- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Design of Experiments
- Environmental Manag. and Sustainability
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Innovation
- ISO 9000
- Laboratory
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Metrology
- Problem Solving
- Process Capability
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Sampling
- Six Sigma
- Social Responsibility
- Software Quality
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Teams
- Total Quality Management
- TL 9000
- ISO 22000
- Software and Technology (for statistics, measurement, analysis)
- Customer Experience Management
- Food Safety
- Economic Case for Quality
- err
- Continuous Improvement
Statistics Roundtable: Divide and Conquer in Reliability Analyses
All product is not created equal. Some units are more likely to fail in service than others. Thus, in reliability evaluations, you need to identify subpopulations with different failure susceptibility....
Statistics Roundtable: Interval Training
Choosing the right type of interval provides a means of supplementing an estimated quantity with an appropriate calibration of the uncertainty associated with that value....
3.4 per Million: Digging the Holistic Approach
Few will argue we live in a dynamic world where change is accelerating. What often goes unnoticed is that along with this rapid change, there is the opportunity and the need to improve....
Expert Answers: October 2009
Creating quality awareness ... Best test for data comparison....
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....
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)....
Expert Answers: September 2009
Accountability ... defining cost reduction ... honing in on confidence intervals....
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...
Statistics Roundtable: Drudgery to Strategy - a Statistical Metamorphosis
Think back to your Stats 101 course. You entered the first session laden with apprehension— induced by survivors’ horror stories—and your worst fears were confirmed....
3.4 per Million: Perusing Process Performance Metrics
Often, I have students ask for clarification about the subtopic level in the 2007 Six Sigma Black Belt body of knowledge, which deals with process performance metrics....
Watershed Moment
Cargill Corn Milling North America approached its Baldrige site visit in 2008 with the same level of preparation any organization would, but with the unique perspective that comes with rebuilding your operation after surviving a natural disaster....
New Frontiers
Self-declared or interview-based surveys are a prime research tool in many application areas, such as risk management, customer satisfaction tracking and social science research....
Expert Answers: July 2009
Setting up a corrective action document ... Dock-to-stock for medical devices ... Questions about confidence intervals....
It Doesn't Add Up
Bewildered economists offer many theories as to what ultimately led to today’s financial woes. Analysts attempt to untangle how so many factors and variables—banks, mortgages and government oversight—contributed to the mess....
Dare to Care
Healthcare is the third-largest area in the Standard & Poor’s 500, behind only financial services and IT. Considering the amount of knowledge, labor and materials devoted to the industry, there's no doubt healthcare is a major economic force in society....
All Ears
Imagine you are presenting the analysis and findings of a critical operational issue or proposed improvement project to senior management. You feel confident because you’ve thoroughly measured and analyzed the data....
Career Corner: A Step at a Time
Based on a quick perusal of the business press headlines and the top 10 best seller lists of business books, I have concluded two things are absolutely essential for the move from employee to consultant....
Statistics Roundtable: Player Rankings
The coefficient of variation, sometimes called the relative standard deviation, is often used to assess the quality of an assay, the diversity in organizations or as a benchmark for ranking....
Career Corner: Are You Recession Proofed?
An observation I have made over the years is that organizations seem to make cuts in two specific areas when economic times are tough. The first department cut is safety, and the second is quality....
3.4 per Million: It’s a Marathon, Not a Sprint
Six Sigma practitioners like their successes swift, large and final. Nature and circumstance, however, are rarely that kind. Normally, success is secured one step at a time....
Measure for Measure: Balanced Budget
In a previous edition of this column, I discussed Type-A and Type-B contributors of measurement uncertainty and what goes into a measurement budget. In this installment, I will outline a process for building that budget....
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....
Career Corner: Survive and Thrive
No sector is immune. Manufacturing, IT, finance, healthcare, education, publishing and retail are being affected by conditions that range from slowdown to slow-motion collapse....
One Good Idea: Beyond Sensors and Scopes
Technicians in a testing lab had access to some of the most powerful microscopes and analytical technology available. But, until they employed lean tools, they couldn’t see the solution to a problem that had challenged them for years....
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?”...
3.4 per Million: Smart Talk
When you examine the success of Six Sigma at Motorola, one characteristic that is frequently listed as a critical success factor is the common language it created. That attribute meanders its way into all types of Six Sigma conversations....
