- Auditing
- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Engineering
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Innovation
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Problem Solving
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Function Deployment
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Six Sigma
- Small Business
- Social Responsibility
- Software Quality
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Best Practices
- Theory of Constraints
- Total Quality Management
- Compliance
- Certification/Registration (management system Standards)
- Risk Management
- Information Management
- Customer Requirements
- Food Safety
- Economic Case for Quality
- Change Management
Online Figures - Ramsay
Year Verct( dys) # Rpts FinRpts InvTech #_ Staff 2003 296 31 13 1.00 216 2004 829 24 11 2.24 190 2005 309 22 12 1.65 210 2006 222 22 9 2.35 225 2007 171 17 5 3.58 247 Verct( dys) = verification of claims cycle time # rpts = number of reports for the boar...
Salary Survey 2012: Part 1, Section 1: Salary by Job Title
Figure 1 includes results for: x Full- time employees, part- time employees, x U. S. employees, Canadian employees, International employees Salary by job title for U. S. respondents / FIgUre 1 46,884 50,558 53,970 56,246 57,718 69,279 70,094 72,261 74,13...
Shift Into High Gear
When customers of tgestiona began expressing dissatisfaction about the its inefficient service and delivery processes, it began a transport optimization project that earned gold-level status in the 2012 ASQ International Team Excellence Award process....
Career Corner: Risky Reputation
Formerly the work of marketers, an organization's image and reputation are integral to quality and risk-based management systems. They are everyone's business in sustaining corporate integrity, and they deserve the attention of quality professionals....
Back to Basics: Team Effort
By paying attention to these six critical success factors, process management teams can deliver value and earn a position of influence in any organization’s performance management and improvement efforts....
Follow the Signs
Many change models have been proposed, but one stands out: the transtheoretical model, also known as the health behavior change model. The model originates from directly observing how people really did or didn’t change in response to urgent medical needs....
Back to Basics: Team Advantage
Process management teams provide a framework through which complex, cross-functional processes can be assessed and optimized. By focusing on these seven activities, process management teams can provide the value they are uniquely positioned to deliver....
Expert Answers: January 2012
Cost-of-quality reporting ... Auditing options ......
Is Six Sigma Dead?
There are reports from the field about the death of Six Sigma. The word is that it has been overused, has not brought its expected benefits and that newer methodologies, such as the theory of constraints and systems thinking, are replacing it....
Standards Outlook: The Missing Link
In most organizations, quality and finance behave like independent silos, resulting in excessive costs and unhappy customers and investors....
Online Tables Olson
Globalization, as well as demands from people, business and technology, require organizations to deliver high-quality performance to remain competitive. Quality methods can allow alignment with rapidly changing and increasing customer expectations....
Online Tables Standards Outlook
Developed the following business process measures: 4 � documented results of management review meetings 5 � Customer satisfaction measures 5 � Measurable objectives used in product or service improvement 1 � balanced scorecard ( please indicate measures ...
Reversing Course?
THE OUTSOURCING OF FUNCTIONS once performed by organizations’ internal departments has been increasing in quantity and scope....
Back to Basics: A Tool for Anyone
The balanced scorecard is used to align business activities to an organization’s strategy and monitor organizational performance versus strategic goals. The scorecard traditionally contains information related to four categories: learning and growth...
Best of Both Worlds
Combine flowcharts and turtle diagrams to simplify the presentation of information and clarify process interactions, making employee training and quality management system auditing easier....
If You Build It, They Will Come
After decades of rising healthcare costs and individual stakeholder initiatives to cut expenses, annual medical cost trends continue to outpace all other employer economic indicators. The current economic crisis and federal healthcare reform discussions...
Expert Answers: March 2011
Explaining rework verification ... Getting management involved ... Measurement confusion....
Loud and Clear
An company's use of metrics to drive and measure success can help it maintain a leadership position in its industry. A commitment to applying performance management tools has increased efficiencies, reduced cost and improved customer satisfaction scores....
