- Auditing
- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Engineering
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Innovation
- ISO 14000
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Problem Solving
- Process Capability
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Function Deployment
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Safety
- Six Sigma
- Small Business
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Best Practices
- Theory of Constraints
- Total Quality Management
- Certification/Registration (management system Standards)
- Risk Management
- Customer Requirements
- Food Safety
- Economic Case for Quality
- Continuous Improvement
3.4 per Million: The Right Decision
As the Six Sigma Academy led large deployments at Allied Signal, GE and other organizations in the 1990s, one of the great benefits realized was linking define, measure, analyze, improve and control-based project improvement to financial performance....
Moving Right Along
Art is knowledge kept in the artist’s mind. Science is knowledge that is documented. The goal of any lean organization is to transfer art to science: tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge. Applying lean to aid in the process of control is vital....
Ask, and Ye Shall Receive
Journalists are experts in managing conversational flow and encouraging people to open up and provide vital information. Their techniques can serve auditors well as they navigate the frustrating quagmire of audit and assessment interviews....
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...
Standards Outlook: Effective Audit Programs
Today's organizations need to be agile and responsive to the changing requirements in private and public business sectors. Properly directed, internal audit program resources can help an organization stay focused and uncover improvement opportunities....
Keep on Truckin’
In July 2005, a transportation representative at Bayer MaterialScience identified a potential problem with the way the company chose its shipping carriers. Bayer, a global manufacturer of polymers used as raw materials for products such as compact...
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....
Smooth Approach
Traditional internal audits fulfill a need for companies with fresh ISO 9001 implementations. But for organizations with mature systems, an innovative approach called an appreciative internal quality audit can take them beyond compliance to excellence....
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....
A Dose of DMAIC
Ruby hospital, a multispecialty for-profit facility in Calcutta, India, was the first in Eastern India to embrace ISO 9001 and is the only one in the country to have successfully deployed a Six Sigma improvement program....
Back to Basics: A Call for Improvement
It’s a common perception that customer phone support is a resource-draining operation. This misconception results in many call center cost reduction projects but few process improvement initiatives. Basic tools can be used to improve a call center....
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,...
Avoid Random Acts of Improvement With Baldrige
Organizations can use the best project execution methods, such as Six Sigma and lean, but be disappointed with the results if key strategic goals are not addressed. Improvement efforts should begin by first considering the characteristics of the...
Lean Lessons: Lean Kaizen in the 21st Century
Adapted from a chapter of Lean Kaizen, the author offers key takeaways from the Toyota Production System (TPS). He describes how the kaizen method is the foundation of the The Toyota Way and how it emphasizes efficiency, problem solving and...
Career Corner: Adapt to Today's Risk Based Environment
Not long ago, during a discussion about innovation, a nontraditional student of mine told me that if my ideas were more than 18 months old, they were probably out of date....
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...
One Good Idea: Under One Roof
Quality function deployment (QFD) is a great tool for designing a business based on the voice of the customer. Many quality tools are multifaceted....
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...
Career Corner: The Making of a Knowledge Worker
Add value, become indispensable, be willing to be itinerant, and you will prosper.
This is the story of Dan Sawyer. Sawyer is an expert in the emerging areas of engineering and technology governance and the application of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to technology....
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...
Career Corner: Has Information About Quality Become a Liability?
While having lunch with a good friend not long ago, I gained unique insight into a very real concern for those of us in the quality profession and the organizations we work with....
Standards Outlook: Developing the Voluntary Healthcare Standard
The new Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) voluntary standard for healthcare delivery is in its second review, with an anticipated launch no later than early 2008. AIAG also is pursuing partners for the publication from the healthcare sector....
Measuring the Cost of Quality for Management
Over the years, few organizations have adopted a reliable method for measuring and reporting cost of quality (COQ) and used it to improve operations. Since the avoidance of reduced profits from quality initiatives is seldom measured or reported by...
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...
Digesting Complicated Processes
Businesses today face the challenge of balancing innovation with the need to maintain control of processes. The introduction to ISO 9001 contains a process model called the process approach that is based on the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle and can be...
Lean Lessons: Value Stream Mapping--an Introduction
Value stream mapping (VSM) can be an extremely powerful tool, combining material processing steps with information flow as well as other important related data. VSM is arguably one of the most powerful lean tools for an organization......
Standards Outlook: Process Auditing and Techniques
Process audits are highly focused, but their effective techniques are not always understood. Because there is no sanctioned process audit standard, anyone can claim to be doing process audits....
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,...
