- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Design of Experiments
- Environmental Manag. and Sustainability
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Innovation
- ISO 14000
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Metrology
- Problem Solving
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Quality Control
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Safety
- Six Sigma
- Social Responsibility
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Teams
- Total Quality Management
- AS9000
- TL 9000
- ISO/TS 16949
- Compliance
- Risk Management
- Economic Case for Quality
- err
Managing Expectations
One condition is vital for initiating, implementing and sustaining a viable quality initiative: management support. Surprisingly, very few articles and books on quality even mention this need, let alone what to do if support isn’t there....
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....
Quality in the First Person: Make a Pit Stop
With each passing day, it seems as though the economy get a little worse. The stock market, unemployment rates and layoffs all paint a grim picture of the current state of the nation. While everyone is looking for an end to the economic crisis...
Critical Stage
Has Six Sigma been a good thing? While this is a straightforward question, there isn’t a simple answer....
Quality in the First Person: Quality Isn't a 9-to-5 Job
As a quality professional, I often think about how quality is embedded in people’s everyday lives. Looking back at my own life, I was shocked to learn how long and how much of an impact quality has had on me—especially outside of work....
Riding the Storm Out
Virtually everyone and every organization has been touched in some way by today’s turbulent economy. Smaller budgets, unexpected layoffs and workplace shake-ups have become commonplace....
Back in Circulation
As the applications for lean expand, organizations must realize lean’s usefulness goes beyond environmental efforts. But first, we must look at the history of lean and to understand how its future fully complements social responsibility....
Expert Answers: March 2009
Return policy ... restructuring activities ... sample size....
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...
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...
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....
Strength in Numbers
Finding resources to pursue quality improvement and organizational excellence is the greatest challenge confronting most organizations today, including universities and professional organizations....
Career Corner: Don't Settle for Shortcuts
Although they have been around for years, diploma mills are increasingly gaining exposure in the internet age, using technology to bombard us with offers for quick degrees that can be obtained with little or no academic effort. People who obtain degrees f...
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...
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....
Part 1 Section 16 Salary by Highest Level of Education
PART 1. REGULAR EMPLOYEE RESULTS Section 16. Salary by Highest Level of Education FIGURE 1 Highest Level of Education Percentage of respondents 0% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0.1 Below high school 6.9 High school diploma 4.5 Vocational/ technical certificate 1.8...
Part I Section 5 Salary Six Sigma Training (Regular Employees)
QUALITY PROGRESS I DECEMBER 2007 I 45 FIGURE 1 79,790 89,011 116,259 109,098 114,394 75,006 Green Belt ( 19.6%) Black Belt ( 16.9%) Master Black Belt ( 3.8%) Champion ( 1.6%) Executive ( 1.3%) None ( 56.9%) $ 0 $ 20,000 $ 40,000 $ 60,000 $ 100,000 $ 80,0...
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 1 Section 6 Salary by Number of Work Hours
Section 6. Salary by Number of Work Hours PART 1. REGULAR EMPLOYEE RESULTS $ 0 Average salary $ 20,000 $ 40,000 $ 60,000 $ 80,000 $ 100,000 $ 120,000 Average number of hours worked per week ( percentage of respondents) 51,824 Less than 35 hours ( 0.6%) 6...
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...
Reaching Out to CEOs
Interested in promoting quality as an agent of profit and prosperity, ASQ asked the Pittsburgh section to participate in a pilot run of the Economic Case for Quality by surveying local business leaders to determine how they perceived the impact of...
Quality in the First Person: Quality on the Front Lines
"Always remain in a rigid state of flexibility" is the one thing about quality that has definitely stuck with me all these years. After checking the internet and finding no information on who might have coined that phrase, I shall claim it as mine....
Career Corner: Has Information About Quality Become a Liability?
While having lunch with a good friend not long ago, I gained unique insight into a very real concern for those of us in the quality profession and the organizations we work with....
12 Keys to Career Success
As the number of manufacturing jobs continues to decline in the United States, many quality professionals have become concerned about job security and opportunities to attain career success. But like Joseph Juran and W. Edwards Deming before them, each...
Career Corner: Maximize the Use of Your Abilities
In the December 2005 edition of Quality Progress, former editor Debbie Phillips-Donaldson asked, “Does your organization make full use of your abilities?” If the answer is yes, good for you and your organization....
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....
Career Corner: Use DMAIC to Enhance Your Career
Attend an ASQ section meeting or conference, and if you didn't already know it, you'll quickly learn Six Sigma is still one of the hottest methodologies in the quality profession today....
Selling Quality Ideas to Management
Many great ideas fall by the wayside because management does not accept them. This may be because the idea must compete with other priorities or the owner doesn't do enough to sell the idea to management. Three effective ways to enhance an idea are to...
