- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Engineering
- Environmental Manag. and Sustainability
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Inspection
- ISO 14000
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Metrology
- Problem Solving
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Safety
- Six Sigma
- Small Business
- Social Responsibility
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Best Practices
- Total Quality Management
- TL 9000
- ISO/TS 16949
- Customer Experience Management
- Customer Requirements
- Economic Case for Quality
- Strategic Planning
- Change Management
- Continuous Improvement
Quality in the First Person: Who's On Top?
Leaders appear to encourage a fear-driven and reactive work culture by instituting limiting and detrimental work systems and policies. Throughout my career, I have witnessed these counterproductive efforts again and again....
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...
Get Them in the Game
The key to developing a high-performance, quality-oriented workforce is maintaining a high level of employee engagement....
Career Corner: Show Your Softer Side
There has been little attention and importance placed on softer skills. But more companies are realizing that while an individual’s hard skills will move them ahead quickly, it is the dearth of soft skills that can derail an individual’s advancement....
A Service Framework
To help service quality professionals negotiate the unique challenges they encounter, the ASQ Service Quality Division envisaged the Service Quality Body of Knowledge as an umbrella framework....
Make the Leap
Kaizen events, also called kaizen blitzes or workshops, are intensive drives by dedicated teams of workers to fix broken processes or design new ones. They are arguably the best change vehicles in the organizational change fleet....
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....
Supporting Role
The ANSI/ISO/ASQ Q9000 Series of Quality Management Standards consists of three component standards. Taken together, the standards are components because they form a complete tactical approach to quality management....
Get in Touch With Your Emotions
Emotional intelligence is one of the key traits shared by organizations that succeed in a dynamic world characterized by innovative technology, a diversified workforce, easy access to information and economic globalization....
Happiness Helps
Boredom and discontent in the workplace are serious business performance issues. In a recent international study of organizational effectiveness, two-thirds of the 28,000 respondents said they were less than fully engaged by their work and organization....
Back to Basics: Change Essentials
Since BloodCenter of Wisconsin began its lean journey four years ago, I have had the chance to do some thinking on what is necessary for any change initiative to be successful. What follows is a short list of what I consider to be the essentials for...
The Right Move
Shortcomings in both measurement systems and traditional methods for assessing customer satisfaction affect the ability of most firms to directly link quality improvements to changes in financial performance....
Take a Bite Out of Inefficiency
Providing consistent and effective service or product requires a consistent and effective framework for implementing, maintaining and improving tactical and strategic operations. Dentistry is no different....
Know Thyself
There are two schools of thought when it comes to improvement: project-centric improvement and culture-centric improvement. Traditional thought says these approaches have their separate places. But PCI and CCI are inextricably linked....
Back in Circulation
As the applications for lean expand, organizations must realize lean’s usefulness goes beyond environmental efforts. But first, we must look at the history of lean and to understand how its future fully complements social responsibility....
The Quality Professional as Organizational Gardener
Many quality professionals understand that the answers to these questions require the ability to envision their organizations as living entities, existing within their understanding of systems theory. We work with organizations and people, not on organiza...
The Road to Improvement
Registration of public organizations to the ISO 9001 quality management standard can be difficult because of their complex operations and extensive documentation....
Small Business, Big Feat
Efforts to continuously improve employee and customer satisfaction, and business practices led PRO-TEC to a Baldrige award. The company has incorporated many best management practices, including lean manufacturing and continuous improvement, and relied on...
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....
First-Person Narratives
The C-17 World-Class Safety Team was structured in a way that allowed members to have fun, work cooperatively with each other and work autonomously on their own. Participating on the World-Class Safety Team, preparing for the CTEA [California Team Excelle...
A Gold Medal Solution
By using quality tools, a team from Boeing came up with solutions that eliminated the unsafe conditions that occurred during installation of the details in aircrafts' tailcones....
Good Vibrations
Modern quality management principles define quality as customer satisfaction with product and service. SCGC has a web page where guitar owners can have questions about their guitars answered by Hoover or Roberts. With employee empowerment accompanying goo...
Eight Steps to Sustain Change
Improvement projects often focus on a problem, its measurement, analysis, and eventual solution, but fail to consider how improvements will be permanently integrated into the daily routine. Resistance is a natural response to change, but it can be...
Don't Throw Out the Baby With the Bath Water
Public school accountability prompted by the No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to assess the quality of educational delivery and make changes to assure student academic success, as well as establish a process for continual improvement....
Living Inside China's Quality Revolution
Quality processes in China today continue to be influenced by remnants of ancient policies and practices. When Huawei Technologies, one of China’s largest telecommunications manufacturers, recently declared its intention to become the Toyota of the...
