- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Design of Experiments
- Environmental Manag. and Sustainability
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Innovation
- Inspection
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Metrology
- Problem Solving
- Process Management
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Function Deployment
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Six Sigma
- Social Responsibility
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Theory of Constraints
- TL 9000
- Risk Management
- Customer Experience Management
- Customer Requirements
- Economic Case for Quality
- err
- Continuous Improvement
Attitude Shift
In a used-car dealership group based in Richmond, VA, a lean culture change took place that started with a redesign of its process for reconditioning used cars and ended with numerous benefits, some of which it didn't expect....
Expert Answers: November 2009
The TOPS way of getting to the root cause ... Repair vs. rework...
Volviendo a los Fundamentos: Probando, Probando, 1, 2, 3
Así como es importante que un producto funcione correctamente, el manual del producto también debe funcionar. Propietarios o usuarios de productos deben ser capaces de encontrar fácilmente la información que necesitan para utilizar...
Back to Basics: Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3
Just as it is important that a product function properly, the product manual must also work. Owners or product users must be able to easily find the information they need to use an item effectively. To achieve this objective, the content and organization...
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...
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....
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....
Practice What You Teach
Many education institutions do not have a foundation conducive to sustainability efforts. For many, change will be cumbersome. Opportunities exist, however, and persistence will be an ally....
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....
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....
Building From the Basics
Quality control is about models, methods, measuring and managing. It’s about uncovering a problem and finding the solution. It’s about using the right techniques at the right time to make things better....
Back to Basics: Improve a Nonconforming System
When we think of nonconforming material, we think about scrapped and reworked material or products that directly cut into a company’s bottom line. But a closer look shows that a nonconforming material system can provide a wealth of information....
Salary Survey 2008: Part 1, Section 5: Salary by Six Sigma Training
Putting down that you completed Six Sigma training looks good on a résumé, but does it result in higher pay? There’s a good chance it will....
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...
Online Sidebars Sanders
Increasing movement from quality of product to quality of management and the organization. The systems approaches the quality profession has evolved through ISO 9000 and other management system standards will be valued by organizations looking to bring qu...
What's Up?
Study participants outlined the forces, four scenarios in which they might play out, and the implications to quality, organizations and the profession. Study participants were asked to envision the implications of the key forces and scenarios for quality ...
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...
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....
Expert Answers: September 2008
Information management systems ... The benefits of binomial probability plotting....
Online Radziwill
The QMS has four components, starting with an organizational assessment to the QMS framework, and covering methodologies and tools that can be applied to problem solving for specific processes. This chart outlines five steps that can be taken to logically...
Starting From Scratch
Graduate students studying quality developed the Quality Systems Development Roadmap to help organizations do this, using application templates from the Lean Six Sigma Quality Transformation Toolkit. However, new companies, organizations without an enterp...
A Dose of DMAIC
Ruby hospital, a multispecialty for-profit facility in Calcutta, India, was the first in Eastern India to embrace ISO 9001 and is the only one in the country to have successfully deployed a Six Sigma improvement program....
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....
Online Coral Springs
The City.s Performance Improvement System / ONLINE FIgurE 1 Strategic level Strategic planning process Environmental scan ( including customer requirements analysis and operational results) Business plan, key intended outcomes, business plan initiatives,...
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....
Standards Outlook: ISO 9001 and Advantage in the Marketplace
You have completed the ISO 9001 certification audit process and received an accredited certificate of registration from the registrar. Your organization has joined the nearly one million others around the world to achieve this distinction....
Opportunities List
Some, perhaps even most, valid audit findings can be resolved by simple system changes that can be implemented quickly with little study. On the other hand, there are sometimes findings that require a good deal of study and long-term thinking. Difficult a...
Statistics Roundtable: More is Better
Central to the core goals of Six Sigma and other quality improvement initiatives is the idea that reducing variation in processes is a vital part of successfully enhancing customer satisfaction and bottom-line results....
Quality in the First Person: Value of Certification
In 1986, I began my career as an engineer in the research and development function of a large global chemical company. Eight years later, my family relocated, and I took a job with a plastic products company as a senior process development engineer....
Quality in the First Person: Lucky Break
When I was in college, attending classes day after day, I knew exactly where I wanted to be when I graduated: working in a lab somewhere doing groundbreaking research....
Conflict and Complexity
Fourteen years before the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after launch in 1986, NASA unknowingly set in motion a series of events that culminated in the tragic disaster that stunned the proud space agency and rocked a nation....
Lean Six Sigma's Evolution
When Motorola rolled out its initial Six Sigma system in 1987, there were no Green Belts, Black Belts, Master Black Belts, Champions or any of the infrastructure or focused training we have come to associate with modern practices in Six Sigma....