Know More, Do More
If organizations want to take advantage of a changing landscape dotted with new opportunities, products and services, they need to make a substantial investment in educating and retaining a competent labor force....
Salary Survey 2010: Part 1, Section 10: Salary by Number of Employees Overseen
QP 65 Part 1. Regular Employee Results Section 10. Salary by Number of Employees Overseen Rewards for Supervising Others Figure 1 includes results for: x Full- time employees, Part- time employees, x U. S. employees, x Canadian employees, International e...
Salary Survey 2010: The Complete Report
experience by gender / FIGURE 2 More than 20 years 10.1- 20 years 6.1- 10 years 3.1- 6 years $ 6,000 Male Years of experience in quality profession Years of experience in quality profession Female $ 4,000 $ 2,000 0 $ 2,000 $ 4,000 $ 6,000 1- 3 years Less...
Statistics Roundtable: Tried and True
A review of past Statistics Roundtable columns reveals that statisticians and quality professionals are always looking for better ways to increase the breadth and effectiveness of the use of statistical thinking and methods....
Where to Start
Companies are viewing the Toyota situation as a cautionary tale rife with lessons that can benefit all organizations. To help drive those lessons home, QP recruited five quality experts, each of whom broke down one aspect of the fallout....
3.4 per Million: Insight or Folly?
In lean Six Sigma, much training effort is spent on conveying the importance of having a measurement system so that consistent and correct decisions are made relative to assessing part quality and process attributes....
Cover Your Bases
Recently, we were asked to give a presentation to a graduate-level organizational development (OD) class comparing process focused management (PFM) to OD. The request led us to conclude the complementary nature of PFM and OD is not well understood....
Think Again
If we stop and contemplate why we think of audit results as pass or fail, we may become more aware of how our mentality affects the way we behave during an audit and how that mind-set influences others....
3.4 per Million: Digging the Holistic Approach
Few will argue we live in a dynamic world where change is accelerating. What often goes unnoticed is that along with this rapid change, there is the opportunity and the need to improve....
Standards Outlook: The Right Approach
The process approach is at the heart of a quality management system (QMS) defined by ISO 9001. And, as everyone knows, it’s necessary to have the old ticker checked out from time to time....
Tune Up
Six Sigma has many meanings. In its simplest context, Six Sigma can be defined statistically as the attempt to achieve near-perfection by having no more than 3.4 errors per million opportunities, or being 99.997% correct (or defect-free)....
Progress Report
Six Sigma has been a hot topic discussed and implemented globally in the business world, nonprofit organizations and even governments. There is comparatively less research, however, into how to assess the maturity of Six Sigma implementation....
Statistics Roundtable: Make Data Matter
Is data analysis an art or a science? Arguments exist for both sides, and many people simply come down in the middle: it’s both....
Talent Show
When an HR team determined it could save its company millions of dollars through stronger retention of customer service (representatives, leadership raised a collective eyebrow and quickly asked HR to make it happen....
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....
3.4 per Million: Putting It All Together
For companies that have been asking themselves how to achieve even more improvement, the answer lies in developing a comprehensive process management system that integrates three critical components....
Newer Better Faster
The Small Business Administration has indicated that the majority of innovations are consistent with the continuous improvement commonly used in the define, measure, analyze, improve and control (DMAIC) Six Sigma method....
3.4 per Million: After the Low-Hanging Fruit
There are four major approaches for organization-wide improvement efforts that fall under the label “lean Six Sigma,” as evidenced by current practices at many industrial organizations, service organizations and consulting firms....
Two Are Better Than One
Management need and my personal curiosity recently led me to take a closer look at the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). My work pointed out similarities and differences between SOX and ISO 9001....
A Framework for Business Ethics
Profit maximization is, of course, the main and foremost objective for any commercial organization. Most modern organizations realize that to survive in today’s competitive arena, customers have to be satisfied....
Lean Six Sigma's Evolution
When Motorola rolled out its initial Six Sigma system in 1987, there were no Green Belts, Black Belts, Master Black Belts, Champions or any of the infrastructure or focused training we have come to associate with modern practices in Six Sigma....
