- Cost of Quality
- Criteria for Performance Excellence
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Design of Experiments
- Engineering
- Environmental Manag. and Sustainability
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Innovation
- ISO 14000
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Problem Solving
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Function Deployment
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Safety
- Six Sigma
- Small Business
- Social Responsibility
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Theory of Constraints
- Total Quality Management
- TL 9000
- Certification/Registration (management system Standards)
- Information Management
- Customer Experience Management
- Customer Requirements
- Food Safety
- Economic Case for Quality
- err
- Change Management
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....
Critical Stage
Has Six Sigma been a good thing? While this is a straightforward question, there isn’t a simple answer....
Extra Credit
Recent data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development indicate the United States ranks 12th among major industrialized countries in higher education attainment....
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)....
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....
Progress Report
Six Sigma has been a hot topic discussed and implemented globally in the business world, nonprofit organizations and even governments. There is comparatively less research, however, into how to assess the maturity of Six Sigma implementation....
A Frank Discussion
The Pittsburgh section has been an ASQ stalwart. It was one of a handful sections that co-founded ASQ in the 1940s. Because of the concentration of manufacturing in the area, Pittsburgh has always been home to many ASQ members—and a hotspot for quality....
Pyramid Power
The next evolutionary step for Six Sigma could be a method called 6TOC (pronounced “six-tock”) that combines principles of lean Six Sigma with the theory of constraints....
Online Sidebar Creasy
The evolution to 6TOC includes its predecessors, Six Sigma, lean manufacturing, lean Six Sigma and the theory of constraints...
Change That Sticks
Process improvement is gaining more attention as organizations face budget cuts, competition from developing markets overseas and a challenging economy....
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...
Keeping Current Online Table
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award: National Institute of Standards and Technology ( NIST) in partnership with ASQ Award criteria are built on seven core values: leadership, strategic planning, customer and market focus, information analysis, human ...
The Road to Improvement
Registration of public organizations to the ISO 9001 quality management standard can be difficult because of their complex operations and extensive documentation....
Raising the Bar
Now more than ever, companies must measure and manage their quality costs to compete at a high level in today’s global marketplace....
Blurred Vision
Many quality professionals have noticed that business leaders still consider quality and business improvement to be separate topics. While this isn’t the case everywhere, it appears to have become more common....
Far-Sighted
In the first year nonprofit organizations could apply for the honor, Coral Springs became the first local government to take home a Baldrige award by proving it didn't emphasize the present at the expense of the future....
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....
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...
Good Vibrations
Modern quality management principles define quality as customer satisfaction with product and service. SCGC has a web page where guitar owners can have questions about their guitars answered by Hoover or Roberts. With employee empowerment accompanying goo...
Construyendo un Equipo de Calidad
Pasos simples para poder involucrar al resto del personal de su empresa en la mejora continua....
Back to Basics: Building a Quality Team
A series of simple yet effective actions can help you, the quality leader, direct change and build momentum by tying company objectives to operating profit....
DFX and DFSS: How QFD Integrates Them
The differences in concept and application between design for excellence (DFX) and design for Six Sigma (DFSS) are discussed, and it is shown how they can be effectively integrated by using quality function deployment. Quality must be built into a...
One Good Idea: Process Optimization for Service Organizations Isn't Rocket Science
The following is intended for service industry people who are mostly clueless about quality improvement. (You manufacturing people can skip the page because you already get this, right?)...
Quality in the First Person: Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due
Shortly after retiring from the business world, I had the opportunity to spend several semesters as an adjunct instructor in the school of business at a small, local private college....
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...
QFD's Evolution in Japan and the West
Although the theory of quality originated in the United States, early industrial applications predominantly took place in Japan. Yoji Akao conceived quality function deployment (QFD), a concept that is a vital management tool for new product...
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...
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...
ASQ Certification Board Puts Quality Tools to Work
Recognizing the importance of customer satisfaction in strategic planning, the ASQ certification board recently used quality tools to develop customer requirements. To begin the process, a SIPOC (suppliers, inputs, outputs, and customers) diagram was...
The International Growth of Quality
Human, economic, and technological changes in the international arena require that businesses deliver high quality value to customers. Fundamental to any business's competitive strength is its ability to understand and implement the language of quality....
