- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Engineering
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Inspection
- ISO 14000
- ISO 9000
- Laboratory
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Metrology
- Problem Solving
- Process Capability
- Process Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Function Deployment
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Sampling
- Six Sigma
- Software Quality
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Total Quality Management
- ISO/TS 16949
- ISO 22000
- ISO 26000
- Risk Management
- Software and Technology (for statistics, measurement, analysis)
- Information Management
- Customer Experience Management
- Customer Requirements
- Food Safety
- Economic Case for Quality
- err
- Continuous Improvement
Aerial Coverage
To harmonize requirements across the supply chain for the management of the Department of Defense aviation CSIs, a standards publication group has reconciled final industry comments and is preparing to publish a new aviation, space and defense standard....
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....
Career Corner: Out of Quality, Out of Business
Being lean used to be associated with poverty and starvation. Today, being lean refers to profitability and fitness, especially in business. Cutting corporate fat, or non-essentials, has become as important for organizational health as slimming down is...
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)....
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?...
Don't Just Talk the Talk
Many companies and organizations talk big about knowing the best way other businesses and groups can work to drive continuous and process improvement. Often, these businesses don’t take their own advice. Once in a while, however, a group comes along...
Expert Answers: May 2009
Design deviation ... Choosing your chart ... Studying sigma shift...
Back to Basics: Sample Wise
Selecting the correct sample size is often the most difficult aspect of any project. Rules of thumb are important because they promote discussion that facilitates the selection of a more optimum sample size....
Take a Bite Out of Inefficiency
Providing consistent and effective service or product requires a consistent and effective framework for implementing, maintaining and improving tactical and strategic operations. Dentistry is no different....
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....
Online Figures Jing
QP 2 Pure bonding / online Figure 5 Part one Part one Part two Part two Left distance Right distance Step one Step two Heat DMAIC Mind- set / online Figure 4 30- 50 10- 15 4- 8 KPIVs 8- 10 KPIVs Critical KPIVs 3- 6 Key leverage KPIVs Inputs variables Mea...
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?”...
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....
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....
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....
Quality in the First Person: From Class to Career
“Stauffer, on Monday morning, you will either be in that total quality leadership (TQL) class, or in front of the captain, explaining why you were not there!” With these words, my division officer inadvertently put my life on a different course....
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....
Salary Survey 2008: Part 1, Section 4: Salary by ASQ and RABQSA International Certification
When it comes to ASQ certification, one is good, but more is better....
Salary Survey 2008: Part 2, Section 22: Base Earnings by Consulting Experience and RABQSA International Certification
Section 8 in the regular employee results reveals that the number of years spent in a position has little impact on regular employees’ salaries. What about self-employed consultants?...
Salary Survey 2008: Part 1, Section 11: Salary by Division Size, Organization Size and Location of Headquarters
Most often, the survey respondents work for small divisions in small organizations with headquarters in North America....
Salary Survey 2008: Part 1, Section 18: Salary by RABQSA International Certification
As Section 4 in the regular employee results noted, 1,263 respondents (14%) have earned RABQSA certifications. These respondents hold 22 out of the 33 RABQSA certifications listed in the salary survey....
Expert Answers: December 2008
Get your boss to pay for training ... Three or six-sigma process?
Q: I’d like to know which process is better controlled: a three-sigma process or a six-sigma process. If the context of your question relates to statistical process control (SPC), then a six-sigma process is better controlled. Q: Will the new ISO 26000 st...
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...
Back to Basics: Clearing SPC Hurdles
Statistical process control (SPC) has provided significant cost savings for companies that are fortunate enough to implement it fully. However, implementation challenges can overcome the best of intentions....
Expert Answers: November 2008
Workplace recognition ... Choosing the right chart.
In your particular case, your production run rate is 30 pieces per hour, so you have a variety of charts available to you, including attribute charts. PPAP provides flexibility in how much documentation must be submitted to the customer as evidence the PP...
Standards Outlook: Automakers Shift Manual Into Another Gear
The Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) published the second edition of the Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) and Control Plan Reference Manual this summer....
