- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Design of Experiments
- Human Resources
- Innovation
- ISO 9000
- Laboratory
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Metrology
- Problem Solving
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Reliability
- Safety
- Six Sigma
- Social Responsibility
- Software Quality
- Standards
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- AS9000
- Risk Management
- Customer Experience Management
- Food Safety
- Economic Case for Quality
- Product-Service Design
Mood Righting
U.S. organizations face monumental challenges as a global economy has emerged. Arguably, the global economy is driving competitive forces to levels unimaginable only a few decades ago....
What Makes You Tick?
Uncoordinated internal operations create organizational inefficiencies, a lower level of customer service and unnecessary delays in management decisions, resulting in increased costs....
Avoiding an Avalanche
Organizations that make products with rigorous quality requirements face numerous challenges associated with meeting objectives—ranging from complying with standards to operating in highly-regulated and frequently audited environments....
Balancing Act
With common quality methods and standards in place, manufacturing organizations share a daunting challenge: an increased volume of electronic and paper-based data collected during process development and manufacturing....
One Good Idea: Act the Fool
Almost every workplace has a few heyokas and they are vital to the organization’s survival....
Statistics Roundtable: One Size Does Not Fit All
The need to improve is ever present in all endeavors and will continue to be so. We live in a dynamic world. As predicted in the second law of thermodynamic and entropy, the world will continue to change....
Paving the Way
Data and information are at the heart of good investigations and decision making, but are all kinds of data the same? What are the major categories and types of questions to ask to collect and analyze data?...
Statistics Roundtable: Getting Graphical
A company has six manufacturing processes critical to its business success. Management recently required each area manager to provide quarterly reports on the performance of their particular process....
Perspectives: Survey Overload
Some years ago, I was presented the bill at a restaurant. In addition to the itemized list of charges, the little billfold contained a customer comment card. “Wow,” I thought, “what a great idea. This place is really on the ball.”...
Heart of the Matter
The goal of most processes in the manufacturing and service industries is to produce products or services that exhibit little to no variation. Variation is defined as “where no two items or services are exactly the same.”...
Statistics Roundtable: Let's Be Realistic
Decision making is all about understanding and comparing trade-offs between choices: What benefits are possible, what are the risks and can they be mitigated, and what will each of the alternatives cost?...
Standards Outlook: Confidence Game
For the second time in my 55 years on this Earth, we are seeing a crisis of confidence. This stems from many factors, including the devastating recession of 2008 to 2009 and the slow and painful global economic recovery we are witnessing....
Five at the Forefront
ISO 19011:2011 is an international standard that provides guidance on auditing management systems. Using ISO 19011 is not mandatory, and organizations are not required to reference this standard in their auditing procedures....
One Good Idea: Form by Design
Filling out simple forms should be easy, right? Yet, how many of us have had the experience in which a simple and easy-to-follow form took more than one time to fill out 100% correctly?...
Innovation Imperative: Seize the Opportunity
I bought a copy of the Scientific American and skimmed through the articles during my flight until I came to Michael Webber’s, “How to Make the Food System More Energy Efficient.” He had my attention....
Before the Fact
The FDA has ratcheted up its surveillance and inspection activities on the suppliers of food and dietary supplements. Growing concern over protection of America’s food chain has been voiced by the FDA’s commissioner of food and drugs....
Career Corner: Out of Hiding
While I was the senior statistician for a manufacturing division of a major aerospace firm, I shared the concept of the hidden factory with a statistical quality control (SQC) training class composed entirely of senior and middle management....
March 2013 One Good Idea - online figures
CAPA process swim lane diagram / online Figure 1 Phase 1: Initiation Phase 2 and 3: Investigation and Corrective Action Issue CAPA number Enter CAPA info into log Notify quality manager CAT investigation CAT investigation Identify issue Meet with process...
Why Certify?
These stories are told by people at different stages of their careers. One of the things they have in common, however, is they’ve carefully considered the costs and benefits of ASQ certification....
In the Crosshairs
In 2005, Fairbanks Morse Engine discovered that work content analysis can help clearly define product families and can align improvement activities in a leveraged execution....
Rain Gauge
The Six Sigma define, measure, analyze, design and verify process is appropriate for exceedingly complex engineering construction problems that require the use of simulation and design of experiments....
Statistics Roundtable: Inquiry on Pedigree
THE MEDIA FREQUENTLY report on examples of situations in which results from statistical studies are not reproducible. A recent article in the New York Times reported how a sophisticated study went wrong because of poor data quality....
3.4 per Million: No Specification? No Problem
In a column earlier this year I referenced a nine-step approach for determining an organization’s long-lasting operational metrics and how to decide where to focus improvement efforts so the entire enterprise benefits....
Salary Survey 2012: Crunching the Numbers
The 2012 survey was sent to 54,337 members. Of the 6,857 individuals who started the survey, 6,857 completed the questionnaire for a response rate of 11.2%....
Salary Survey 2012: Part 1, Section 12: Salary by Industry
Transportation and aerospace products 12.8 80,965 24.7 79,706 other products 5.3 78,625 4.7 78,111 Service sector 28.5% $ 90,449 42.8 $ 93,453 Construction services 5.4 90,114 7.0% 85,600 Consulting and other professional, scientific and technical servic...
Expert Answers: December 2012
A better supplier scorecard ... Inspecting your suppliers ......
Quality Around the Clock
It’s in your DNA. It’s how your mind works. It’s what you do. It’s who you are. When you work in quality, you see things differently. You approach problems and scenarios in certain ways. It happens after you’ve signed off....