Standards Outlook: Auto Industry Drives to Improve Healthcare
The U.S. auto industry has been challenged by its need to compete in a global marketplace while burdened by healthcare expenses for workers and retirees....
Lean Lessons: In the Office: Where Lean and Six Sigma Converge
When focused on the reduction in process variability, Lean Six Sigma efforts can improve the predictability of the office environment and improve the flow of information....
Six Sigma and Baldrige: A Quality Alliance
The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award has evolved from a way to recognize the best quality management practices to a comprehensive framework for world-class performance....
3.4 Per Million: How to Identify and Select Lean Six Sigma Projects
Lean Six Sigma is a powerful method for improving existing products, processes and services. Six Sigma was developed by Motorola in 1987. Motorola’s Six Sigma yielded significant financial results...
QFD's Evolution in Japan and the West
Although the theory of quality originated in the United States, early industrial applications predominantly took place in Japan. Yoji Akao conceived quality function deployment (QFD), a concept that is a vital management tool for new product...
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...
Financial Control and Quality
The case for quality should be easy to make, but it is not always obvious to top management who must be aware of and control the corporation’s finances in order to comply with federal regulations. There are two aspects to measuring financial control -...
Hospital Reduces Medication Errors Using DMAIC and QFD
The medication error rate at Illinois' Alton Memorial Hospital was low when compared to national statistics, but the hospital knew cost savings would be significant if this statistic was lowered even further. A multidisciplinary team sought the help of...
Apply Six Sigma To Sales and Marketing
A common misconception regarding Six Sigma is that it applies only to manufacturing processes and that its fact-based problem solving methodology doesn't transfer to business processes such as marketing and sales. These people believe that a...
Statistics Roundtable: Process Variation: Enemy and Opportunity
As the giants of scientific management and the quality movement long ago pointed out, work takes place in a series of interconnected processes....
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...
Measuring the Cost of Quality for Management
Over the years, few organizations have adopted a reliable method for measuring and reporting cost of quality (COQ) and used it to improve operations. Since the avoidance of reduced profits from quality initiatives is seldom measured or reported by...
One Good Idea: Improve Product Development Using IPD
As with many processes at IBM, product development can be summarized with the three-letter abbreviation IPD--Integrated Product Design. Simply put, IPD is a systematic process for product development....
Making It Look Over Easy
Sunny Fresh Foods was the first food company to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1999. The manufacturer of egg based products won the award again in 2005, this time applying in the manufacturing category, having outgrown the small...
Digesting Complicated Processes
Businesses today face the challenge of balancing innovation with the need to maintain control of processes. The introduction to ISO 9001 contains a process model called the process approach that is based on the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle and can be...
Promoting Quality In Your Organization
A 2004 survey of industry executives showed that while nearly all agreed that quality favorably influences profits, few had actually used quality methods. Quality professionals can play a significant role in supporting performance management initiatives...
Back to Basics: Best Practices in Auditing
Organizations conduct audits to examine a business process and evaluate the process’s compliance with internal and external requirements. They also use audits to implement continuous improvements. Internal and supplier audits allow management to:...
Statistics Roundtable: If You're Not Keeping Score, It's Just Practice
Despite the fundamental importance of measurement and measurement systems, statisticians and quality professionals engaged in process improvement and quality studies frequently find numerous gaps, including:...
8 Dimensions of Excellence
Despite a stated desire to be customer focused, most companies tend to measure process performance more intensely than the outcomes customers experience. The 8 Dimensions of Excellence expand and balance the definition of success, beginning with the...
Back to Basics: That's So Random - or Is It?
Assignable cause, random variation, process stability, process capability—these terms can easily confuse those new to process management. Does random variation in a process automatically require process improvement?...
Standards Outlook: QMSs and EMSs Support Financial Management Systems
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was adopted in 2002 in response to scandals, such as the ones at Enron and WorldCom, and other misuse of corporate resources. In 2003, Paul Palmes and I started an effort to integrate...