Quality in the First Person: Quality Principles and Alzheimer's
The author, a volunteer advocate with the Alzheimer's Association, shares how quality tools, such as failure mode effects analysis, can be used when caring for someone suffering from Alzheimer's disease....
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...
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...
3.4 per Million: Use DMAIC to Make Improvement Part of the Way We Work
Faster, better, cheaper. That’s what organizations across almost all major industries must now do to remain competitive....
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...
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...
Back to Basics: Have You Adequately Defined Your Situation?
The is/is not matrix is a simple yet powerful tool that enables a planner or investigator to more clearly define the problem, decision or situation being addressed. The matrix can be extremely useful in problem definition and root cause analysis, but...
Volviendo a los Fundamentos: ¿Has definido adecuadamente tu situación?
Uno de los criterios más importantes en la toma de decisiones o en la resolución de un problema es la necesidad de definir claramente la situación....
Career Corner: Full-Time Quality Manager or Part-Time Quality Consultant?
As companies become leaner and the workforce becomes older, it seems the use of highly qualified quality assurance consultants would be an attractive alternative to hiring full-time regular quality managers....
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...
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...
Career Corner: Behavioral Interviewing--Find Your Star
One of the newer trends in interviewing job candidates is to use behavioral interviewing techniques. When I was first exposed to behavioral interviewing, I was unsure and skeptical....
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...
Career Corner: Get Around the Box
Thinking outside the box can be crucial to business success. But career success sometimes depends on getting around the box - and here I'm referring to the boxes on the organization chart....
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...
Completed Staff Work Revisited
The principle of completed staff work gives your bosses what they need to do their jobs....
Building Task Cohesion to Bring Teams Together
Traditional, homogeneous teams made up of members of the same gender, race, and age tend to be more cohesive and more successful and effective in problem solving, but such sameness can produce bland and predictable solutions. On the other hand, a team...
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....
One Good Idea: 60 Minutes To A Solution
We’ve all been in those meetings. You know the type: Everyone knows what the problem is. Lots of ideas are chewed on and spit out. The group shares anecdotal experiences about the problem, but nobody records anything....
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...
3.4 per Million: Six Sigma in Everything We Do?
I was lucky to work for Motorola in the 1980s and early 1990s - right in the middle of the company's transformation. Motorola was at risk as were many U.S. businesses....
The Science in Six Sigma
The structure Six Sigma provides for managing an organization's improvement initiatives is more important than its conformance quality target. It also guides project leaders and offers an array of analysis tools. In addition to Six Sigma's DMAIC...
Statistics Roundtable: Process Variation: Enemy and Opportunity
As the giants of scientific management and the quality movement long ago pointed out, work takes place in a series of interconnected processes....
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....
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....
Back to Basics: A Fish(bone) Tale
You have been asked to perform a root cause analysis to determine where a process is breaking down. Not sure where to begin? Use a fishbone diagram to help you and your team identify and discuss all potential causes of an effect....
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...
Lean Lessons: Keeping Lean Alive
We know we cannot stand still in the face of global competition. Our rivals are not standing pat--they are improving their processes and systems to catch up or overtake us. If we do not improve, sooner or later our customers will prefer our rivals....
Climbing the Career Ladder: It's Up to You
With as much information on the subject of career development as there is available today, the real challenge is recognizing that you, not your employer, are responsible for your own career development, and then finding a structure to guide your plans....
Building Quality at Veridian Homes
Veridian Homes in Madison, Wisconsin uses several quality methods to improve productivity while reducing impact on the environment. To achieve its goal of promoting and coordinating quality throughout the company, the company employed the National...
3.4 Per Million: The Hard Part: Holding Improvement Gains
You've overcome the obstacles to launch your latest improvement initiative: scarce resources, time pressure, unforeseen glitches at every turn. Now comes the hard part--sustaining the gains....
Measuring the Cost of Quality for Management
Over the years, few organizations have adopted a reliable method for measuring and reporting cost of quality (COQ) and used it to improve operations. Since the avoidance of reduced profits from quality initiatives is seldom measured or reported by...
Emotional Intelligence and Six Sigma
Emotional intelligence (EI), the ability to perceive, assess, and manage one's own emotions and the emotions of others, is vital to a project team environment and fits well with Six Sigma methodology. When time is limited, Six Sigma Black Belts must...
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...
Standards Outlook: Supply Chain Management Remains Aerospace Challenge
The aerospace industry is in the process of shedding new light on the customer-supplier relationship, especially in the never ending quest to deliver defect free, safe and reliable product....
