March 2003
13 Steps to Certification in Less Than a Year
Ultratech Stepper (UTS), a manufacturer of photolithography equipment, became both ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 14000 certified in less than a year at a cost under $200,000, using only two employees to manage the effort part-time. UTS's quality steering...
Survey for Action, Not Satisfaction
Traditional customer satisfaction processes bring the voice of the customer back to management, but they fail to identify what to improve and how to take action. These failures can be addressed through a strategic customer driven action process (CAP)....
Get Your Shop Measurements Right
Many measurement problems in the shop are due to basic metrology’s being ignored or unknown, and this transforms into what I call bad data disease....
A Quality Manual For the Transition and Beyond
Companies may wonder whether quality manuals structured around the new ISO 9001:2000 format would be acceptable while the firm is still registered to the old ISO 9001:1994 standard. Consensus warrants that if the manual meets all the requirements of the...
How to Set Up a Predictive Maintenance Program
The application of advanced technology through predictive maintenance programs (PMPs) has a major impact on product quality, customer satisfaction, and machine safety. While the proposed European Standard of Documentation on Maintenance will increase...
ASQ News
ASQ activities: Conference speaker on Six Sigma and other topics; producer of video interview of George Box; member of editorial board of the Journal of Quality Technology; column editor for Quality Engineering; ASQ representative on management committee ...
Column: Emerging Sectors: ASQ's Role in Healthcare
In 1992, ASQ's Healthcare Division was formed to encourage research, innovation and the formation of learning partnerships to advance knowledge of healthcare quality....
Column: Frontiers of Quality: Smart Project Selection
If proposed projects are evaluated numerically from 1 to 100, selecting the very best projects may lead into a situation where outliers must be identified. The author discusses a graphical tool known as a box and whisker plot and a version of a test...
Smart Project Selection
Narrow your list of improvement projects with outlier techniques
There are many statistical techniques for identifying outliers, but the two I will discuss here are a graphical tool known as a box and whisker plot and a version of a test called Dixon's outlier test. (Note: Box and whisker plots are often drawn to show ...
Quality Web Watch
www.niso.org/index.html The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) develops standards for libraries, bibliographic and information services, and publishers. The site also includes drafts of standards in development by NISO, a calendar of event...
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