 170,000 22,697 258 66,392 65,000 Black Belt 34,000 149,845...
DFX and DFSS: How QFD Integrates Them
The differences in concept and application between design for excellence (DFX) and design for Six Sigma (DFSS) are discussed, and it is shown how they can be effectively integrated by using quality function deployment. Quality must be built into a...
Standards Outlook: Output Really Does Matter
Auditing is a key component of systems that provide confidence in organizations’ competence, ability and honesty in meeting requirements. For decades we have been using audits for this purpose...
Statistics Roundtable: When Should You Consider a Split-Plot Design?
Split-plot designs are an important, practical class of designs. When strategically chosen, split-plot designs can boost the amount of information a practitioner can extract from a designed experiment....
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...
QFD's Evolution in Japan and the West
Although the theory of quality originated in the United States, early industrial applications predominantly took place in Japan. Yoji Akao conceived quality function deployment (QFD), a concept that is a vital management tool for new product...
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...
3.4 per Million: Assessing the Effectiveness of Controls Under Uncertainty
Sequential sampling and logistic regression techniques offer useful strategies....
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 1. Salary by Job Title
Standard deviation: Standard deviation is a FIGURE A PART 1. REGULAR EMPLOYEE RESULTS Section 1 Salary by Job Title Comparison of Salaries of Full- Time And Part- Time Employees 4,731 ( difference) 77,049 ( 2006) 72,318 ( 2005) 4,777 ( difference) 71,584...
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....
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....
Career Corner: Making Performance Reviews Work for You
With rare exception in the course of my work life, I have been fortunate to have reasonable and fair supervisors. One thing they tended to agree on was that performance reviews should be a two-way communication process....
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...
Detect Financial Problems With Six Sigma
An organization's financial decline is often impossible to detect from the few financial measures investors or creditors typically examine. While the Sarbanes-Oxley Act should help improve the quality of data available to the public, it has drawbacks...
What Are Quality Reputations Worth?
The practical successes of Six Sigma have shown that quality initiatives have a substantial effect on an organization's bottom line. Yet quality professionals may experience difficulty convincing managers to keep up the efforts once a quality objective...
3.4 per Million: Put the Pieces Together
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This isn't a particularly new idea; it has been around for years. We even have an entire profession built around it....
Are You Making Decisions in a Fog?
Just as water makes up two thirds of the world's surface, measurement constitutes an enormous part of the scientific method and scientific problem solving....
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 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...
Big Improvements for Small Parts
National Semiconductor Corporation is a process-driven manufacturer looking for additional ways to cut costs. Having experienced dissatisfaction with an earlier continuous improvement program, it became clear that reducing costs while maintaining...
Control Charting at the 30,000-Foot-Level, Part 3
In my November 2003 "3.4 per Million" column (p. 67), I described a traditional and a 30,000-foot-level procedure for creating control charts and making process capability/performance metric assessments for a continuous response....
Metrology: We Use It Every Day
I am often asked by friends and family what I do for a living, and when I respond that I consult and train on metrology issues, the familiar response is: “Oh, you do weather predictions!”...
How to Choose the Appropriate Design
When planning an experiment, you can consider many possible sets of observations. Choosing the combinations of factors at which to collect data to make up the best design involves balancing multiple goals and objectives....
Our Place-Kicker Is Out of Control
In most business, reducing variation is essential. The same is true for football and other sports. In a parable about place kicking, the author explains how statistical process control and basic quality improvement tools can be used to better understand...
When Your Process Has Runs, Trends and Cycles
As a Six Sigma practitioner, you sometimes work with processes that have memory, in which the value observed at some earlier time partly influences or determines the current value....
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...
Beyond Sample Size
As a statistical consultant who works with scientists and researchers in a number of areas, the question I have answered most frequently is, “How big a sample do I need?”...
Salary Survey – 2004
Regular Employee - Section 1. Salary by Job Title
117,976 104,410 90,930 88,858 83,853 81,216 76,438 75,270 71,043 68,352 66,126 62,885 62,195 61,719 58,945 57,870 55,421 50,422 50,018 43,845 41,571 Job title ( percentage of respondents) Vice president/ executive ( 3.0%) Master Black Belt ( 1.3%) Direct...
Salary Survey – 2004
Full Survey
( For industrial classifications and all tables related QUALITY PROGRESS I DECEMBER 2004 I 25 $ $$$$ $$$$ $$ $$$ $$$ U. S. Salary Changes by Industry 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Average Average Average Average Average Average salary Difference* salary ...
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,...
Salary Survey – 2003
Full Survey
6. QUALITY PROGRESS I DECEMBER 2003 I 31 Average salary 1999 Average salary 2000 Average salary 2001 Average salary 2002 Average salary 2003 Average salary Change from previous year Change from previous year Change from previous year Change from previous...