From One-Man Show to Baldrige Recipient
Mesa Products Inc., which manufactures and installs cathodic protection systems for underground piping and other metal structures, was the recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality award in the small business category in 2006. Mesa’s quality...
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...
10 Quality Basics
In an overview designed to give quality newcomers a glimpse of the knowledge they need to succeed, ten regular Quality Progress contributors write on 10 basic quality topics that are fundamentals essential to surviving in a quality role. Topics covered...
Standards Outlook: Why a New ISO 9004?
In the rush that is today's business environment, we often worry more about details than we do the big picture....
The International Growth of Quality
Human, economic, and technological changes in the international arena require that businesses deliver high quality value to customers. Fundamental to any business's competitive strength is its ability to understand and implement the language of quality....
Extending School Improvement Beyond Curriculum
Successful schools must meet the needs of multiple stakeholders - students, parents, teachers, administrators, taxpayers, and the community in general. And all this must be accomplished at different grade levels and divergent subject areas. Therefore,...
Don't Forget the People
Standard practice in quality management has been focused on establishing good systems for quality, but many organizations see these efforts fall short of objectives. The problem is the lack of linkage between the way the workforce perceives and...
Empowering Employees to Pull the Quality Trigger
The successful implementation of a quality management system calls for a shift in decision making from quality managers to shop floor operators empowered to initiate a corrective action in the event of a quality event. While the widespread use of data...
Employee and Patient Focus Earns the Baldrige
Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo, Michigan has a vision of becoming a national leader in healthcare quality. In the 1990s, it began using the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria as a tool for improvement and self-evaluation, and in...
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...
Steady Does It For DynMcDermott
DynMcDermott Petroleum Operations (DM) holds the maintenance and operations contract for the Department of Energy's strategic petroleum reserve. High DOE expectations prompted DM's Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award journey ten years ago when DM...
Manage Complaints To Enhance Loyalty
Every customer complaint represents a chance to correct a flawed process, educate a customer, and strengthen loyalty. But unless management can quantify the return on investment of complaint handling, they won't see the link between complaint handling...
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....
Improve Schools With Empowerment Based Models
Most school administrators have been slow to adopt the quality practices mandated by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Only three school districts have received the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award since the sector's entry. Top-down approaches for...
The Next Level in Employee Empowerment
Individual and organizational effectiveness has been handicapped by the manner in which employee empowerment has been practiced in the past. The concept of employee determination takes employee empowerment to the next level by allowing individuals to...
A Foundation of Trust
Relational based quality teaches organizations to build a foundation of trust based on core values, human dignity and environmental consciousness. Five guiding principles offer a strategy for organizations to enhance their business processes, corporate...
Volunteer Trains Black Belts in Romania
A retired quality management consultant relates his experiences as a volunteer trainer of Black Belts in Romania, Europe's poorest country. Under the sponsorship of NCH Advisors, a management company that administers investments made in Romania by...
TS 16949 – Where Did It Come From?
TS 16949 is an international fundamental quality management system specification for the automotive industry based on ISO 9000. It was developed at the request of automotive suppliers from the Big Three automakers' quality system assessment manuals,...
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....
A Deming Inspired Management Code of Ethics
In today's business environment, executive management's narrow focus on productivity can produce ethical, moral and legal consequences. While there are codes to prohibit discrimination based on race or gender, they fail to address conduct that is legal....
Simplify Baldrige for Healthcare
The growing number of applicants for the Baldrige award in healthcare points to the need for a set of tools to help organizations assess themselves. A healthcare self-assessment matrix and opportunity for improvement worksheets are provided to help...
Two Hospitals Prescribe Performance Excellence
Florida's Baptist Hospital Inc. (BHI) and Saint Luke's Hospital (SLH) in Kansas City, Missouri were recipients of the 2003 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the healthcare category. In addition to its new mission to provide world-class patient...
Stop Depending On Inspection
In today’s global marketplace, “better, cheaper, and faster” has become the mantra for manufacturers. Obviously, it would be better to build a product correctly in the first place, but making the transition from a traditional...
At Your Service
"Boeing Aerospace Support (AS) and Caterpillar Financial Services Corp. (CFSC), 2003 winners of Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards in the service industry, have proven once again that quality pays rather than costs. As Baldrige award applicants,...
Learning From Columbia
In the year since the space shuttle Columbia accident that took the lives of its seven crew members a number of reports say NASA’s management and culture should share the blame. Findings from the accident have significance in all operations...
The Six Sigma Mambo
South Beach, Miami, starts to come alive about midnight. As I travel from club to club, I am mesmerized by the dancing. I have a desire to participate, but I don't know how to dance....
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....