Simple Tools for Complex Systems
Complex problems don't always require complex solutions. Pareto analysis and process mapping are examples of simple tools that can reduce the defects of a complex manufacturing process. A high-tech manufacturer of electromechanical devices put these...
Lean Lessons: Building Blocks
Is your organization wasting its valuable resources? Waste can directly impact your organization’s costs, quality and delivery, and may lead to excess inventory, unnecessary movement, unintentional waiting time, untapped......
Statistics Roundtable: Play It Again, Sam
People who know a lot about old movies say Humphrey Bogart, who played Rick Blaine in Casablanca, never really said, "Play it again, Sam" to Dooley Wilson, who played Sam. But the saying continues to stick....
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...
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...
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...
What Do Online Customers Value?
Burgeoning e-commerce sales point to the pivotal role of the Internet as an effective marketing tool. An online survey was used to determine which website design features have the strongest consumer appeal. One section of the survey gathered background...
Where's the Money?
Proving system and process auditing is a value added service has been a topic of considerable interest recently....
Lean Thinking for Knowledge Work
Productivity in the service sector trails manufacturing by a wide margin. Since the early 1990s, the Toyota Production System (TPS) has been heralded as the standard for manufacturing environments, but early attempts to apply it to nonproduction work...
Lean Glossary
A glossary defines terms commonly associated with lean...
Outsourcing Quality
Our company provides outsourced quality services to businesses and federal agencies. How is business? It's booming. There has been a dramatic expansion of outsourced quality services in the last year....
Opportunities Are Everywhere
As the distinction between quality management and business management fades, an unprecedented confluence of trends and forces offers unique opportunities for quality professionals. Sporadic cost cutting campaigns are being replaced by business...
A Statistician Looks at Inventory Management
A major problem facing companies today is how to promptly deliver products to customers without tying up too much capital in the form of inventory buffers. The incorporation of statistical models into supply chain management tactics helps in sizing and...
Let's Get Statistical
Many of us who spend considerable time working with and implementing quality management system (QMS) standards are usually in a mode I like to call “system think.”...
Develop a Process Based Management System
An ISO 9001 team charged with developing a process based quality management system needs a thorough understanding of the company's current business management system in order to avoid conflict and unnecessary paperwork. While the QMS development team...
The Growth of Risk Management
The quality profession and ASQ were very successful during the l980s and '90s. ASQ surged ahead in membership, national prominence and public policy influence....
Simplify Baldrige for Healthcare
The growing number of applicants for the Baldrige award in healthcare points to the need for a set of tools to help organizations assess themselves. A healthcare self-assessment matrix and opportunity for improvement worksheets are provided to help...
Use Basic Quality Tools To Manage Your Processes
The 2000 revision of ISO 9001 stresses the importance of process in a company's quality system. However, many firms operating under the traditional hierarchical view of structure have found it difficult to make the transition. The experience of a...
Who Attends ASQ Section Meetings and Events?
When the Jacksonville, Florida ASQ section was threatened with deactivation due to inactivity, dedicated volunteers used telephone surveys to determine what members wanted. Survey results made clear the necessity to set strategic objectives for planning...
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...
Twelve Ways to Add Value to Audits
Much has been said and done in the last couple of years related to organizational improvement and value added auditing....
At Your Service
"Boeing Aerospace Support (AS) and Caterpillar Financial Services Corp. (CFSC), 2003 winners of Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards in the service industry, have proven once again that quality pays rather than costs. As Baldrige award applicants,...
ISO 9001 Made Easy
ISO 9001 is a quality management system (QMS) standard that requires an organization to meet its own requirements and those of its customers and regulators....
Column: Standards Outlook: Is It Already That Time — Again?
For most organizations, the transition to ISO 9001:2000 is a recent memory. The transition period just ended last December....
Outsourcing and Jobs
Jim (name changed) had been looking for a quality director or manager position with a pharmaceutical company in the Northwest. We'd met at one of my Value Added Auditing workshops, where he'd been upgrading his risk management skills....
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....
How to Implement and Audit the Process Approach
If you organize your management system according to how business processes work instead of by departments or elements of a standard, you are using the system-process management approach. The ISO standards community has provided several guidance documents ...
Column: Emerging Sectors: All Aboard the ISO 9000 Express
The Chicago Transit System, serving approximately 1.5 million riders every day in Chicago and 38 neighboring suburbs, is a vital component of Northeastern Illinois' economy. Operated by the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) and including buses, trains and...
Quality, Not Quantity, of Management
This article is from the book The Power of Management Capital: Utilizing the New Drivers of Innovation, Profitability, and Growth in a Demanding Global Economy, available through Quality Press, item number
Management System Integration: Can It Be Done?