Salary Survey – 2003
Regular Employee - Section 1. Salary by Job Title
36- 37. As Table A shows, only 9% of U. S. respondents and 6.6% of Canadian PART 1. REGULAR EMPLOYEE RESULTS Section 1 Salary by Job Title United States Canada Count Percentage Count Percentage Analyst 238 2.4% 12 1.8% Associate 113 1.0 6 1.0 Auditor 321...
Control Charting at the 30,000-Foot-Level
For a given process, do you think everyone would create a similar looking control chart and make a similar statement relative to process control and predictability? This type of data traditionally leads to an and R control chart, as shown in Figure 1 (p. ...
One way to moderate ceiling effects.
2. Since the predictor and response have the same upper and lower limits, and the extreme values on response and predictor variables most influence a regression fit, you could expect a regression fit to be forced to have a slope of 1. This means the esti...
Column: Statistics Roundtable: One Way To Moderate Ceiling Effects
Multiple linear regression models are ordinarily defined with a continuous (usually normally distributed) response variable. In many applications of regression modeling, however, the response variable is constrained by fixed, achievable lower and upper...
Column: Career Corner: Lessons From Prairie Dogs
Like prairie dogs, some organizations are excellent at identifying and responding defensively to external threats. However, a response that works in the animal kingdom can be counterproductive in...
SPC: From Chaos to Wiping the Floor
Physicist Walter Shewhart, in tackling the problem of process control, began with the definition of control and went on to distinguish chance causes from assignable causes of variation. He believed that assignable causes could be found and eliminated....
Improve Molded Part Quality
The injection molding process, while simple in concept, is complex in execution. Typical injection molding machines have many adjustable parameters that affect the quality of finished plastic parts....
How to Set Up a Predictive Maintenance Program
The application of advanced technology through predictive maintenance programs (PMPs) has a major impact on product quality, customer satisfaction, and machine safety. While the proposed European Standard of Documentation on Maintenance will increase...
Salary Survey – 2002
Section
Consultant: Provides advice, facilitation and training on the development, administration and technical aspects of a company's quality assurance (QA) or quality control (QC) program at any or all levels in the organization. Specialist: As the primary assi...
Column: Statistics Roundtable: Process modeling: find the critical few
Finding the critical few X's allows you to better control and optimize a process
With the widespread use of Six Sigma has come a renewed interest in developing statistical models and using regression analysis. Now is a good time to rethink your strategies for developing models. In particular, I believe it is...
2002 Annual Salary Survey
The American Society for Quality 2002 Annual Salary Survey is presented in two parts. Part one reports salaries of regular employees by job title; by number of years experience in the quality field; by division size, organization size, and location of...
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....
Column: Frontiers of Quality: Design for Six Sigma
You need more than standard Six Sigma approaches to optimize your product or service development
Many organizations believe design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is a design process when really it is not. DFSS is an enhancement to an existing new product development (NPD) process that provides more...
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...
Column: World View: Samsung Uses Quality To Grow
Korean giant draws on just about everything in the toolbox to reach its goals
The Samsung Quality Award was established in 1993 to recognize business divisions by using criteria developed from the Baldrige Award, ISO 9000 quality management standards and the company's own business operation standards. Nearly 70% of Samsung's qualit...
A User Friendly Financial Reporting System
In the late 1980s Master Industries, Inc. began implementing W. Edwards Deming's 14 points and management philosophy to create a customer focused and employee oriented culture committed to continuous improvement. More recently, the company integrated...
Salary Survey – 2001
Regular Employee - Section 1. Salary by Job Title
This year, the salary survey included a new job title: associate. Consultants, directors, managers, reliability engineers, software quality engineers and vice presidents have a higher average salary than the national average salary. Analysts, associates, ...
2001 Quality Progress Salary Survey
KAREN BEMOWSKI, formerly an associate editor of Quality Progress, is a senior editor of Windows 2000 Magazine in Loveland, CO. Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 1 I 21 Contents PART 1. Regular Employee Results page Section 1. Salary b...
Column: Frontiers of Quality: Statistical Tools for Six Sigma
What to emphasize and de-emphasize in training
These tools and closely related concepts, such as the design of experiments, are key elements of Six Sigma training and comprise up to half of the standard curriculum. The goal of standard Six Sigma statistical training is to give Green Belts and Black Be...
Teaching the Role of SPC in Industrial Statistics
Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I J U L Y 2 0 0 1 I 89 Teaching the Role of SPC In Industrial Statistics Base the future of a process on statistical investigations of the past by Ralph L. Liberatore S T A T I S T I C S ISCUSSIONS CONCERNING STATIStical pro...
Column: Statistics Roundtable: Using degradation data for product liability analysis.