Bridging the Gap Between the Classroom and Real World
Two of the courses in Scott Hiler's business education classes at Paramus High School in New Jersey specifically cover international business and management systems that include lessons on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, total quality management, and ISO 9000....
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...
So, You'd Like To Be an ASQ Fellow
Some of the benefits of becoming an ASQ Fellow include peer recognition, networking opportunities, and new levels of ASQ involvement. A candidate must be an ASQ Senior Member for at least five years before submission of the nomination and be able to...
Career Corner: Your Future in Risk Management
Our engineering company conducts risk analyses and assessments in cyber security, infrastructure security, operational integrity and business continuity planning. And, business is booming. Why?...
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...
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....
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 2. Salary by Number Of Years' Experience in the Quality Field
More than ( 17.7%) 20 years ( 6%) 10.1 to 20 ( 29.6%) years ( 31%) 6.1 to 10 ( 31.7%) years ( 31%) 3.1 to 6 ( 12.9%) years ( 22.6%) 1 to 3 ( 5.4%) years ( 7.1%) Less than ( 1.6%) 1 year ( 2.4%) $ 0 $ 40,000 $ 20,000 $ 60,000 Average salary ( Canadian dol...
Feigenbaum on Quality: Past, Present, Future
In an interview held at the ASQ World Conference on Quality and Improvement in Seattle this year, quality pioneer Armand V. Feigenbaum shared his views on the current status and future of quality. Feigenbaum notes that quality has always been a cyclic...
The Cause and Effect Of My Quality Journey
My first encounter with quality occurred when I was a teenager and read in the newspaper that a human error resulted in a patient's death at a hospital. That incident created a shift in my life....
The Future of Quality in Indianapolis
ASQ's Indianapolis Section 903 has typically focused on projects that could be completed within the year but, conscious of the effects of short-range planning, the section decided to develop a five-year strategic plan to increase responsiveness to the...
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...
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....
Opportunities Are Everywhere
As the distinction between quality management and business management fades, an unprecedented confluence of trends and forces offers unique opportunities for quality professionals. Sporadic cost cutting campaigns are being replaced by business...
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 ...
Salary Survey – 2004
Regular Employee - Section 2. Salary by Number Of Years' Experience In the Quality Field
R E G U L A R E M P L O Y E E R E S U LT S Section 2 Salary by Number of Years' Experience In the Quality Field Salary by Number of Years' Experience In Quality for U. S. Respondents 13.1 29.5 33.1 23.7 23.3 19.8 14.3 20.9 Men Women 10.1 7.3 1.2 2.6 0.4 ...
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....
Certification Exam Tips, Trips and Traps
An ASQ certification can be a significant career enhancement, but the decision to sit for the exam requires careful preparation. Questions and answers are presented reflecting the author's experience in taking ASQ certification exams. Planning and...
The Growth of Risk Management
The quality profession and ASQ were very successful during the l980s and '90s. ASQ surged ahead in membership, national prominence and public policy influence....
Twelve Ways to Add Value to Audits
Much has been said and done in the last couple of years related to organizational improvement and value added auditing....
100 Years of Juran
An interview with Joseph M. Juran reveals an inspirational story of his struggle to overcome the challenges of emigration, childhood poverty, and the Great Depression to become one of quality’s leading gurus....
The Legacy of Ishikawa
Kaoru Ishikawa was a prime mover of quality in Japan who believed in quality through leadership. His six quality concepts form the basis for a holistic approach that is the unique Japanese approach to quality improvement. Ishikawa’s focus on...
Quality's Identity Crisis
James Lipton concludes each interview for the Bravo Cable Network's "Inside the Actors Studio" with 10 questions. I've found one of these useful for dialogue about careers. It asks for a profession, outside of your own, you wouldn't want to pursue....
Qualitative vs. Quantitative Methods
Using statistical methods in quality management systems (QMSs) has been discussed ever since the advent of total quality management (TQM) and ISO 9000 certification. Yet statistics remain an often neglected component of quality management systems....
Six Sigma in Metaphor: Heresy or Holy Writ?
We begin by assuming everyone knows what Six Sigma is. Even in this forum of quality professionals, we know this to be untenable, although it seems likely this is not the first time readers have heard the term...
Measurement Capability
Measurements are made all the time: in processes, to see how well work is progressing and in commerce. Most of the time, we trust these measurements are adequate for the task....
Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate scandals such as those involving Enron and WorldCom may finally be awakening corporate America to its social responsibilities. Such scandals are creating concern about business ethics and governance....
The Seven Deadly Sins of Quality Management
Root cause analysis is the structured investigation of basic causal factors leading to quality failure. When the root cause resides in the fundamental values of an organization, eradication can be extremely challenging. Problems ascribed to...
Column: Career Corner: Be a Change Agent
The quality profession is no longer static but is in a state of unprecedented transition. Practitioners must begin to see themselves as change agents facilitating an ongoing organizational quality improvement process....
