- Auditing
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Design of Experiments
- Inspection
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Problem Solving
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Quality Control
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Sampling
- Six Sigma
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Teams
- Best Practices
- Total Quality Management
- Change Management
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....
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....
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....
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...
One Size Does Not Fit All
It has been said that academia has lagged behind practice in the development of quality management methods and philosophies, yet academia has done a good job of propagating these concepts. Now academic research has developed two new concepts that will...
Control Charting at the 30,000-Foot-Level, Part 2
In my November 2003 "3.4 per Million" column (p. 67), I described a traditional and a 30,000-foot-level procedure for creating control charts and making process capability/performance assessments for a continuous response....
The Legacy of Ishikawa
Kaoru Ishikawa was a prime mover of quality in Japan who believed in quality through leadership. His six quality concepts form the basis for a holistic approach that is the unique Japanese approach to quality improvement. Ishikawa’s focus on...
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....
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....
The Status Quo's Failure in Problem Solving
The Status Quo's Failure In Problem Solving The best thing top management can do is design a problem solving process for all types of problems by Paul Palady and Nikki Olyai Q U A L I T Y A N D T O P M A N A G E M E N T 34 I A U G U S T 2 0 0 2 I W W W ....
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...
Los Beneficios de PDCA
Utilice este ciclo para mejoramiento continuo de procesos
El ciclo PDCA también se le conoce por otros nombres, el ciclo Shewhart y el ciclo Deming. 5 También se refirió al ciclo PDCA como el ciclo PDSA (donde la 'S' significa Estudio/Study). Deming es acreditado como quien incitó a los Japoneses en los años de ...
Column: Back to Basics: The Benefits of PDCA
Use this cycle for continual process improvement
The PDCA cycle is also known by two other names, the Shewhart cycle and the Deming cycle. Walter A. Shewhart first discussed the concept of PDCA in his 1939 book, Statistical Method From the Viewpoint of Quality Control....
A User Friendly Financial Reporting System
In the late 1980s Master Industries, Inc. began implementing W. Edwards Deming's 14 points and management philosophy to create a customer focused and employee oriented culture committed to continuous improvement. More recently, the company integrated...
What Is Quality?
Pirsig defines quality In our opinion, you must go all the way back to Shewhart's pronouncements about quality to find an Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I J U L Y 2 0 0 1 I 57 Ishikawa's D E F I N I T I O N O F Q U A L I T Y In short, level one quality me...
Teaching the Role of SPC in Industrial Statistics
Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I J U L Y 2 0 0 1 I 89 Teaching the Role of SPC In Industrial Statistics Base the future of a process on statistical investigations of the past by Ralph L. Liberatore S T A T I S T I C S ISCUSSIONS CONCERNING STATIStical pro...
Six Sigma improves both statistical training and processes.
I refer to the definition of statistical thinking published in Glossary and Tables of Statistical Quality Control: Statistical thinking is a philosophy of learning and action based on the following fundamental principles: All work occurs in a system of i...
A Road Map for Quality Beyond Control
This final installment in the "Quality in the 21st Century" helps quality professionals deal with seven problems noted earlier. First, to avoid imposing the one best way, hierarchies and control systems like the ISO 9000 series should give way to...
Cowboy Quality
Mikel J. Harry is the acknowledged leader in the theory and application of Six Sigma. Although Six Sigma is related to the concepts of variation and standard deviation, it goes beyond these ideas. While allowing for some uncontrollable fluctuation...
Why Should Statisticians Pay Attention to Six Sigma?
An Examiniation for Their Role in Six Sigma Methodology
At first, one might conclude that the six sigma methodology is nothing new. It uses statistical methods that have already been proven. It focuses on quality improvement and defect reduction and utilizes project-by-project improvement...
Why Should Statisticians Pay Attention to Six Sigma?
An examination for their role in the six sigma methodology
12. Hoerl and Snee, " Redesigning the Introductory Statistics Course" ( see reference 3). 13. Mikel J. Harry, The Vision of Six Sigma: A Roadmap for Breakthrough ( Phoenix: Sigma Publishing Co., 1994). 14. Mikel J. Harry, This Vision of Six Sigma: Tools ...
Statistical Gymnastics Revisited
A debate on one approach to short-run control charts
Summarizing the results by the medians and the first and third quartiles, I found: 10 Subsamples true median Q1 Q3 x0 0.0027 0.0067 0.0028 0.0157 x1 0.2225 0.2289 0.1119 0.3962 x2 0.9295 0.9324 0.8460 0.9757 v0 0.0027 0.0029 0.0023 0.0054 v1 0.1177 0.122...
Early SQC: A Historical Supplement
The Hawthorne Works of AT&T's Western Electric Company was the site of early applications of statistics to inspection problems. Probability theory at AT&T can be traced to 1903, and its first application to inspection occurred in 1916. By 1922, A. P....
The New Pragmatism: Going Beyond Shewhart and Deming
The pragmatism of Walter A. Shewhart and W. Edwards Deming is contrasted with that of Richard Rorty. Shewhart and Deming were influenced by the work of C. I. Lewis, who based his conceptual pragmatism on ideas of Charles S. Peirce, William James, and...
The Deming View of a Business
Management's commitment to employees and their focus on customers are keys to the organizational change that improves business systems. These concepts pervade the views of W. Edwards Deming, as expressed in his system of profound knowledge and his 14...
More Voices Speak Out on the Future of the Quality Profession
Readers have reacted to the Quality Progress July 1996 special issue on the future of quality. Direct responses from about 24 readers to questions raised in the issue suggest that quality activities will become more integrated within organizations,...
Another Look at "A Graphical Exploration of SPC"
The authors of "A Graphical Exploration of SPC" (May and June 1996 issues of Quality Progress) comment on readers' letters about their two-part article. Among the responses by Hoyer and Ellis are the following. Their examples using the normal...
A Graphical Exploration of SPC Part 1: SPC's definitions and procedures
Special causes of control chart variation are identified by rules. Some of the rules are more sensitive than others, and their probabilistic relevance does not necessarily match the relevance assigned by many quality professionals. For example, it is...
Not the Best Years of Their Lives
The quality profession in the 1940s is revisited through the memories of people like Henry J. Becker, Edward P. Coleman, P. B. Proctor, Richard T. Trelfa, and Ralph Wareham. The fiftieth anniversary of the 1946 founding of the American Society for...
Don't Throw Scientific Management Out with the Bathwater
The history of Taylorism is intertwined with the development of total quality management (TQM). Frederick W. Taylor's scientific management sought to reduce waste and increase productivity in the early 1900s. His seminal work was translated into...
The Legacy of W. Edwards Deming
W. Edwards Deming's contributions have had an impact on both Japan and the United States. His legacy in Japan was the application of statistical methods to quality control. In 1950, the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers, the editorial staff...
