- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Engineering
- Environmental Manag. and Sustainability
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Innovation
- Inspection
- Leadership
- Lean
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Tools
- Social Responsibility
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Supplier Quality
- Theory of Constraints
- Total Quality Management
- Information Management
- Customer Requirements
Online Sidebars Sanders
Increasing movement from quality of product to quality of management and the organization. The systems approaches the quality profession has evolved through ISO 9000 and other management system standards will be valued by organizations looking to bring qu...
What's Up?
Study participants outlined the forces, four scenarios in which they might play out, and the implications to quality, organizations and the profession. Study participants were asked to envision the implications of the key forces and scenarios for quality ...
Futures Study
Forces of Change From All ASQ Futures Studies Table 1 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 Changing values Partnering Quality must deliver bottom- line results Globalization Globalization Globalization Learning systems Management systems will increasingly absorb 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....
Lean Inspection Through Supplier Partnership
Incoming inspection is a nonvalue-added activity that does not improve a product, but only identifies products that do not meet standards. One way to reduce incoming inspection is to move from traditional sample inspection to a system in which the...
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...
Career Corner: Are You Middle-Aged and Counting?
When were you born? For some of you, the answer makes you middle-aged, but that’s OK. Think of the experiences under your belt. Experience is an asset, you know....
Good News - If You're Ready
Futuring is a structured look ahead aimed at enhancing anticipatory skills. ASQ's most recent futures study, conducted in 2005, identified six key forces of change: globalization, innovation, outsourcing, consumer sophistication, value creation, and...
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...
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...
Senior Citizens Get It Done
Stop now! Enter this column only if you meet admission requirements. Those who fail to meet the standard of being a confirmed senior citizen need not apply. Discrimination against young people is in progress....
Put Some SAAS in Your Career
Have you ever wondered why friends, associates or co-workers get ahead faster or move on to other positions? Have you ever assessed your own career?...
Quality From the Inside Out
Organizations know that improving quality of life (QOL) on the job relates to organizational success. Current literature, lacking any information on group behavior, fails to identify the two key factors of self-challenge and relationship building as...
Quality in the Classroom
Institutions of higher learning have only recently begun to address the issue of how to offer quality products and services. The present turbulent economy coupled with the accreditation requirement for relatively low individual faculty course loads...
Can Quality Concepts and Tools Fix the U.S. Election Process?
Five months after the presidential election the true impact of election process errors and the importance of continuous improvement to the process is still becoming apparent. While media attention focused on Florida, the problem is far more widespread....
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...
Finding your next job online.
Web plays a big role when firms look for workers
Thousands of employers, including federal agencies, companies and small businesses, post job openings in these sites. The job auction sites go even further. They can use the site search engine, intelligent agents or do database cross checks to find you ou...
University, Inc.
Institutions of higher education can increase their competitiveness and product value by applying synchronization, zero-defect, and quality control techniques. Supporting such techniques is a systems view in which student education, courses, and...
What's Your Future?
One-half-by-two-by-three rule is key.
Companies want to focus on what they do best--their core competencies or core processes. The inner ring, the organizational core, is composed of corporate insiders, managers, and professionals. This inner ring also determines the organization's core proce...
Lawyers Find a Partner in Quality
The quality-in-law project initiated by Samuel Welch seeks to identify the needs of legal services clients and to use these data to redesign law school programs. One phase of the project analyzed surveys from 151 clients of nine lawyers and small...
The Realistic Model of Higher Education
The primary customers of higher education are employers, while students are products. Accepting this model is a step toward implementation of total quality management in higher education. The model is appropriate for many technical, undergraduate...
The Pursuit of Happiness
Market-based management (MBM) applies free-market concepts to organizations. It is an alternative to the traditional, Taylor-based management found in command-and-control firms. MBM management thrives in a community of individuals who are valued,...
The Zealots and the Old Guard
Fundamental changes to the content and process of undergraduate engineering education are occurring at Arizona State University and a consortium of six other institutions. The changes come about because traditional graduates enter the workplace with...
Leading the Duck at Mission Control
At Wainwright Industries, quality comes from the heart and the head. Symbolic of the emotion that drives the company is its stuffed duck mascot. It represents passion, teamwork, and market anticipation. Factual information is in Mission Control. On...
Reduce the Potential Impact of Product Liability on Your Organization
Prevention and information management are tools for dealing with product liability. An early step in these processes is the naming of a product liability expert within the firm. This expert should attend the design review meetings for a new product....