ASQ's World Partners
One of ASQ's objectives is to become a global advocate for excellence and a provider of information and learning opportunities about quality. Having decided to take a more active role in collaborating with existing national quality associations, ASQ is...
Rx for Excellence
SSM Health Care (SSMHC), the first healthcare winner of the Malcolm Baldrige Award, has been showing the world that a focus on continuous improvement can help the ailing healthcare sector. SSMHC operates as a private, not-for-profit system that owns,...
The Shift to Customer Focus
Understanding what complaints really mean is an important aspect of leadership
Quality requires complaints not merely be tolerated but be actively encouraged--embraced for their value in getting at the roots of problems in production and service. 1 He contrasts the language of complaint with the language of commitment. Who better to...
Roadblocks to Quality
The automotive industry has developed state-of-the-art quality processes and procedures, yet many managers and engineers still do not understand or apply the concepts of variation reduction or trend analysis. This results in the poor quality that...
Salary Survey – 2002
Salaries and Diversity
Now, we not only hear or read about product quality and quality control in manufacturing, but we also hear and read about quality of services, quality of relationships, quality of ideas and thought processes, and of course, quality of life. To open our ho...
Column: Career Corner: Plenty of Opportunities
[Abstract from article]
If you are seeking a job because you are unemployed or simply want new challenge or advancement, don't let the bad economic news get you down. There are positions open in the quality profession, and many may be right in your...
Coming Soon: The Future
Issues presented at the third futures study conducted by the American Society for Quality are highlighted. Conducted to energize strategic planning efforts, the study was guided by representatives from the Alternative Futures Institute and drew...
The Changing Role of Quality Professionals
In the spring of 2002 a survey ASQ Fellow Members was conducted asking opinions and comments on the changing role of the quality professional. A brief compilation of survey results is presented, along with some predictions of expected directions...
Evaluating Higher Education Programs in Quality
The mechanism is now in place to determine whether specific quality degree programs meet any standards. Specialized accreditation examines specific programs of study to determine whether graduates are prepared to enter a profession. The Accreditation...
On Leadership
In June 2002, more than 200 industry experts and academic leaders convened at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management Juran Center for Leadership in Quality to hear Joseph M. Juran, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, and...
Education and the Future of Quality
As education goes, so goes quality, since the leadership derived from the educational process provides direction for the future. How ASQ can use student branches and other key resources more effectively to improve quality and education systems for the...
Organize Your Quality Tool Belt
Quality professionals adopt and adapt techniques from other fields to satisfy the need to apply their skills to a wide variety of processes and situations. To someone new to the profession, this array of tools may seem overwhelming, but upon closer...
Is Time Running Out for Quality?
Fifty years ago W. Edwards Deming and other researchers recognized the benefits that can be gained by applying scientific methods to production-oriented business systems. Their methodology is broadly referred to as total quality management (TQM). The...
Column: Career Corner: Transfer Your Skills
Service industries need auditors, project managers and improvement associates. Have you ever thought about how the skills, knowledge and techniques you have learned and applied in the quality profession would be transferable...
Column: Career Corner: How To Work With Recruiters
(pages 85 and 87)
[abstract from article]
As quality professionals assume more personal responsibility for developing their careers, asking how recruiters can help is a natural question. Bill, Dave and Paul, three recruiters who place quality...
The Essential Six Sigma
The disciplined quality improvement features of Six Sigma methodology offers companies nearly all of the elements of Total Quality Management (TQM), and it is much easier to incorporate into a business system. In addition, Six Sigma utilizes technical...
My process is too variable--now what do I do?
How to produce and use a successful multi-vari study
How to produce and use a successful multi- vari study by Ronald D. Snee Process Schematic FIGURE 1 The process Process outputs Controlled variables Customer Process inputs Uncontrolled noise variables Manufacturing Process Variables TABLE 1 Process input...
Six lessons can steer your career path.
Flying lessons and quality principles
The sky is the limit for competent quality professionals who keep themselves properly grounded and fly a straight path. TERESA WHITACRE is a quality systems manager for CTP Carrera in Latrobe, PA, and principal of Marketech Systems. Whitacre holds a bache...
Column: Statistics Roundtable: My Process Is Too Variable--Now What Do I Do?
How to produce and use a successful multi- vari study by Ronald D. Snee Process Schematic FIGURE 1 The process Process outputs Controlled variables Customer Process inputs Uncontrolled noise variables Manufacturing Process Variables TABLE 1 Process input...
Column: Career Corner: Six Lessons Can Steer Your Career Path
Flying lessons and quality principles : Lessons from a pilot's career include:Make keeping your skills current your constant vigil.Know your aircraft (your product--yourself).Assess your strengths and weaknesses.Keep your wheels chocked to the ground...