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...
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...
You Can Go Home Again
Jamie Houghton's love for Corning brought him out of retirement and back to the company when it was fighting for survival, due to the decline of the telecommunications industry and decreased demand for Corning's fiber optics. When Houghton returned to...
Consultants' Style: Sometimes Less Is More
When medium to small organizations decide to become ISO 9001 or ISO 14001 registered, they often rely heavily on consultants for training, gap analysis, documentation, and management system development. However, because consultants are expensive, these...
Linking the Supply Chain to TQM
In today's environment of global outsourcing, supplier quality management must transform itself from simply measuring supplier compliance to gathering knowledge, managing risk, and executing project management. Total quality management (TQM) ensures...
Don't Forget the People
Standard practice in quality management has been focused on establishing good systems for quality, but many organizations see these efforts fall short of objectives. The problem is the lack of linkage between the way the workforce perceives and...
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...
3.4 Per Million: The Hard Part: Holding Improvement Gains
You've overcome the obstacles to launch your latest improvement initiative: scarce resources, time pressure, unforeseen glitches at every turn. Now comes the hard part--sustaining the gains....
Annual Quality Awards
The Annual Quality Awards Listing is a guide to automotive, government, international, national, and state quality related awards. The list is organized by type, the award's name and sponsor, criteria, contact information, and notes. To be included in...
Making It Look Over Easy
Sunny Fresh Foods was the first food company to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1999. The manufacturer of egg based products won the award again in 2005, this time applying in the manufacturing category, having outgrown the small...
Bringing Lean To the Office
Lean methods produce quicker results than other quality methods, and they readily apply to office work. Lean uses three principles to create more value while reducing waste and cost. A team of college students gained hands-on lean experience with two...
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,...
A Community College's Long-Term Commitment
Committed leadership is essential to maintaining a focus on continual improvement in any organization. Dallas' Richland College proved this when, under the leadership of long-time president Steven Mittelstet, it became the first community college to...
Quality in the First Person: From Software Programmer to Quality Pro: The Road Less Traveled
Like many quality professionals, I did not intend to become one. I started out with the selfish goal of looking for improvements that would benefit me....
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...
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...
A Quest For Quality
Hamilton Health Services, a Canadian healthcare organization with a multi-site emergency room program, used quality facilitators in six continuous quality improvement projects over a period of one year. Quality facilitators provide resources needed to...
Lean Lessons: All About Lean
Lately, lean has been receiving a lot of attention from quality professionals, management and the media. After getting its start in manufacturing, it has now migrated to nonshop floor activities in sales, customer service, accounting, HR......
What Are Quality Reputations Worth?
The practical successes of Six Sigma have shown that quality initiatives have a substantial effect on an organization's bottom line. Yet quality professionals may experience difficulty convincing managers to keep up the efforts once a quality objective...
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...
Quality in the First Person: You Can Call It Fred
My business partner and I were speakers at an ASQ Six Sigma conference when I ran into a colleague we had met the year before. She asked if I remembered our discussion from the previous year regarding the pushback many quality professionals get...
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....
How Do You Begin?
So, how did I begin in quality? I began knowing basically nothing about it and evolved my knowledge over 13 years....
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...
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...
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...
Seduce Them With Success
The first commandment of Six Sigma quality is that you must get top management commitment in order to succeed. The truth is that half the firms that have taken that path have failed. Six Sigma's strength is in resolving linear cause-effects, but culture...
ISO 9000 In Service: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
When the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began requiring ISO 9001 certification for its new business contracts, claims processing contractor Palmetto GBA decided to pursue certification for its existing contracts as well. Getting a...
Seven Steps To Measure Supplier Performance
Most organizations use some type of supplier performance measure, yet few are satisfied with their supplier assessment capabilities and results. Quality professionals are under increasing pressure to avoid supplier problems and retain high performers....
Unintended Consequences
The process approach embodied in ISO 9001 emphasizes the actual activities of an organization that would result in providing a product or service that continuously meets the customer's needs....