The Message Is Clear
This abstract is based on the ]In 2002, the CGISS division of Motorola won the Baldrige award in the manufacturing category. Through strict process improvement measures, the division was able to increase its direct customer loyalty, customer...
The Seven Deadly Sins of Quality Management
Root cause analysis is the structured investigation of basic causal factors leading to quality failure. When the root cause resides in the fundamental values of an organization, eradication can be extremely challenging. Problems ascribed to...
Lean and Six Sigma – Synergy Made in Heaven
The combination of Six Sigma and lean enterprise work can enhance the production experience. Workers have the empowerment and skill to recognize a problem and, if it cannot be resolved, shut down the line to eliminate the root cause. Six Sigma and lean...
ISO 9000 Makes Integrated Systems User Friendly
Organizations need management systems that are based on processes or activities that help personnel understand what is essential to achieving continual improvement on a consistent basis....
Systems Thinking – An Uncommon Answer
Some of the common problems to be found in many business failures include too much focus on short-term gains, too much focus on quarterly profit statements, and a prevalence of long-term losses. One possible solution to these problems is systems...
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...
An Integrated Approach System
What’s the best quality system? How would you answer this question? How would your colleagues?...
Baldrige: It's Easy, Free and It Works
While many people consider the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria to be difficult, a harder task is learning how to manage opportunities for improvements instead of managing known strengths. While Baldrige may not have the answers, it...
Complexity Theory Simplifies Choices
Many business management and improvement methodologies provide finite structures for achieving success. Examples include the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award; the ISO 9001 standard; W. Edward Deming, who provided 14 points; and Six Sigma....
Quality Management Multiple Choice: What’s the best quality system?
Monitoring and recording the extent of transition experienced within a designated area assure Procedure ( general) Priority Reviewed Completed Record control Document control Internal audits Management review Corrective action Preventive action Monitorin...
Rx for Excellence
SSM Health Care (SSMHC), the first healthcare winner of the Malcolm Baldrige Award, has been showing the world that a focus on continuous improvement can help the ailing healthcare sector. SSMHC operates as a private, not-for-profit system that owns,...
Better Supply Chains with Baldrige
Demand for customized products with shorter life cycles requires companies to develop supply chain management concepts to help them maintain competitive advantages. The traditional competitive model that favored mass production has give way to a model...
Hungary's Journey To Business Excellence
Hungary has emerged as a major European success story, its economy thriving despite the recent worldwide recession. Four Hungarian companies illustrate how quality has led to business success. Using total quality management techniques tailored to fit...
Do Performance Appraisals Work?
Since 1989 when Glenroy Inc., a small Wisconsin manufacturing firm, abandoned its performance appraisal and merit pay system in favor of market based pay grades and company-wide noncompetitive bonuses, few organizations have followed suit. Some quality...
A Quality Major
The doctorate in technology management program offered by the School of Technology at Indiana State University is unique because it is a consortium of seven universities, with ISU being the degree issuing institution. The program provides...
Simple Quality for Smaller Organizations
Involving everyone in an organization in a sustainable quality process requires that management understand that the process is both simple and difficult. Paul Revere Insurance Group and UICI Insurance Company each began their quality efforts with 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...
Organize Your Quality Tool Belt
Quality professionals adopt and adapt techniques from other fields to satisfy the need to apply their skills to a wide variety of processes and situations. To someone new to the profession, this array of tools may seem overwhelming, but upon closer...
Connecting the Planners and Doers
Many companies are seeking a way to link business strategy to its implementation. The Two Rings model shows how senior and operations management, each represented by a ring, can contribute their respective knowledge and develop business strategies...
First to the Top
A small, scattered school district in a remote part of Alaska, a suburban school district near New York City, and a mid-sized public university have become the first winners of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the education category. The...
A Chip Maker's Unique Improvement Approach
CANDOS, the continuous improvement process at Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), is an acronym derived from a series of steps: Clearing, Arrangement, Neatness, Discipline, Ongoing improvement, and Safety. Its principles of maintaining a safe and...
Column: Standards Outlook: Automotive Quality Management System Evolves
ISO Technical Specification (TS) 16949, based on ISO 9000, is an international fundamental quality management system specification for the automotive industry. The author looks at the second edition's significant changes from...
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...
Column: World View: Russia's Journey Toward Performance Excellence
Russian industrial enterprises move from traditional quality control to a focus on organizational planning, process improvement and customer satisfaction....
Russia's Journey Toward Performance Excellence
Industrial enterprises move from traditional quality control to a focus on organizational planning, process improvement and customer satisfaction
This move shifts the focus from quality control and inspection to organizationwide quality planning and improvement of all processes rather than only those that affect product quality. Planning for quality control of products and production processes, inc...