Standards & Registrars Directory
TS TR TL RS QS MD 9KS 14K 9K CR CE AU AS TR CS SPC QS 9KS 14K 9K CS VD6 TS TR TL SPC QS MD 9KS 14K 9K CS CE AU AS TS TR SPC 9KS 14K 9K CS AU AS TS QS MD 9KS 14K 9K CSD AU AS 9KS 9K CR AU VD6 TS TR SPC QS MD 9KS 14K 9K CS VD6 TS RS QS 9KS 14K 9K CSD CS AS...
ISO 9000 In Service: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
When the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began requiring ISO 9001 certification for its new business contracts, claims processing contractor Palmetto GBA decided to pursue certification for its existing contracts as well. Getting a...
Genentech Error Proofs Its Batch Records
Like other firms subject to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation, Genentech must provide complete and accurate documentation of processes. In September 2003 an error-proofing project was launched by the good manufacturing practices core team at...
Two Controls, One Result
In the three years since the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), implementing organizations have begun to realize that operating with separate SOX controls is expensive, and they are now looking for a way to integrate SOX controls into their...
Better Processes = Better E-Commerce
Successful e-commerce (EC) requires customer and supplier interaction to be seamlessly integrated with existing business processes. Quality professionals must keep this in mind when redesigning business processes, particularly in the service industry....
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....
Sarbanes-Oxley: Pain or Gain?
The Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) regulatory requirements passed by Congress in 2002 ensures investors are provided with accurate and reliable financial data on all publicly traded companies. Implementation of these requirements can be expensive and difficult....
Why Customer Related Processes Don’t Always Work
One of the original driving factors behind the worldwide adoption of ISO 9000:2000 was the belief it would improve customers’ confidence in the ability of suppliers to meet specified needs, requirements and quality expectations....
What Do CEOs Think About Quality
Quality professionals can count on the support of the American Society for Quality when justifying the cost of quality to upper management. ASQ has conducted a survey of top executives in manufacturing, service, healthcare, and education to determine...
A Software Company’s TL 9000 Success Story
When Ulticom, a small software product company, set out to establish a quality management system it considered a number of international standards before pursuing registration to TL 9000, the telecommunications quality management standard based on ISO...
TQM vs. BPR
What’s the difference between total quality management (TQM) and business process reengineering (BPR)? Though the terms themselves aren’t heard much anymore, many organizations still use the tools in these programs to make changes....
Improve Service And Administration
Variation in business activities is unacceptable and undermines quality. Statistical methods can be applied to all types of business processes to understand relationships between processes, then document and reduce variation. The several strategies...
Column: Standards Outlook: Auditing a Process Based System
Since the clause-by-clause approach to auditing for ISO 9000 no longer works, auditors will need to understand subjective and objective issues, and to determine whether the processes of the Quality Management System are...
Gain a Competitive Edge By Preventing Recalls
Product recalls are a serious problem for consumer products companies. Each year, thousands of products representing hundreds of millions of product units are recalled in the United States for safety reasons....
Best Practices in Process Management
Process improvement tools have been used to evaluate business processes ranging from employee satisfaction to customer help desk support....
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...
A Simple Process Map
This approach will help you easily identify areas for improvement
Traditional organizations built on functional lines suffer from a silo syndrome. Each function or department acts like a silo whose output is tossed over the wall to the next function....
A Global Approach to ISO 9000
The implementation of quality management standards across multiple sites within an organization presents unique challenges. Johnson Controls' Government Systems and Services (GSS) changed its ISO 9000 approach and turned it into a model system for its...
Process Mapping's Next Step
The sophisticated technology of process simulation is explained from a nontechnical viewpoint. Simulation technology enables the accurate analysis of complex business processes. The key benefit is that all the analysis and testing take place in a...
Column: Career Corner: Add Value To Quality Audits
[Abstract from article]
Quality auditors should understand and align their reports with internal audit reports. Why? Our quality and ISO 9000 audits usually go no higher than a second level manager. Pre-Enron, 24% of internal audits went directly to...
