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...
A Comparative Analysis of National and Regional Quality Awards
Organizations are using quality award programs in their pursuit of total quality management. Industries realize that quality awards offer models and tools for implementing quality strategy, benchmarking best practices, performing self-assessment, and...
Explosion of New Products Creates Challenges
New product development in the Innovation Age needs new quality tools and techniques to meet customer expectations and fast-paced change. Rapid innovation is evident in the explosive growth of patent applications, led by companies like Eastman Kodak,...
Doing the Right Things Right
The 1997 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award winners were honored at a ceremony in which President Clinton noted that continuous improvement and the elevation of employees serve the bottom line and the general public. Solectron Corporation won its...
Lessons Learned from Alexander the Great
Logistics planning, knowledge of the competition, innovation, and a single point of control were elements of success for Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) They also should be key characteristics of modern organizations. Alexander incorporated...
The Criteria: A Looking Glass to Americans' Understanding of Quality
Process Management is Category 6 in the 1997 criteria of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA). As the sixth of seven installments on the Baldrige criteria, this article notes that the MBNQA is driven by values for which the criteria are...
But It Takes Too Long . . .
Quality improvement projects can consume too much time. The Juran Institute studied twenty projects of 10 clients in 5 industries. The average project took 68.1 weeks; 62.8% of that time could have been eliminated. Inadequate management preparation...
Aerospace and Defense Contractors Learn How to Make Their Businesses Soar
A strategic benchmarking study of 24 divisions in 17 companies identified characteristics of the most profitable companies. This analysis of the aerospace and defense industry by Price Waterhouse and a team of contractors collected more than 20,000...
Quality Management Benchmark Assessment
A series of task-oriented checklists with 253 requirements enable a firm to compare itself and its suppliers to the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria and to the Q9000 standards of ANSI/ASQC (American National Standards Institute /...
The Role of Statistical Thinking in Management
Managers, as well as statisticians, can employ process thinking, an understanding of variation, and data analysis. This mindset of statistical thinking has four requirements. First, managers must know why statistical knowledge is important. For...