Statistics Roundtable: In a Certain Way
Whenever we estimate a population parameter from a sample, in addition to providing a point estimate, we should also include an interval to characterize the associated uncertainty....
Measure for Measure: Standard Definition
It's important to establish metrological traceability as it is defined in ISO/IEC Guide 99:2007. In this column, other ISO/IEC Guide 99:2007 definitions pertaining to measurement uncertainty are discussed....
Expert Answers: March 2009
Return policy ... restructuring activities ... sample size....
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....
Statistics Roundtable: Predicting Success
Considering that a phase three efficacy clinical trial for a potential new product could cost nearly $100 million, spending time in simulation activities before fully committing to developing a new product has proven to be worthwhile for more companies....
One Good Idea: Chart Smart
One of the greatest challenges with consumer data is to make sense of it. A particularly useful way to summarize consumer call-in information is the control chart, which can transform data into a time-series graph, along with an estimate of noise....
Statistics Roundtable: Care and Feeding of Checkweighers
Many years ago, during a tour of a production facility where packages of customer goods were being filled, a statistician colleague and I stood transfixed by an end-of-line checkweigher....
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....
Career Corner: How to Get Hired
As an employee, I have tons of insight on what the job hunt looks like from the seeker’s point of view. But I’ve often wondered what the process is like for the person on the other side of the hiring desk....
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....
Salary Survey 2008: Seeing Green
Significant salary discrepancies exist among quality professionals depending on where they work, their gender and whether they supervise others, according to an analysis of QP’s 2007 and 2008 salary surveys. Part 1, section 1 leads off the salary survey p...
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....
Statistics Roundtable: Make Data Matter
Is data analysis an art or a science? Arguments exist for both sides, and many people simply come down in the middle: it’s both....
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...
The Quality Professional as Organizational Gardener
Many quality professionals understand that the answers to these questions require the ability to envision their organizations as living entities, existing within their understanding of systems theory. We work with organizations and people, not on organiza...
Statistics Roundtable: The Pros of Proactive Product Servicing
Just like athletes can experience an injury that takes them out of a game, systems can experience component failures that require downtime and repair....
Energize Your QMS
Changes to the ISO 9001:2008 amendment are high benefit and low impact. This position stated the following: "ISO 9001:2008 has been developed to introduce clarifications to the existing requirements of ISO 9001:2000 and changes that are intended to improv...
Expert Answers: October 2008
Sample size of 30 ... DFMEA dilemma....
Statistics Roundtable: More is Not Always Better
All other things being equal, if offered a choice between small or large sample sizes, the larger sample size is preferred. Or is it?...
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....
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....
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....
One Good Idea: Find the Answers You Seek
Incidental differences—those with no impact on the component's performance—are often resolved by modifying the product print to match the samples. Microsoft Excel has a powerful tool called "Goal Seek" that makes this resolution a breeze....
Online OGI-Harkins
Summary statistics in Excel table Using Goal Seek in Excel / Online Figure 3 summary statistics / Online Figure 2...
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....
Statistics Roundtable: The Trusty Jackknife
Outliers are a continual source of problems when analyzing data. A few questionable data points can skew your distribution, make significant results seem insignificant and generally ruin your day....
One Good Idea: High Probability of Success
Normal is the most frequently occurring type of distribution, but to use the statistics relating to normal distribution, it is necessary to prove the data are, in fact, normally distributed....
Expert Answers: June 2008
Calculating DPMO ... Origins of sampling plan....
Statistics Roundtable: The Reality of Residual Analysis
In the world of statistics textbooks, independent random samples of size 30 from a normal distribution are a dime a dozen—the norm rather than the exception....
Career Corner: A Ready Résumé
Using performance review notes is the best way to keep your résumé ready. Any notes you prepare before a performance review are fodder for updating the current job section of your résumé. After 10 minutes of cutting, pasting and editing, the part of Kostu...
Helping Ease the Transition
Six Sigma and process improvement projects include implementation steps that typically alter workflow and deployment of labor to create a more effective and efficient process. New connections and relationships are established that reinforce new methods....
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....