A case study shows how this type of data can provide more precise results in assessing reliability
High reliability systems require individual components to have extremely high reliability for a long time. Often, the time for product development is short, imposing severe constraints on reliability testing. Traditionally, methods for the analysis of...
Gravity of the situation.
Understanding, finding and correcting an essential value
A standard value of gravity has been set at 980.665 gals, and many times you will find instruments calibrated with a correction to this standard value. After determining each measurement value, multiply it by this correction constant to get a value approp...
10 Requirements for Effective Process Control: A Case Study
To see the variation pattern more clearly, she conducted a blanket study of 10 wafers Performance summary Performance summary units Target 30.00 um USL 37.00 um LSL 23.00 um Tolerance 14.00 um Process . 3.2 um Process gage capability: s2 gage error/ s2pr...
Salary Survey – 2000
Definitions of Job Titles
Quality engineer: Designs, installs and evaluates quality assurance/quality control process sampling systems, procedures, and statistical techniques; designs or specifies inspection and testing mechanisms and equipment; analyzes production and service lim...
Using Corrective Action to Make Matters Worse (By Not Considering Variation)
One of the most important elements of a quality assurance program is the corrective action process. The success of the corrective action process depends on the commitment of management, but even in organizations where management is totally committed,...
Interpretive features of a T2 chart in multivariate SPC.
The ball is rolling down the hill and gains momentum as it moves
84 I Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I A P R I L 2 0 0 0 Interpretive Features of a T2 Chart In Multivariate SPC The ball is rolling down the hill and gains momentum as it moves by Robert L. Mason and John C. Young Statistics Roundtable Typical T2 Chart of...
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...
Reliability Improvement Issues and Tools
Weibull distributions can also represent products with either a decreasing hazard rate ( less than 1) or increasing hazard rate ( greater than 1). When equals 1 the Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I M A Y 1 9 9 9 I 135 Selling Reliability to Upper Manageme...
Digital Hammers and Electronic Nails - Tools of the Next Generation
In the knowledge age, quality professionals and their organizations must welcome the change that is driven by technological innovations. Successful organizations in this era will be customer focused, process controlled, quality engineered, results...
Communities as Systems
Community improvement requires systems thinking. W. Edwards Deming urged leaders of Japan and the former Soviet Union to think of their countries as systems. Americans also should think of their communities as systems. For example, a systemic...
The New Pragmatism: Going Beyond Shewhart and Deming
The pragmatism of Walter A. Shewhart and W. Edwards Deming is contrasted with that of Richard Rorty. Shewhart and Deming were influenced by the work of C. I. Lewis, who based his conceptual pragmatism on ideas of Charles S. Peirce, William James, and...
The Deming View of a Business
Management's commitment to employees and their focus on customers are keys to the organizational change that improves business systems. These concepts pervade the views of W. Edwards Deming, as expressed in his system of profound knowledge and his 14...
Can U.S. Schools Be Managed for Improvement?
Systems thinking and the principles of quality management can improve education. "System" can be operationally defined so that it applies to public schools. The public school system must become stable enough to bring its processes into control while...
A Darwinian Future Is Looming ...
As quality becomes everyone's responsibility, the quality profession must evolve. Its transformation has been driven by technology; by new markets, products, and services; and by competitiveness. To survive in the Darwinian future, the fittest...
Not the Best Years of Their Lives
The quality profession in the 1940s is revisited through the memories of people like Henry J. Becker, Edward P. Coleman, P. B. Proctor, Richard T. Trelfa, and Ralph Wareham. The fiftieth anniversary of the 1946 founding of the American Society for...
Don't Throw Scientific Management Out with the Bathwater
The history of Taylorism is intertwined with the development of total quality management (TQM). Frederick W. Taylor's scientific management sought to reduce waste and increase productivity in the early 1900s. His seminal work was translated into...
Renewing American Civilization, Pillar Five: Quality as Defined by Deming
Empowerment is a key to societal quality. W. Edwards Deming has encouraged this by codifying the decency, hard work, integrity, and sincerity found in America. Other communicators who have increased the awareness of quality include Philip B. Crosby,...
The Legacy of W. Edwards Deming
W. Edwards Deming's contributions have had an impact on both Japan and the United States. His legacy in Japan was the application of statistical methods to quality control. In 1950, the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers, the editorial staff...
Column: Statistics Corner: The Use and Abuse of Cpk, Parts 1-4
Part 1: Quality Progress, Vol. 22, No. 1, JANUARY 1989, pp. 72-73 Part 2: Quality Progress, Vol. 22, No. 3, MARCH 1989, pp. 108-109 Part 3: Quality Progress, Vol. 22, No. 5, MAY 1989, pp. 79-80 Part 4: Quality Progress, Vol. 22, No. 7, JULY 1989, pp....
