- Auditing
- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Design of Experiments
- Engineering
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Innovation
- ISO 14000
- 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
- Reliability
- Safety
- Six Sigma
- Software Quality
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Total Quality Management
- TL 9000
- Compliance
- Certification/Registration (management system Standards)
- Software and Technology (for statistics, measurement, analysis)
- Information Management
- Customer Experience Management
- Customer Requirements
- Food Safety
- Economic Case for Quality
- err
Standards Outlook: Trust, but Verify
Grouping product, service and process audits together is somewhat natural, because a process audit may include a product or service audit. I’ve dubbed the combination a verification audit....
Expert Answers: October 2009
Creating quality awareness ... Best test for data comparison....
Standards Outlook: The Right Approach
The process approach is at the heart of a quality management system (QMS) defined by ISO 9001. And, as everyone knows, it’s necessary to have the old ticker checked out from time to time....
Measure for Measure: Conscientious Calibrations
There are compelling reasons for an organization to get certified to a standard, but one that gets overlooked is the impact on the environment....
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....
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...
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....
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....
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...
Perspectives: First, Do No Harm
Healthcare costs in the United States are increasing at staggering rates. In fact, last year’s employer health insurance premiums increased by 5%, which is two times the rate of inflation....
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....
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....
Quality in the First Person: Beyond Appearances
Throughout my 40 years in healthcare, I have always held the belief that quality must be intentional. The only true responsibility of a leader is to create an environment where staff can choose to be successful....
Back to Basics: Training Day
Effectively training project staff and capturing and diffusing the training is difficult within any industry. At the company I work for, Cadforce Inc., we used a forgotten program from World War II America to help train construction field staff....
Standards Outlook: To Launch or Not to Launch
Having quality professionals on medical device product development teams eliminates last-minute conflicts....
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....
Online Figures Rooney
Cause and effect tree symbols / online Figure 1 Example cause and effect tree with supporting data / online Figure 2 Cause and effect tree for rod failure following reassembly / online Figure 3...
Driven to Succeed
Strategic planning is an important element in quality management, as evidenced by the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria. A strategic plan is the aim of an organization that helps to reduce variation related to possible strategic outcomes....
Cause and Effect
Cause and effect tree analysis—also known as fault tree analysis—begins with a known event, referred to as the top event, and describes possible combinations of events and conditions that can lead to this event....
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....
Measure for Measure: In No Uncertain Terms
Because ISO/IEC Guide 99:2007 harmonizes terms for many different industries, it is important to take a closer look at all the terms. In this column, I will examine measurement uncertainty and metrological (measurement) traceability....
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 12: Salary by Industry
U.S. and Canadian survey respondents are a lot alike when it comes to the industries in which they work....
Salary Survey 2008: Looking at the Numbers
Mean salary: The mean salary is the average salary for that particular group. Manager: Ensures the administration of the company’s quality, process and business improvement efforts within a defined segment of the organization. Quality engineer: Designs, i...
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....
Perspectives: In Crisis, Give Credit to Quality
The financial industry needs a quality framework for manufacturing and controlling complex mathematical models, technological systems and financial data. Therefore, if Congress enacted strict quality standards for financial data and its distribution, the ...
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...
On the Same Page
Memorial Hermann’s first priority has always been to deliver quality healthcare (see sidebar, "About Memorial Hermann"). Every hospital in the Memorial Hermann system also has developed self-directed Medicare action plans. For hospital systems like Memori...
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?...
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....
Newer Better Faster
The Small Business Administration has indicated that the majority of innovations are consistent with the continuous improvement commonly used in the define, measure, analyze, improve and control (DMAIC) Six Sigma method....
Standards Outlook: Down With Silos
Businesses today have multiple management systems, including financial, quality and environmental. Unfortunately, these management systems usually do not talk to one another....
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....
In the Know
More and more organizations are choosing outsourcing as a necessary means of remaining competitive in the global economy. Quality professionals must consider building a body of knowledge completely dedicated to the subject of quality in outsourcing....
Standards Outlook: Ensuring Supplier Quality
I've worked in the medical device and pharmaceutical/biotechnology industries, and I've concluded that when it comes to quality, the medical device world is at least 20 years ahead of its drug-world cousin....