The Architect of Quality
Joseph M. Juran 1904 - 2008
Pioneer. Teacher. Consultant. Guru. Each of these words describes Joseph M. Juran, the man who became a giant in the world of quality management and changed how companies do business....
3.4 per Million: Test Drives and Data Splits
Prediction models are one of a Six Sigma practitioner’s best friends for improving processes. The more complicated and persistent the quality problem, the more useful prediction models can be....
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....
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....
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...
Statistics Roundtable: Match Game
One useful method for evaluating new medical treatments, devices or services involves propensity score methods - matching members of different groups based on a range of characteristics and forming a probability score....
Educating Engineers
Statistics is an indispensable tool for solving engineering problems. But many engineers are not exposed to problems that require the use of statistical methods until they start their professional careers....
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....
Statistics Roundtable: A Preference for Parity?
You rarely hear coaches encourage their teams to get out there and tie. So why do banks, restaurants, consumer goods companies and others try so hard to match their competition?...
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....
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...
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...
Part I Section 1 Salary by Job Title (Regular Employees)
Standard Minimum Maximum deviation Count Mean Median Full- time employees Analyst $ 30,000 $ 145,000 $ 19,951 206 $ 63,694 $ 60,000 Associate 21,000 200,000 26,118 96 61,756 56,500 Auditor 18,000 170,000 22,697 258 66,392 65,000 Black Belt 34,000 149,845...
Part 1 Section 13 Salary by Metropolitan Area, State and Province
The survey asked respondents who were paid in a currency other than U. S. or Canadian dollars to convert their salaries into U. S. dollars so that their information could be included I Average salary Percentage San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose ( CA) $...
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...
Standards Outlook: Output Really Does Matter
Auditing is a key component of systems that provide confidence in organizations’ competence, ability and honesty in meeting requirements. For decades we have been using audits for this purpose...
Statistics Roundtable: When Should You Consider a Split-Plot Design?
Split-plot designs are an important, practical class of designs. When strategically chosen, split-plot designs can boost the amount of information a practitioner can extract from a designed experiment....
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...
Standards Outlook: TL 9000 Measurements Handbook Release 4.0
The Quality Excellence for Suppliers of Telecommunications (QuEST) Forum is the global society dedicated to the quality of telecom products and services. The forum has developed and maintained a single common set of telecom...
Statistics Roundtable: It's Not Always What You Say, But How You Say It
The Youden plot has proven extremely useful in the analysis and interpretation of data generated by interlaboratory studies. It’s always easy to understand and motivates others to take action if...
Don't Throw Out the Baby With the Bath Water
Public school accountability prompted by the No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to assess the quality of educational delivery and make changes to assure student academic success, as well as establish a process for continual improvement....
Standards Outlook: ISO 14001 Hits 10-Year Mark
It has been 10 years since the ISO 14001 standard on environmental management systems (EMSs) was first published....
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....
Nanotechnology: A Big Little Frontier for Quality
Nanotechnology is a field of applied science that deals with arranging particles...
Statistics Roundtable: Likert Scales and Data Analyses
Surveys are consistently used to measure quality. For example, surveys might be used to gauge customer perception of product quality or quality performance in service delivery....
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...
Statistics Roundtable: Reliability Assessment by Use-Rate Acceleration
Statistical evidence is often needed to show that a proposed product meets or exceeds its reliability goals. Many times, such evidence must be obtained in a compressed time period....
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...
Building a Better Fantasy Baseball Team
Fantasy baseball is a popular game giving sports fans the opportunity to display their baseball expertise in competition with other fans. The game fosters careful planning and research in hopes of outsmarting the rival team. By looking at fantasy...
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....
NFL Teams Huddle Up Around Quality
Football has evolved to become big business, and with the big money comes the pressure for teams to win. Almost every NFL team today employs coaches and personnel dedicated to controlling the quality of actions on the field. NFL head coach Tom Landry is...
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....
3.4 per Million: Assessing the Effectiveness of Controls Under Uncertainty
Sequential sampling and logistic regression techniques offer useful strategies....
Quality in the First Person: Quality Control and Brain Damage
Patience perseveres, even in the worst of circumstances....
Using Statistics To Improve Satisfaction
Choosing which attributes to improve from customer survey data maximizes the use of resources and increases the chances of positive returns on your efforts. The Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance by ranks helps focus attention on what needs...