Journey to the Baldrige
The year's Baldrige winners are profiled. They include Operations Management International Inc. (OMI), Spicer Driveshaft (SD) (an operating unit of Dana Corp.), Karlee Co. Inc., and Los Alamos National Bank (LANB)....
Quality Makes a Splash
In 2000, Operations Management International Inc. (OMI), a water and wastewater treatment company with operations worldwide, became the first such company to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the service category. Determined to maintain...
Column: One Good Idea: Change the way people think
The use of quotes can influence the way employees view new quality initiatives
In my new job, I started over with Quote 1, but I changed the comment so it related to my new role. Again, I started over with Quote 1 and a new set of comments. --Thomas J. Peters in Quality Quotes by Hélio Gomes (Milwaukee: ASQ Quality Press, 1996)....
A Quick, Accurate Way to Determine Customer Needs
Never before has so much attention been focused on the importance of understanding the customer, but business people encounter a discontinuity between market research and actual market performance. Customers tend to say one thing during research and...
Lessons Learned
Despite the difficulty of transferring technology and methodology from one culture to another, a team from Raytheon has successfully conducted Six Sigma based tactical transformation workshops for Raytheon Business units, their customers, and suppliers...
Capturing Financial Benefits From Six Sigma
Six Sigma is a disciplined approach that helps organizations consistently meet customer requirements and drive continuous improvement through process-focused management. First and foremost, Six Sigma is about delivering value to the shareholder. What...
The Problems with Managing by Objectives and Results
Management by objectives (MBO) and management by results (MBR) represent the major approaches used by managers to align system objectives with employees' goals and behaviors. The practice continues despite warnings from quality experts that MBO often...
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...
Doing It Wrong: A Case Study
This case study looks at steps an insurance company took toward quality improvement, and how and why their efforts failed to achieve the desired results. Each step taken produced suspicion of upper management's motives, competition among middle...
Managing in Uncertainty: Lessons from the Underground
Corporate results can only be improved in the face of uncertainty if the management process itself is defined, developed, and monitored carefully. In some industries, including the mining industry, high levels of uncertainty impact results. In such...
Quality Culture in Small Business: Four Case Studies
Companies of all sizes must focus on four elements in order to determine their quality standing. These include a firm's position relative to market competition, the cost of poor quality for the organization, the quality culture, and the effectiveness of...
A European Application Of the Business Excellence Index
Critical success factors begin with leadership
The excellence seeker's approach applies a variable assignment algorithm that maximizes improvements to key areas of the organization to further improve business excellence. The BEM, shown in Figure 1, shows causal relationships among the total quality ma...
Continuous Improvement at an Agency For the Developmentally Disabled
Program is consumer focused, measurement oriented and team based
Today, our quality program, specifically the measurement element, has been identified as one of the two best consumer focused programs in the state system. These totals can then be summarized by category, survey, staff, consumer, program, agency and so fo...
Obstacles to Implementing Quality
Organizational performance improves when quality management systems are implemented appropriately. Inconsistencies in the records of companies using Total Quality Management have given rise to debate about the usefulness of TQM programs, however....
Turning CFOs into Quality Champions
For chief financial officers (CFOs) to support quality efforts, they must see that quality improvements have an impact on problems, complaint behavior, or customer satisfaction. Before studying the effect of enhanced quality on profits, the CFO should...
ISO 14000 and the Bottom Line
A proactive environmental policy linked to ISO 14000 must be based on strategic planning and implementation. Key elements are commitment to prevention and to continual improvement as well as an assurance of compliance with regulations and laws....
Total Quality Requires Serious Training
Simultaneous training of line workers and their direct supervisors is a key to successful implementation of total quality (TQ). A three-module training system is suggested. Module A covers a variety of topics that must be well integrated: an...
On Leaders and Leadership
Systemic leadership is based on core values and competencies as well as on more tangible elements of business excellence. Systemic leadership requires that everyone be responsible for leadership. However, the models embedded in international quality...
More, Better, Faster from Total Quality Effort
The plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle facilitated breakthrough improvement at Procter & Gamble's (P&G) health care over-the-counter (OTC) clinical division. The Plan step had four components. First, apply the principles of total quality. These included:...
Quality in Banking Starts with Four Assessments
Assessments help banks learn how to improve customer and employee satisfaction, internal quality, company culture, and operating cost systems. One large assessment area covers the four components of the cost of poor quality. Internal failure costs...
How a Team Can Grow
Team growth relies on: planning; communication; a well defined target; performance measurement; and a goal to establish self-directed work teams (SDWTs). Only 10% of employees at Fortune 1000 companies are in work teams, perhaps due to poor development...
