- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Engineering
- Environmental Manag. and Sustainability
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Inspection
- ISO 14000
- ISO 9000
- Laboratory
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Metrology
- Problem Solving
- Process Capability
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Sampling
- Six Sigma
- Small Business
- 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 Requirements
- Food Safety
- Economic Case for Quality
- err
- Continuous Improvement
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...
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....
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?”...
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....
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 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....
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....
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....
Expert Answers: August 2008
Flushing out flatness ... Corrective vs. preventive actions....
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?...
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...
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,...
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...
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....
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...
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: 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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
E-Learning: The Future of Quality Training
E-learning, an extension of multimedia technology, provides quality managers with an effective means of gaining the commitment and involvement of employees. Unlike other media forms, e-learning offers interactivity that transforms passive audiences into...
A Midstream Career Change
I began my life in the real world with a new engineering degree, a new job with a major aircraft manufacturer and a new baby. My first brush with the quality industry was after two years as an intern for the Boeing Co....
Make No Mistake
Mistake proofing tools provide low cost, effective defect prevention and operator feedback. They can stop mistakes from being made or make mistakes obvious at a glance....
Minimize Your Waste Line
Many companies see the enthusiasm surrounding new quality initiatives wane once the immediate benefits decrease and realities of day-to-day operational procedures override long term goals. While no plan can provide instant, lasting improvement, the...
Unsung Heroes of Quality
Not many dedicated quality professionals attain the media-bestowed title of guru. Quality Progress readers respond to a call for examples of outstanding, but frequently overlooked, quality leaders. The eleven persons described represent diverse fields...
Quality in the First Person
Five authors provide personal accounts of their quality experiences. In A Hunger for Quality, Robert Nix tells how a temporary job organizing files for a quality control manager turned into a permanent career in quality management. Certified Quality...
Stoplight Charts (With SPC Inside)
Many balanced scorecards use stoplight charts to track defects. Colors for the chart are set by comparing current results with target thresholds. Software that automates the process results in an operation that is quick and efficient, but which may be...
Create a Better Life With Quality Tools
The same quality principles needed for business success may be applied on an individual basis to improve both professional and personal lives. For the process to succeed, standards must be identified, set and measured....
Quality From Scratch: A Model for Small Business
Whether a company is large or small, quality programs are vital to assure customer, stakeholder, and employee satisfaction. Many small businesses, however, may find limited resources and conflicting priorities make the quest for organizational...
What Is 3.4 per Million?
When Motorola was connecting the notion of 6s to ppm levels, it assumed a process might shift 1.5s from its target. So Motorola based 3.4 ppm on such an assumption. In fact, such a shift should be considered very unlikely, as I will explain later. So,...
Tips for Automotive Auditors
ISO 9000 has taken more than its fair share of criticism, largely due to the variation in international third-party conformity assessment....
Your Gateway to Quality Knowledge
For the past decade, the Quality Information Center (QIC) at ASQ’s Milwaukee headquarters has collected and compiled material from quality professionals in academics, manufacturing and service to create a definitive quality body of knowledge....
Multivariate Thinking
Statistical thinking has helped industry become more aware of the benefits of using statistical procedures....
Flip the Clip
In all the discussion and debate about what Six Sigma means, one thing remains clear: Six Sigma is a broad subject. It is daunting for us trainers to try and produce experts called Black Belts (BBs)....
The Right Place At the Right Time
My first exposure to quality came as a U.S. Navy submarine officer. As it holds a nuclear reactor and submerges under a lot of seawater pressure, a submarine has many quality issues....
Match the Change Vehicle and Method to the Job
Processes are at the core of continuous improvement, and improvement happens when a process is changed in one way or another....
Faster Test Results
Southside Hospital used Six Sigma to reduce test turnaround times from 68 hours to an average of 32 hours. The use of quality tools helped the hospital improve the sigma level for stress test turnaround....
Offense and Defense
To improve its quality, an enterprise must fight two battles. It must prevent new problems, such as wear and tear on equipment, increasingly stringent customer requirements, new product introductions and employee turnover, from affecting its processes....
Eight Essential Tools
The broad use of Six Sigma since its introduction in the 1980s has taught us much about how to make the best use of Six Sigma tools. Now we need to take a look back and reflect on what we’ve learned...
Column: Standards Outlook: Characteristic Management
Executives sometimes wonder why their organizations still have quality problems, despite their best efforts to eliminate them. There are many possible causes and you've probably heard of some of them, such as lack of resources and lack of leadership or...
Column: Career Corner: Jacks and Jills of Many Skills
A significant conclusion I've come to after reading reams of newsprint about downsizing, layoffs, plant closings and the like is that people who have developed multiple skill sets have a unique advantage. These folks are either asked to remain with the...
ISO 9000 Makes Integrated Systems User Friendly
Organizations need management systems that are based on processes or activities that help personnel understand what is essential to achieving continual improvement on a consistent basis....
Capability Analysis of Complex Parts
Several years ago, Military Aircraft and Missile Systems Group (A&M), a division of the Boeing Company in St. Louis, made a strategic decision to focus on its main business—aircraft and missile assembly....
Lean and Six Sigma – Synergy Made in Heaven
The combination of Six Sigma and lean enterprise work can enhance the production experience. Workers have the empowerment and skill to recognize a problem and, if it cannot be resolved, shut down the line to eliminate the root cause. Six Sigma and lean...
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....
An Integrated Approach System
What’s the best quality system? How would you answer this question? How would your colleagues?...
Baldrige: It’s Easy, Free and It Works
While many people consider the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria to be difficult, a harder task is learning how to manage opportunities for improvements instead of managing known strengths. While Baldrige may not have the answers, it...
Systems Thinking – An Uncommon Answer
Some of the common problems to be found in many business failures include too much focus on short-term gains, too much focus on quarterly profit statements, and a prevalence of long-term losses. One possible solution to these problems is systems...
Complexity Theory Simplifies Choices
Many business management and improvement methodologies provide finite structures for achieving success. Examples include the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award; the ISO 9001 standard; W. Edward Deming, who provided 14 points; and Six Sigma....
Quality Management Multiple Choice: What’s the best quality system?
Monitoring and recording the extent of transition experienced within a designated area assure Procedure ( general) Priority Reviewed Completed Record control Document control Internal audits Management review Corrective action Preventive action Monitorin...
QOS – A Simple Method for Big or Small
Although there are many quality initiatives in the marketplace, many of them involve a degree of hype. Ford Motor Company’s quality operating system (QOS) is recommended as one offering the most value for the money. A QOS assessment looks at...
Column: Career Corner: Resumes: Before and After
My friend Deming Juran Crosby (D.J. for short) and I go back a long way. He recently decided to look for a new job and wanted some feedback on his résumé. It looked all right to me, but I suggested D.J. get a more professional opinion....
Column: Measure for Measure: Validating Calibration Processes And Software
Measurement assurance provides a sound foundation
While validation is required for gages, processes, and software, sometimes measurement assurance can be just as accurate and far more simple 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...