In October 1996, the International Organization for Standardization, known as ISO, issued the final version of ISO 14001, an international standard for environmental management systems (EMS)....
Quality's Path to the Boardroom
Combining the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 20021 and elements of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 quality and environmental management standards may provide a powerful tool for elevating the quality assurance function status in many U.S. companies....
Managing Supplier Relationships
Effective supply chain management (SCM) can provide companies the competitive edge by adding stability and predictability to their supply stream. Manufacturers can identify vendors that provide high quality service and developing close,...
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,...
ASQ's World Partners
One of ASQ's objectives is to become a global advocate for excellence and a provider of information and learning opportunities about quality. Having decided to take a more active role in collaborating with existing national quality associations, ASQ is...
Column: Back to Basics: Process Improvement
Even minor changes can make an impact
Click here for Spanish.
After her first attempt to lead a process-improvement team failed to yield workable strategies, the author used an example from her...
Create a Lean, Mean Machine
"Lean" has been defined as a systematic approach to identifying and eliminating waste through continuous improvement. Lean focuses on value added flow of resources from the customer’s point of view. To compete in today’s economy a company must...
Column: One Good Idea: The Importance of Improved Design
How product design affects significant factors in manufacturing
When a company learned that they were losing money manufacturing the most expensive winch in their catalog, they contacted a local professor of design for...
Big Results With Less
Recent world events have put pressure on companies involved in security-related technologies and systems to rapidly increase their production. Garrett Metal Detectors was able to respond to a 300 percent increase in orders for its handheld and...
The Little Hot Dog Stand That Could
Pal's Sudden Service isn't a large, sophisticated corporation, but that didn't stop the Tennessee-based restaurant chain from winning the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA). Pal's two executives believe there is a process for everything...
Column: Career Corner: Add Value To Quality Audits
[Abstract from article]
Quality auditors should understand and align their reports with internal audit reports. Why? Our quality and ISO 9000 audits usually go no higher than a second level manager. Pre-Enron, 24% of internal audits went directly to...
Should You Transition to ISO 9001:2000?
With the deadline little more than a year away, indications are that fewer than 20 percent of organizations whose business and quality objectives include compliance to the ISO 9000 standards have made the transition. Six ISO 9000 experts present their...
Check Out This Baldrige Winner
In 1993 Clarke American, a manufacturer of bank checks, faced a major business crisis due to industry consolidations and competition from direct mail suppliers. It was a defining moment for Clarke's new president and CEO, and a catalyst for the...
Column: Standards Outlook: ISO 9001:2000's Process Approach
A new concept or the same old stuff?
Questions and answers on the process approach of ISO...
Quality Glossary
A handy reference is provided of quality terms, acronyms, and key people in the history of quality. Information is derived from a variety of sources and compiled by the editorial staff of the American Society for...
New Industry Specific Quality Certification
The Canadian secondary wood products manufacturing industry is made up largely of small enterprises with little access to capital, a history of low-paying jobs, and a poorly educated workforce. Global competition in the sector is fierce, and quality...
Column: Standards Outlook: Add Value to ISO 9001:2000 Audits
The standard's revision provides the opportunity to help organizations improve the way they do business
Quality auditors have been criticized for not adding value to what they do for clients. The ISO 9001:2000 revision provides an opportunity to change...
Peter F. Drucker: Delivering Value to Customers
Before Peter F. Drucker published his seminal book defining management as a formal discipline, there was no coherent body of knowledge addressing management issues. Drucker rejects the commonly held belief that the purpose of business is to make a...
Bull or Bear?
Citigroup Caterpillar Constellation Energy Group Campbell Soup Co. Cisco Systems Cummins Chevron Texaco Corp. Dominion Resources E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Co. Dell Computer Corp. Walt Disney Co. Duke Energy Corp. Consolidated Edison Inc. Eastman Kodak Co...
How To Compare Six Sigma, Lean and the Theory of Constraints
Many process improvement methodologies appear to conflict with each other, making it difficult to decide which best fits an organization's needs and culture. Three improvement methodologies - Six Sigma, Lean thinking, and Theory of constraints - are...
On Today's Menu: Quality
Despite concerted efforts by the food industry to comply with federal food safety regulations, the number of food safety incidents has been steadily increasing. Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) is a quality management system that...
Column: Standards Outlook: ISO 9000:2000 Product Support Initiative
Effort to provide value to users grows out of standards validation work
When the International Organization for Standardization, known as ISO, Technical Committee (TC) 176 began the process of drafting revised editions of the ISO 9000 series in 1996, a significant goal was to verify and validate the drafts to ensure they...
