Quality Management : Teams
Off the Ground
None of the 4,000 fasteners that were hand drilled into the fuselage of any C-17 cargo plane was misaligned or had gone missing. For years, Boeing has been building these top-notch planes. It just wanted to build them better....
Incredible Journey
In response to personnel’s safety concerns and rising workers’ compensation costs, a team at Boeing’s C-17 site developed a solution to thwart injury and save money....
Testing the Limits of Team Development
The stages of team development are well known. Not as defined are practical techniques for moving through the process quickly without sacrificing performance. There are examples of how this can be done, including ASQ’s exam review workshops....
Building Task Cohesion to Bring Teams Together
Traditional, homogeneous teams made up of members of the same gender, race, and age tend to be more cohesive and more successful and effective in problem solving, but such sameness can produce bland and predictable solutions. On the other hand, a team...
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 Six Sigma Reduces Medication Errors
Medication errors are a serious threat in the healthcare industry. One mid-sized hospital interested in quality management in several areas undertook a Six Sigma project to determine what policy and practice changes might be needed to remedy the...
Building Customer Satisfaction With Quality
Competition in the marketplace has forced Grayson Homes of Ellicott City, MD to refocus its operating strategy from a family company culture to a team culture stressing mutual respect. A new strategy with a business model approach was devised that...
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,...
Offense and Defense
To improve its quality, an enterprise must fight two battles. It must prevent new problems, such as wear and tear on equipment, increasingly stringent customer requirements, new product introductions and employee turnover, from affecting its processes....
Column: Frontiers of Quality: The Six Sigma Sweep
Like the Packer Sweep, Six Sigma was not totally original. It was built on the work of others and continues to be enhanced. Six Sigma works because it emphasizes focus, planning, constant practice (every project is a practice session) and dedicated...
QOS – A Simple Method for Big or Small
Although there are many quality initiatives in the marketplace, many of them involve a degree of hype. Ford Motor Company’s quality operating system (QOS) is recommended as one offering the most value for the money. A QOS assessment looks at...
Forming Virtual Teams
Despite the continuing growth of virtual teams, not all of them are successful. Reasons for negative attitudes toward virtual teams include lack of facial and body language cues, feelings of isolation, changes in operational norms, and demand for...
AQP Awards Promote Business Results
QUALITY PROGRESS I JUNE 2003 I 31 AQP Awards Promote Business Results by Glenn Bodinson and Raymond Bunch he Association for Quality and Participation ( AQP), now an ASQ affiliate organization, launched its National Team Excellence Award competition in 1...
The Essential Six Sigma
The disciplined quality improvement features of Six Sigma methodology offers companies nearly all of the elements of Total Quality Management (TQM), and it is much easier to incorporate into a business system. In addition, Six Sigma utilizes technical...
7 Steps to Improved Safety for Medical Devices
Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 1 I 37 Sample HACCP Control Chart Incorporating Injection Molding Verification Procedures TABLE 2 1 Raw material receiving Foreign material in resin Effective supplier audit Audit pass Audit by trai...
Journey to the Baldrige
Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 1 I 51 Journey to the Baldrige For winners of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the coveted honor is just one step in their ongoing quest for performance excellence by Debbie Phillips- Do...
How a Good Quality Management System Can Limit Lawsuits
Q U A L I T Y P R O G R E S S I J U N E 2 0 0 1 I 55 How a Good Quality Management System Can Limit Lawsuits Quality professionals can spearhead product liability prevention programs by Randall Goodden P R O D U C T L I A B I L I T Y P R E V E N T I O N ...
Research: The Key to Quality Policies and Procedures
A structured research plan for analyzing a business process is the key to writing quality policies and procedures. Comprehensive and accurate policies and procedures are essential for meeting documentation requirements of standards like the ISO 9000...
Making Teams Work
At the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, a one-year pilot project for introducing a team environment generated seven major observations. The pilot project covered both leader-directed teams and self-directed work teams (SDWTs). The...
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.
