Quality Management : Quality Assurance
Measure for Measure: A Clearer Picture With RCA
The next step to crafting a successful quality assurance program is conducting root cause analysis (RCA) to examine the individual nonconformities, and then performing trend analysis to determine the most significant nonconformities and the root cause....
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...
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...
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....
Quality in the First Person: Dead Man's Shoes
The responsibility for quality assurance is sometimes bestowed upon reluctant recipients who don't really understand quality. However, basic quality assurance factors don't change between business sectors. The real issue is to get people to listen and...
The Loyalty Elephant
There is an old parable about a group of blind men describing an elephant. Lacking vision, they must use their sense of touch to understand what an elephant looks like. Recent articles about the differences between customer satisfaction, customer value...
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...
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 ...
The 2 + 2 Enhancement Process
Quality assurance programs in higher education institutions in northwest Ohio have benefited from improved articulation among the institutions and local manufacturers. Bowling Green State University (BGSU) has offered an Applied Quality Science (AQS)...
What to Do When All of Your Company's Experts Have Been Downsized
External consultants become ever more important to organizations that lose internal specialists to downsizing. Early steps in the consultant selection process include solving internal trust problems and defining needs. The needs may be expressed as...
In this month’s QP, A.V. Feigenbaum outlines five areas quality professionals must focus on to help their companies succeed as the economy recovers. The article is based on remarks he presented at ASQ’s World Conference on Quality and Improvement in May 2009. For a preview of this article, listen to an interview with Feigenbaum from earlier this year and see his conference presentation. You can also check out his past QP articles.
65th Annual Deming Conference of Applied Statistics
December 7–11 | Atlantic City, NJ
Call Walter Young at 610-989-1622 or e-mail demingchair@gmail.com.
Lean and Six Sigma in Product Development Conference
December 8–10 | Miami, FL
Call Worldwide Conventions and Business Forums at 800-959-6549 or visit www.wcbf.com/quality/5101.
ASQ members exchange comments, suggestions, questions and ideas inspired by articles or letters in Quality Progress.