The Histogram for Complex Parts
In the aerospace industry, production and procurement usually consists of infrequent lots of complex parts with relatively small lot sizes. Data are often insufficient to implement standard process assessment techniques. In these situations, a percent...
Statistical Engineering: A Case Study
The statistical engineering algorithm can be used to reduce variation in manufacturing and assembly processes, and is particularly useful in improvement systems such as Six Sigma. A case study illustrates how a team used the SE algorithm to reduce...
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...
Lean Lessons: Building Blocks
Is your organization wasting its valuable resources? Waste can directly impact your organization’s costs, quality and delivery, and may lead to excess inventory, unnecessary movement, unintentional waiting time, untapped......
Faster Turnaround Time
In 2004, North Shore University Hospital (NSUH) used Six Sigma to reduce bed assignment delay turnaround time that made it difficult to balance capacity needs. A capstone project revealed incorrect use of the hospital's bed tracking system. The goal was...
A Quest For Quality
Hamilton Health Services, a Canadian healthcare organization with a multi-site emergency room program, used quality facilitators in six continuous quality improvement projects over a period of one year. Quality facilitators provide resources needed to...
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......
Project Teams: How Good Are They?
Project teams have become the basic work units for most enterprises, but there are tough challenges, as illustrated by notable project failures featured in the media in recent years. A recent Quality Progress survey revealed a conflicting picture of...
After Six Sigma - What's Next?
A systematic scientific approach is fundamental to dealing with problems of variability that cause costly defects and quality problems. This idea has remained the foundation of numerous incarnations of quality management and is the basis of the current...
Reflections on the Future of Quality
Over the years, the intent of quality systems has evolved from enhancing customer satisfaction by meeting their needs to improving overall organizational performance and capabilities. But quality management systems have always lagged behind evolving...
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...
Let's Accentuate the Positive
As a quality practitioner, I have learned problem based management is pretty much the standard. So when I was introduced to a positive approach known as appreciative inquiry (AI), I was initially intrigued by it and eventually embraced 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....
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...
A Quality Library for a Desert Island
A key skill for any quality professional is knowing where to find the answers to questions. After more than 20 years in the quality business, I find my workday is a healthy mixture of old and new questions....
Prepare Students For Technical Careers
In a global comparison, U.S. high school students are not competitive in mathematics, and relatively few pursue engineering or other technical disciplines when they enter college. A survey conducted by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers showed gaps...
When Worlds Collide: Lean and Six Sigma
Facing unprecedented pressure to improve performance across the board, organizations cannot afford to forego the benefits of either Six Sigma or lean....
Curse of the Super-fish-al
Root cause analysis teaches us to ask, "Why?" five times, and from this I developed these five ways not to use a fishbone....
A Recipe For Excellence
The roots of the Bama Companies' 2004 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award go back to a Texas kitchen in 1927. Today the third-generation family owned business makes frozen baked goods for fast food and casual dining restaurants using the same...
Lean Thinking for Knowledge Work
Productivity in the service sector trails manufacturing by a wide margin. Since the early 1990s, the Toyota Production System (TPS) has been heralded as the standard for manufacturing environments, but early attempts to apply it to nonproduction work...
Timeless Wisdom From Crosby
Philip Crosby's book, Quality Is Free, changed the way managers looked at the cost of poor quality. Written 25 years ago, Crosby's management principles are as valid today as ever. Thirteen quotations from the book illustrate Crosby's deep insight into...
Ghosts in Your Process? Who Ya Gonna Call?
Even when using the DMAIC process, root causes of poorly performing processes can be extremely difficult to find and eliminate. In his book Manufacturing Solutions for Consistent Quality and Reliability, Robert Traver proposes a nine-step process for...
Quality Management's Role in Global Sourcing
Globalization and the evolution of quality management systems from a focus on controlling product conformity to a much broader focus on overall enterprise capability have resulted in the need to redefine the role of quality management in dealing with...
Volunteer Trains Black Belts in Romania
A retired quality management consultant relates his experiences as a volunteer trainer of Black Belts in Romania, Europe's poorest country. Under the sponsorship of NCH Advisors, a management company that administers investments made in Romania by...
Back to the Future at Ford
The U.S. automotive industry, and U.S. industry in general, have seen significant change over the past thirty years, and the results haven’t always been positive. While specific details differ, Ford Motor Company's experience with the major system...
Quality Attitudes Start in Childhood
My beliefs and behavior have had four major influences: my parents' teachings, stringent requirements during elementary and middle school years, the basic principles of my religion and IBM's corporate culture....
The Importance of Building Social Capital
Maintaining the integrity of the supply chain is critical in times of economic instability. An investment in social capital among organizations within the supply chain is mutually beneficial. The affinity group provides a strategy for developing...