The True Test of Loyalty
The customer loyalty field has experienced much technological innovation, such as automated reporting portals and integration of attitudinal and behavioral data in customer relationship management applications, over the past decade....
Customer Servicemen
Customer Feedback is a key component of improvement. The challenge has always been finding the most effective way of procuring it....
Quality in the First Person: All Roads Lead to Quality
At 17, most high school students are trying to decide what they want to do with their lives. At graduation, I never would have thought that in 10 years I would work in quality assurance....
Two Are Better Than One
Management need and my personal curiosity recently led me to take a closer look at the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). My work pointed out similarities and differences between SOX and ISO 9001....
Expert Answers: May 2008
Government and cost of quality ... Understanding the slack factor....
Better Safe Than Sorry
Last year’s record number of product recalls, especially recalls of children’s toys, drew worldwide attention to product safety and defective products. The recall stories topped newscasts and made headlines in newspapers coast to coast....
Quality in the First Person: Uniquely Prepared
Being the quality manager of a plastics extrusion and fabrication company for the last eight years has required large shares of technical savvy, people skills and hard work. The experience and skills I’ve gained in the trenches have been invaluable....
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....
One Good Idea: Upon Further Review...
Often, a product release occurs without the company taking a crucial step—performing a product release readiness review to determine whether the product is ready for release and whether the company is prepared to lend its full support to the product....
Testing the Limits of Team Development
The stages of team development are well known. Not as defined are practical techniques for moving through the process quickly without sacrificing performance. There are examples of how this can be done, including ASQ’s exam review workshops....
Expert Answers: March 2008
Outlook on outsourcing ... When does Six Sigma suffice?...
Launch to Quality
After using different quality methods with limited success, the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Indian Head Division, implemented lean Six Sigma in 2004. Through all of this, leadership demonstrated a steadfast commitment to fully implementing lean Six Sigm...
Ghysels Online Sidebar: Modeling Customer Service
Modeling Customer Service Ways top level administrators of the Mountain View Whisman School District modeled customer service included: They visit teachers and staff each Monday at school sites to informally encourage teachers and staff to share their con...
Ghysels Online Sidebar: What Students Think
Jan. feature/SD EDUCATION School District Offers Ideas for Continuous Improvement by Maurice Ghysels In 50 Words or Less In implementing a process of continuous improvement, a California school district learned lessons that are applicable to industry. M.G...
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...
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: 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...
QMS Certification: Down With Disillusionment
Conformity assessment and international standards that cover products and quality and environmental management systems provide mechanisms to ensure the quality of goods and services, but a recent survey reveals that the various certification bodies...
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...
Lean Lessons: Filling New Post-Lean Capacity
The impact of lean projects in manufacturing plants is more than cost efficiencies, decreases in lead times and improvements in on-time delivery....
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 12 Salary by Industry
Transportation and aerospace products 13.7 77,999 19.1 68,500 Other products 4.2 76,782 5.9 78,104 Service sector Construction services 1.0 $ 82,756 0.9 $ 107,375 Consulting and other professional, scientific and technical services 6.4 94,405 8.0 77,166 ...
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,...
Standards Outlook: Auto Industry Drives to Improve Healthcare
The U.S. auto industry has been challenged by its need to compete in a global marketplace while burdened by healthcare expenses for workers and retirees....
Quality Tools, Teamwork Lead Boeing Team to a System Redesign
A team from Boeing, as well as members of the Air Force and suppliers, worked to fix the C-17's inert gas generating system that previously needed constant repairs. Using quality tools, the team identified cause and came up with the best solution for...
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...
ASQ Team Says QMS and EMS Standards Support SOX
The intent of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was to make the financial system of control more transparent and to reduce the incidence of corporate fraud. It soon became evident, however, that compliance with the law’s auditing requirements would be...
Agency Files Away Inefficiency, Saves Taxpayers a Bundle
Caseworkers for the SunCoast Region of the Florida Department of Children and Families won a silver medal in the 2007 International Team Excellence Competition by redesigning its paper based document filing and retrieval system and bringing it into...
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...
Measure for Measure: Qualitative Indications From Quantitative Measuring Instruments
When we make measurements with inspection, measuring and test equipment (IM&TE), we assume and expect that all of the measurements are quantitative....