Column: Frontiers of Quality: Make the View Worth the Climb
Focus training on delivering better business results
When upper managment sees training as a cost rather than an investment, it is easy to justify cutting that cost. However, using a Six Sigma paradigm to look at training as a means to improving performance in a specific project allows a...
Why Quality Gets an 'F'
No doubt those defenders of ISO 9001 and QS- 9000 who were forced to come to terms with the fact that the defective Firestone ATX, ATX II and Wilderness AT tires were manufactured at ISO- 9001 and QS- 9000 certified facilities will not want to be reminde...
Philip B. Crosby's Mark on Quality
Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I O C T O B E R 2 0 0 1 I 25 Philip B. Crosby's Mark on Quality His teachings will continue to touch lives for years to come by Kristen Johnson, assistant editor Q U A L I T Y G U R U S RECENT ARTICLE IN the Orlando Sentinel...
Revisions improve on the ISO 9001 standard
Auditors and Auditing
Most auditors who conduct third-party registrar audits are certified by the RAB or IRCA. RAB recently announced a reduction in certain quality management system auditor certification program requirements relating to work experience and witness audits. The...
A World of Opportunity
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 0 I 57 ASQ and other quality societies adapt to changing times by Spencer Hutchens Jr., chair, ASQ International Task Force I N T E R N A T I O N A L Q U A L I T Y UALITY PROFESSIONALS THE WORLD over ...
Quality Professionals Around the World Share Similar Concerns, Experiences
The International Chapter of ASQ has grown from about 25 members in 1956 to more than 5,000 members in about 90 countries by 2000. Quality professionals worldwide want to hold on to a core set of principles, and similar challenges face the quality...
Salary Survey – 2000
Inspectors See Big Increases; Ahead of Technicians
According to the 2000 Quality Progress salary survey, quality inspectors in the United States earn an average of $37,795, up nearly 9% from the $34,802 reported in last year's survey. At the top of the salary heap, quality vice presidents responding to th...
Implementation Can Benefit from Quality Experience
Knowledge management is beginning to be recognized as a quality tool that will change the standards of competition. Knowledge management decreases waste and rework by focusing on shared solutions, ideas, and best practices. The concept of knowledge...
Six Sigma improves both statistical training and processes.
I refer to the definition of statistical thinking published in Glossary and Tables of Statistical Quality Control: Statistical thinking is a philosophy of learning and action based on the following fundamental principles: All work occurs in a system of i...
Beyond Compliance
Most quality auditors perform compliance audits to verify the implementation of written procedures. Compliance audits can be second party audits used to review the activities of suppliers, or they can be third party audits performed by independent...
Great Quality Consulting
Improvements must be connected to external results
Reid teaches the popular ASQ workshop "Skills for the Quality Consultant" and is the principal consultant with the Performance Design Group in Sarasota, FL. He offers some valuable thoughts and suggestions for those who want to position themselves as succ...
Management System Standards Poised for Momentum Boost
Growth in the standards industry is driven by: the ISO 9000 revision; proliferation of sector specific standards; the importance of environmental management; and the future of health and safety management standards. ISO 9000:2000 will be completed...
Column: Career Corner: Great Quality Consulting
The future for quality consultants won't rest solely on their ability to improve processes, design interventions or give advice. "Improving processes or even improving internal performance is not sufficient if we cannot connect the improvement to...
A New Definition Aims To Connect Quality With Financial Performance
Focus on the business relationship
Quality is a state in which value entitlement is realized for the customer and provider in every aspect of the business relationship. Instead of a singular focus on conformance to standards (a.k.a. customer satisfaction), Six Sigma companies strive to det...
Help Your Career And the Environment
Companies can improve revenues through risk management
So as the quality movement wanes, wise quality professionals are seeking the next generation idea so they can position themselves and improve the competitive advantage of their organizations. In our world where sustainability matters, quality now means me...
21 Voices for the 21st Century
The interplay of quality, e-quality, and equality in the comments of 21 individuals provide a preview of the future of quality in the new century. The editors of Quality Progress, with input from many sources, have selected 21 original thinkers...
Back to the Future
The ASQ Foresight 2020 project has generated scenarios on the future of quality and the role of the quality professional. Facilitated by the Institute for Alternative Futures, the project is a successor to ASQ's first futures study, which had 2010 as...
A Road Map for Quality Beyond Control
This final installment in the "Quality in the 21st Century" helps quality professionals deal with seven problems noted earlier. First, to avoid imposing the one best way, hierarchies and control systems like the ISO 9000 series should give way to...
Salary Survey – 1999
Full Survey
22 I Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I N O V E M B E R 1 9 9 9 Table of Contents PART 1 Regular Employee Results Section 1. Salary by Job Title and Nonexempt vs. Exempt Status* 25 Section 2. Salary by Number of Work Hours* 27 Section 3. Salary by Nonexempt...