Check Out This Baldrige Winner
In 1993 Clarke American, a manufacturer of bank checks, faced a major business crisis due to industry consolidations and competition from direct mail suppliers. It was a defining moment for Clarke's new president and CEO, and a catalyst for the...
Customers: A Love/Hate Relationship?
We are all customers of many organizations and individuals, and as such, are almost daily subject to indifference, neglect, poor service, and failed products. The American Customer Satisfaction Index trend line, which hovers in the low 70s, shows little...
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...
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...
ASQ's Black Belt Certification - A Personal Experience
Together with the growing interest in and use of Six Sigma techniques comes the need to assess the qualifications of those seeking quality leadership roles in organizations. The ASQ certified Six Sigma Black Belt (CSSBB) exam is a practical and cost...
Peter F. Drucker: Delivering Value to Customers
Before Peter F. Drucker published his seminal book defining management as a formal discipline, there was no coherent body of knowledge addressing management issues. Drucker rejects the commonly held belief that the purpose of business is to make a...
From Quality to Business Success
Quality professionals have made little progress in communicating how to convert quality tools and methods into a foundation for sound business management. The model "quality as a profit center (QPC)" makes the case that every facet of a quality...
Destination: ISO 9001
When in 1999 Nebraska manufacturer Nucor Corporation announced that it would require each of its Vulcraft divisions to achieve ISO 9001 certification, the Norfolk Division had two paths from which to choose. They decided that rather than wait until the...
What Should Be Changed?
Tools from two change management systems are compared to show which give managers the best results when implementing changes. The theory of constraints (TOC) features a set of five tools to examine the entire system for continuous improvement. One of...
Design for Six Sigma: 15 Lessons Learned
Despite its growing popularity, Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is a difficult transition for most companies. Six Sigma professionals from a number of major corporations share their experiences switching from a deterministic to a probabilistic design...
Expect the Unexpected
The Idaho State Department of Water Resources (IDWR), whose mission is to provide oversight for the management of water within the state of Idaho, recently converted its Cobol based ADABAS database system to an structured query language (SQL) server...
The State of Quality Auditing
Internal, quality, operational, safety, environmental, compliance, and customer-supplier audits will converge in the near future. In particular, the model is likely to be adopted by publicly held organizations. Because many concepts of internal control...
Resolving The Process Paradox: A strategy for launching meaningful process improvement
Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) is critical to business strategy. To improve its value creating abilities, organizations must continuously improve their value creating processes. Before implementing process improvement, organizations should...
Business Process Orientation: Do You Have It?
The current business environment, characterized by global competition, demanding customers, and e-commerce, requires the best organizations to become faster, more flexible, and customer-focused. Process orientation and process reengineering are concepts...
Quality Professionals Around the World Share Similar Concerns, Experiences
The International Chapter of ASQ has grown from about 25 members in 1956 to more than 5,000 members in about 90 countries by 2000. Quality professionals worldwide want to hold on to a core set of principles, and similar challenges face the quality...
The Power of Quality Thinking in Sales and Management
Customer loyalty and revenue may be increased through the application of quality principles to the sales process. In the field of sales and marketing, quality thinking relies on the belief that the most effective method for increasing earnings over the...
Hustle, That's All
The Earle M. Jorgensen Company has always focused on service quality. The company, which distributes steel and aluminum bar, tube, and plate products in the U.S. and Canada, has found its commitment to service quality to be both a blessing and a...
You don't have to be awful to be a statistician, but it helps.
Using experimental design to perfect products and processes
One strategy might be to examine combinations of ingredients in a two- level factorial design as seen in Table 1. A statistical thinking practitioner, however, would look at the entire process and wonder if a screening design of the various ingredients, ...
Building a Better Doctor
Both the content and delivery of the medical education program at the University of Sydney in Australia changed in fundamental ways due to the application of quality tools. With the participation of staff and students, the Faculty of Medicine initiated...
Too Many Types of Quality Problems
Categorizing problem types can help practitioners in the quality field to focus their attention on relevant past experiences and problem solving techniques. This approach requires the definition of appropriate problem categories and communicating them...