Column: Standards Outlook: From Deming to ISO 9000:2000
Lip service isn't enough; management must understand and carry out its obligations to achieve sustainability and growth
For quality programs to be successful, management must take an active role in their implementation. Plenty of guidelines are available in the work of quality leaders such as W. Edwards Deming and in more recently developed standards and programs such...
Learning From Mistakes
Through 42 I Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I J U N E 2 0 0 1 L E A R N I N G F R O M M I S TA K E S Current State Value Stream Map FIGURE 1 Yearly forecast Monthly orders Turn 01 I = 37,516 107 days I = 1,270 3.6 days I = 1,612 4.6 days I = 841 2.4 days ...
Capturing Financial Benefits From Six Sigma
As the team moves from the define to the control stage of the DMAIC methodology, the accounting and finance SME plays an influential role, as shown in Table 1. 40 I Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I M A Y 2 0 0 1 C A P T U R I N G F I N A N C I A L B E N E...
How To Find the Correct Balance Between Standardization and Differentiation
No generalized quality model can fit all organizational needs
I believe, in fact, that for these standards, even more than for product standards, a correct balance between standardization and differentiation is important for the benefit of the free market. Success led ISO 9000 to break down the barriers separating c...
Column: World View: How to find the correct balance between standardization and differentiation.
For system and management standards such as the ISO 9000 series, even more than for product standards, a correct balance between standardization and differentiation is important for the benefit of the free market. The value added by having a standard -...
Column goes monthly with new contributors
This month six advise on a typical career dilemma
I have a bachelor's degree plus ASQ's quality auditor and quality engineer certifications. He earned a master's degree in statistics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and holds the following ASQ certifications: quality engineer, reliability engineer, qu...
The State of Quality Auditing
Internal, quality, operational, safety, environmental, compliance, and customer-supplier audits will converge in the near future. In particular, the model is likely to be adopted by publicly held organizations. Because many concepts of internal control...
A World of Opportunity
Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 0 I 57 ASQ and other quality societies adapt to changing times by Spencer Hutchens Jr., chair, ASQ International Task Force I N T E R N A T I O N A L Q U A L I T Y UALITY PROFESSIONALS THE WORLD over ...
The Branding of Six Sigma
Brand yourself the same way
So, back to Six Sigma branding: The wannabe quality gurus took their lead from the leading marketing books. To build Six Sigma brand equity, they did what marking experts advise. Wannabe gurus write Six Sigma books to create awareness and buzz....
Semiconductor Assembly Council Promotes Use of Quality Tools
The member companies of the Semiconductor Assembly Council represent manufacturers, assembly and test subcontractors, and end user companies. SAC was established to certify subcontractor quality and process control systems. The member firms represent...
ISO 9000:2000 will create challenges, require new competencies
All About Auditing
Third-party environmental and quality system auditors will be interested in the new (still in development) system audit standard. Since the new ISO 9001 standard contains many of these not-so-easy-to-audit requirements, an agreement was reached that requi...
Continuous Process Improvement When It Counts Most
Managers are challenged to address the radical changes that have occurred in the manufacturing industry in the past two decades. Managers often use continuous process improvement and computer simulations to help them reduce waste, improve quality,...
Different Roads to Auto Quality: The Experts Speak Out
Product quality has become increasingly important in the automotive industry, but the definition of the term and the best ways to achieve product quality remain subjects of debate. Quality has been defined in a number of ways in the rapidly changing...
Great Quality Consulting
Improvements must be connected to external results
Reid teaches the popular ASQ workshop "Skills for the Quality Consultant" and is the principal consultant with the Performance Design Group in Sarasota, FL. He offers some valuable thoughts and suggestions for those who want to position themselves as succ...
Column: Career Corner: Great Quality Consulting
The future for quality consultants won't rest solely on their ability to improve processes, design interventions or give advice. "Improving processes or even improving internal performance is not sufficient if we cannot connect the improvement to...
Back to the Future
The ASQ Foresight 2020 project has generated scenarios on the future of quality and the role of the quality professional. Facilitated by the Institute for Alternative Futures, the project is a successor to ASQ's first futures study, which had 2010 as...
Total Quality Requires Serious Training
Simultaneous training of line workers and their direct supervisors is a key to successful implementation of total quality (TQ). A three-module training system is suggested. Module A covers a variety of topics that must be well integrated: an...
Industry leaders seek self-declaration in lab testing.
Some industry leaders are pushing supplier's declaration of conformity (SDOC) with a recent call for industry self-declaration in the realm of lab testing, as well as for management system standards. Besides ITI, members of the Industry Cooperation for St...