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....
One Good Idea: Get Specific
Quality control or quality assurance personnel will typically be responsible for determining whether a lot of product conforms to specifications. Answering a few key questions is the first step toward the elimination of nonvalue-added product testing....
Statistics Roundtable: Transforming Data
What separates a multivariate analysis from a univariate analysis in process control? As simple as this question might appear, the answer can sometimes be difficult to understand....
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....
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....
Expert Answers: August 2008
Flushing out flatness ... Corrective vs. preventive actions....
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 ...
Statistics Roundtable: It Depends
A Shewhart chart is an excellent tool for detecting abrupt process changes. One of its additional properties is its ability to detect small process changes through the use of run rules....
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....
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....
Expert Answers: March 2008
Outlook on outsourcing ... When does Six Sigma suffice?...
Efficiency Gets a New Identity
This article demonstrates the impact RFID will have on existing supply chain processes and the improvements RFID implementation will bring by comparing the benefits of RFID with those of barcode for various supply chain entities. The increases in data cap...
Quality in the First Person: From Pizza to Quality
I was hired as a quality technician at TexTek Plastics, and the quality manager, who had vast experience in quality applications, was impressed with my diverse education and experiences. One of the absolutes I have learned in my journey is that the compan...
Standards Outlook: Product vs. System Quality
We live in an era in which complex and technologically advanced products are produced on a regular basis. Little concern is given to the engineering and advanced process capabilities that are required to produce them....
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 4 Salary by ASQ and RABQSA Certification (Regular Employees)
Certified quality engineer 23.9 Certified quality auditor 23.3 Certified manager of quality/ organizational excellence 12.3 Certified quality technician 7.7 6.9 Certified Six Sigma Black Belt 3.9 Certified quality inspector 3.5 Certified quality improvem...
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...
A Recipe for Safe Food: ISO 22000 and HACCP
Although food safety experts maintain that the U.S. food supply is one of the safest in the world, three recent food recalls raise the question of how food supplies can remain safe in a global environment. Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point...
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...
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....
Statistics Roundtable: Detecting Dependent Observations in Multivariate Statistical Process Control
Since we must consider many variables at the same time when monitoring a multivariate process, detection of data dependencies between and among the observation vectors is not straightforward. The test procedures that exist for checking for the...
Nanotechnology: A Big Little Frontier for Quality
Nanotechnology is a field of applied science that deals with arranging particles...
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...
The Quality Diet: Building a Healthy Business
Quality is not always an easy sell. As a result, the challenges facing a quality professional trying to help a company are a lot like those facing a dietitian trying to help a client succeed with a diet. Quality professionals could even be called...
Standards Outlook: Six Lessons Learned From QS-9000
The sun sets on QS-9000, the U.S. automotive standard.
My version of the old joke goes: "When’s your birthday?" "Dec. 15." "What year?" "Every year, so far."...
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...
Lean Lessons: Using Lean to Meet Quality Objectives
For many years, proponents of lean and Six Sigma methodologies have worked to achieve a marriage of convenience. For the most part this has fared well....
Statistics Roundtable: Dependent Univariate Observations and Statistical Control
Have you ever wondered why your process control procedure doesn't work just right? It might be that the underlying assumptions are not completely valid....
ISO 9001: Could It Be Better?
Many well-intentioned people are using ISO 9001 to control and improve quality, but much of the standard should be disregarded. ISO 9001's unnecessary costs affect companies, their employees and customers, as well as society in general which depends...
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...
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....
Quality in the First Person: Never-Ending Learning
“You’ll have six questions, worth 25 points each, out of which you’ll be required to answer any four.” As usual, we pressed for clues—more specifics on what would be included on the test. “One of the six questions will be on ISO 9001:1994.”...
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...
Quality in the First Person: The Right Place at the Right Time
When I was working on my master's degree at the University of North Carolina (UNC) in the late 1940s, it was an exciting time to be associated with quality control....
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...
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....