Living Inside China's Quality Revolution
Quality processes in China today continue to be influenced by remnants of ancient policies and practices. When Huawei Technologies, one of China’s largest telecommunications manufacturers, recently declared its intention to become the Toyota of the...
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....
Retrospective Analysis of a Designed Experiment
Design of experiment (DOE) techniques have been successfully used by India’s Department of Defense Production to optimize the process parameters for a plastic injection-molded part used in the manufacture of tank deterrents. The goal was to get...
The Innovation Process and Quality Tools
Cost control and product quality are only capable of sustaining competitive advantage. It takes product or service innovation to create competitive advantage in a global marketplace. Innovation consists of a series of steps like any other business or...
Nanotechnology: A Big Little Frontier for Quality
Nanotechnology is a field of applied science that deals with arranging particles...
Standards Outlook: AS&D Standards? Revisions to Improve Supplier Performance
The International Aerospace Quality Group (IAQG) is revising the IAQG 9100 family of standards1 to stay aligned with changes to ISO 9001,...
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...
Reach for the Stars
CelsiusTech Australia, a systems and software supplier, has long had a commitment to quality, but believes there is always room for improvement. The company decided to create an improved approach to the plan-do-check-act cycle to help new employees...
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....
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...
Measure for Measure: Managing the Measurement System
ISO 10012:2003 helps you plan your total measurement system....
Statistics Roundtable: Design of Experiments: A Single Experiment or Sequential Learning
Sequential experimentation lends itself to more efficient and precise answers....
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...
Statistics Roundtable: Superiority, Equivalence and Non-inferiority
Most statistical tests are performed to show whether two measurements, processes, products or treatments are significantly different from each other and whether we can reject the null hypothesis....
3.4 per Million: Six Sigma in Everything We Do?
I was lucky to work for Motorola in the 1980s and early 1990s - right in the middle of the company's transformation. Motorola was at risk as were many U.S. businesses....
Switching From Improvement to Innovation on the Fly
Proceeding with an improvement methodology when it becomes obvious the process lacks the potential to achieve the desired capability can be damaging to an organization's continuous improvement initiatives. Goals will not be reached, and the resulting...
The Science in Six Sigma
The structure Six Sigma provides for managing an organization's improvement initiatives is more important than its conformance quality target. It also guides project leaders and offers an array of analysis tools. In addition to Six Sigma's DMAIC...
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....
Salary Survey – 2006
Regular Employee - Section 12. Salary by Industry
Transportation and aerospace products 14.6 73,759 20.6 68,287 Other products 4.0 74,926 5.2 65,466 Service sector Construction services 0.8% $ 84,698 0.7% $ 93,375 Consulting and other professional, scientific and technical services 6.7 86,784 7.5 85,001...
Salary Survey – 2006
Full Survey
44 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 – 2006
Regular Employee - Section 1. Salary by Job Title
Standard deviation: Standard deviation is a FIGURE A PART 1. REGULAR EMPLOYEE RESULTS Section 1 Salary by Job Title Comparison of Salaries of Full- Time And Part- Time Employees 4,731 ( difference) 77,049 ( 2006) 72,318 ( 2005) 4,777 ( difference) 71,584...
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...
Extending School Improvement Beyond Curriculum
Successful schools must meet the needs of multiple stakeholders - students, parents, teachers, administrators, taxpayers, and the community in general. And all this must be accomplished at different grade levels and divergent subject areas. Therefore,...
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....
Climbing the Career Ladder: It's Up to You
With as much information on the subject of career development as there is available today, the real challenge is recognizing that you, not your employer, are responsible for your own career development, and then finding a structure to guide your plans....
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...
Quality in the First Person: A Perfect Corrective Action
Not long ago, my 15-year-old daughter, who has type one diabetes, became severely ill and needed to go to the emergency room. To help determine the cause, I used a standard fishbone analysis....
Documenting a Process - With a Side of Cole Slaw
Barbecue is an art, but it is also a process that can be documented and perhaps even reproduced. A dedicated group of friends conducted a controlled barbecue experiment in an effort to document the cooking method that has guided their efforts over the...