Take Action on Customer Satisfaction
Quality managers use customer satisfaction research to determine their company's level of performance and to guide decisions about where to make improvements. The four commonly used models discussed not only provide a measure of customer satisfaction,...
How To Prepare an Excellence Award Application
The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence represents the best business model in the world. Even if your company doesn't expect to win the award, submitting an application has many benefits. Whether your goal is to receive feedback, receive a site...
Better Processes = Better E-Commerce
Successful e-commerce (EC) requires customer and supplier interaction to be seamlessly integrated with existing business processes. Quality professionals must keep this in mind when redesigning business processes, particularly in the service industry....
A Solid Foundation
Any discussion of implementing Six Sigma is typically accompanied by a conversation around top management buy-in and the fiat that it is a top-down initiative. They are independent issues, so I'll separate them for discussion and clarity....
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...
Quality Problems and Their Real Costs
When considering the cost of poor quality, it is important to consider the hidden cost of managerial transactions. If management is distracted from its normal responsibilities, these activities require additional resources. Quality problems respond only...
The Future of Quality: Customer Value
This article is from the book The Power of Management Capital, available through Quality Press, item number P1026. Copyright restrictions do not allow its individual sale or its placement on My ASQ....
Statistical Leadership
Statisticians, as we have known them for almost half a century, may become an endangered species....
Quality Challenges in Global Companies
Quality management system implementation in multinational corporations is often hindered by factors related to cultural differences among its affiliates. A survey indicates major factors affecting QMS implementation include cultural limitations,...
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...
Effective White-Collar Teams: The New Quality Imperative
In nonmanufacturing environments, quality has not had the impact that it has had in production environments because the input, process, output equation is less visible and more difficult to measure. In today’s competitive environment,...
Good Supplier Management Aids New Products Launch
Unisys Corporation, once a vertically integrated company that designed and manufactured most of what was needed to support its products, has changed its focus to providing cost effective solutions to its customers. Since this change requires reliance on...
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....
What Do CEOs Think About Quality
Quality professionals can count on the support of the American Society for Quality when justifying the cost of quality to upper management. ASQ has conducted a survey of top executives in manufacturing, service, healthcare, and education to determine...
A Necessity To Compete Globally
One of the most important things about quality is to hold on to the quality philosophy. Having been trained at Japan’s Mitsubishi Motors I began to see the contrast between America’s luxury style and Japan’s no waste society....
Does Baldrige Make a Business Case for Quality
The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) is a widely accepted model promoting quality management as a means to business success. However, because business results are themselves part of the model, the contribution of the approach-deployment...
Better Teaching with Deming and Bloom
The quality management concepts of W. Edwards Deming can be combined with Benjamin Bloom’s cognitive taxonomy to improve teaching methods. To integrate these concepts, a quality control sheet is developed to monitor improvement, integrate subject...
Climbing Mount Sustainability
This year marks an anniversary of sorts for Interface Inc., which produces about 40% of the world’s commercial carpet tiles. Ten years ago, I challenged my company to a new way of thinking: to embrace a new paradigm...
Making Stakeholders a Strategic Asset
Employees and business partners have an important role to play in organizational improvement. Quality models indicate that managing stakeholders to enhance their value generation capability can be a winning strategy....
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...
Handling the Human Side of Change
Quality efforts and their accompanying flurry of training activities continue unabated in many organizations. Many have morphed to adapt to the current crazes of Six Sigma and lean....
Applying an Excellence Model to Schools
Students, parents and society are demanding much more of schools as education becomes more and more important for national economic competitiveness, growth and even survival....
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....
TQM vs. BPR
What’s the difference between total quality management (TQM) and business process reengineering (BPR)? Though the terms themselves aren’t heard much anymore, many organizations still use the tools in these programs to make changes....
Quality's Six Life Cycle Stages
A tool referred to as “quality life cycle” provides a strategic mechanism to chart and sustain quality while proactively countering shortcomings of its implementation, such as stagnation and limited application, which can ultimately result in failure....
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....
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....
Print Perfect
Branch-Smith Inc., a fourth-generation printing company, had its origins in the unlikely success of a boy born without arms in 1868. The company as it exists today takes inspiration from founder Aaron Smith, who taught himself to type with his toes,...
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...