Quality in the First Person: SPC: Not Just for Geeks
I fell into quality the old fashioned way: I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. At the time, computers were becoming important tools, and I was one of the few people in the plant who knew how - or even wanted - to operate one....
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...
Making It Look Over Easy
Sunny Fresh Foods was the first food company to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1999. The manufacturer of egg based products won the award again in 2005, this time applying in the manufacturing category, having outgrown the small...
One Size Does Not Fit All
It has been said that academia has lagged behind practice in the development of quality management methods and philosophies, yet academia has done a good job of propagating these concepts. Now academic research has developed two new concepts that will...
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...
Use SPC for Everyday Work Processes
Despite the advantages of statistical process control (SPC), many organizational implementation efforts have not been successful or self-sustaining. This has nothing to do with the methodology, but is a case of using the right toolbox but the wrong...
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,...
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....
60 Years and Still Going Strong
This year the American Society for Quality marks its 60th anniversary with a special website devoted to its celebration. Thirteen surviving founders shared their insight into how the quality profession and ASQ have changed over the years. Responses to...
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...
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......
Standards Outlook: New Ideas and Expanded Use
With more than a half million organizations certified or registered to ISO 9001 and 14001, many say the development of management system standards (MSSs) has ended. But wait; is this really where things end? I would say the answer is no....
8 Dimensions of Excellence
Despite a stated desire to be customer focused, most companies tend to measure process performance more intensely than the outcomes customers experience. The 8 Dimensions of Excellence expand and balance the definition of success, beginning with the...
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: Data Mining for Quality
Allen, I. Elaine; Seaman, Christopher A.
In a 1996 Quality Progress article, Bert Gunter urged caution in the use of data mining based on the extraordinary amount of hype and false promises it was receiving at the time....
Career Corner: Competence and Confidence Count
A core career value is a combination of competence and confidence: realistic and objective confidence you have the skills to achieve in the world of work and believing those skills are a positive contribution....
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...
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....
Use Distribution Analysis To Understand Your Data Source
Distribution analysis - the process of examining a data set to understand its characteristics - uses a variety of tools that are often not used to their fullest extent. A procedure is presented as a guide to performing distribution analysis while...
The Forgotten "C" in DMAIC
When using Six Sigma's define, measure, analyze, improve, control (DMAIC) approach in an improvement project, quality practitioners often either neglect or poorly execute the control stage, jeopardizing the......
Quality Pros Break Through the Healthcare Barrier
Many quality professionals have been denied access to quality jobs in the healthcare sector because they lack medical backgrounds. One exception is Wisconsin's Marshfield Clinic, which has established a central department dedicated to helping the clinic...
Feigenbaum's Enduring Influence
Armand V. Feigenbaum was one of the first engineers to recognize financial performance as an indicator of poor quality. Together with W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran, he established the intellectual framework for quality as a discipline worthy of...
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...
Lead To Succeed
It seems at times that the quality profession is not as valued as it once was. The solution is to offer a unique service the corporation and its managers are willing to pay for. To sell yourself and your product, people must notice that you are...
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....
Does Six Sigma Work in Service Industries?
Service and manufacturing organizations have much to learn from one another when it comes to serving customers. While in manufacturing the focus on product quality distracts employees from customer service quality requirements, in the service sector the...
As the World Flattens
We are struggling with the uncomfortable results of the world's having been very rapidly "flattened" by technology harnessed to eliminate barriers of space and time. This technology revolution has converged with other forces of change....
Improve Profits With Standards
The goal of CEOs and business managers is to make products that please customers and produce a profit. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) provides a roadmap for profit gains through its standards and technical reports. Used in...
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...
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...
Calibration: What Is It?
According to the The International Vocabulary of General and Basic Terms in Metrology (VIM), metrology is "the science and practice of measurement." Metrology is critical to all the physical, chemical and biological sciences and the...
FMEA--Something Old, Something New
Managing risk is not optional for organizations. Clause 0.1 of ISO 9004 mentions risk management in the same breath with cost and benefit considerations as being important to an organization, its customers and interested parties....
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...