Statistics Roundtable: Improve Your Evaluations
In an earlier Statistics Roundtable column, we described how the conclusions you can draw from statistical analysis of limited life data can be bolstered by appropriately incorporating engineering knowledge and experience into the analysis....
Back to Basics: To DMAIC or Not to DMAIC?
Define, measure, analyze, improve and control is a structured problem-solving method. Each phase builds on the previous one, with the goal of implementing long-term solutions to problems. Most problem-solving efforts benefit from a disciplined method....
Innovation Imperative: Open to Suggestions
Open market innovation intrigues people because it appears to run counter to accepted business practices. It discounts secrecy, recognizes we lack knowledge in our own organizations and depends on ideas from outside for success....
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....
Law and Order
The laws created and enforced by government are among the most important works of humankind. They address the most significant societal problems and have a direct impact on human rights, living standards and the quality of life of every person....
Lasting Impression
A recent paper found that quality initiatives have made significant contributions to three primary indicators of economic well-being: gross domestic product, corporate tax revenues and employment....
Perspectives: Added Structure
Global good manufacturing practices (GMP) and regulatory guidelines ensure the “safety, identity, strength, quality (and) purity of drug(s).” Manufacturing and quality control testing of approved drugs fall under these GMP regulations....
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....
Making Contact
For an organization to be able to truly understand how well it’s meeting customer expectations, more concrete, measureable metrics must be used....
Statistics Roundtable: Weighing Your Options
When we are faced with choosing the best solution for a problem, most of us are very good at picking the right solution if there’s only a single quantitative objective over which to optimize....
Expert Answers: October 2012
Finding the right role ... Audit mismatches ... Accuracy in calibration...
Pick Your Spots
In the rush to achieve results, lean Six Sigma programs can get derailed because projects are pushed through the organization, leading to the selection of the wrong projects and suboptimizing the entire enterprise’s goals....
Career Corner: Light Your Fire
It takes the right team members to create an enabled, empowered, motivated, cross functional, self-directed team capable of selecting the most important tasks, and then efficiently and effectively solving the most critical problems....
Statistics Roundtable: Fleshing Things Out
Recently, a colleague asked me to review some data that a student had gathered on cannibalization in spiders. They had 10 families of spiders, and each family had 14 members. We’ll call the families A, B, C, etc. The families were randomly paired off....
Change Ability
Building on the creative spirit of each individual joined with others is at the heart of transforming organizations so they don’t just weather forces of change, but also capitalize on the immense energy inherent in the surge....
Back to Basics: The Big Picture
Business competition is an unending race with multifaceted measurements of success. One success factor is productivity: the ratio of value added—such as service rendered or products produced—versus the associated cost....
Quality in the First Person: Know No Bounds
For me, the common denominator in optimal job satisfaction and employment progression nearly always relates to an organization’s people focus—or lack thereof. I began to develop a strategic plan that would prepare me for a major transition....
Expert Answers: August 2012
Innovation issues ... SPC vs. SQC ......
Statistics Roundtable: Go With the Flow
Years ago, while on my way to conduct a statistical process control short course at a local ASQ meeting, I was stopped by a man who told me he had attended my short course the previous year and got a lot out of it....
Improving on Excellence
With the changing face of healthcare in the 1990s, the Mayo Clinic started to measure more thoroughly the results of its efforts to track quality. So it enlisted the help of the Juran Institute to begin a full-fledged quality improvement program....
Blaze Your Own Trail
We used to put our careers into the hands of our organizations. If we worked diligently enough, they might reward our efforts with a series of promotions. This template for career advancement was a clean 45-degree line....
Learning to Fish
The career excellence diagram, a modified version of the fishbone diagram, can be used to create desired results in career development by identifying causes that will ultimately lead to success....
Back to Basics: Smart Charting
Control charts are at the foundation of Six Sigma. They serve as the primary tool to filter out the probable noise (inherent variation or common cause) from the potential signals (nonrandom variation or special cause)....
One Good Idea: Easy A
It is almost as easy to fail a certification exam by making mistakes while answering questions—even if you know the answers—as it is to fail by not mastering the body of knowledge....
Standards Outlook: Group Effort
When users think about AS9100, they typically think only of the AS9100 quality management system standard and not about the other products and services the International Aerospace Quality Group provides to the aviation, space and defense industry....
The Audit Answer
Graduate students at Bowling Green State University studied the Quality Systems Educational Collaboration, a program that addresses workforce and technical assistance needs for organizations, and disclosed areas for improvement using Six Sigma methods....
In the Spotlight
Based on what we know about the skills needed for innovation management, what quality management functions, responsibilities and skills can be applied to manage innovation?...
Up and Away
Do you want to quickly test your creativity? Take a sheet of paper and draw a big circle on it. Draw a dot on the paper. This exercise is part of a test given to children entering kindergarten to find out their baseline levels of creativity....
Perspectives: Relying on the Basics
It’s difficult to improve a process that isn’t running. Equipment reliability from a manufacturing equipment perspective is typically the purview of maintenance teams and may include watch-over by the engineering team....
Standards Outlook: Ingraining Innovation
The concept of innovation has been around for a while, but it has grown and evolved to become an issue of significant, if not critical, importance to organizations....
Valuable Resource
Talent development is addressed in three key components of sustainability management systems: international standards, social responsibility (SR) reporting and performance excellence frameworks....
Tangled Mess
Many of the world's factories are designed in ways detrimental or unhealthy to product quality. The typically complex and lengthy flow times multiply process variables, which can obscure and delay the discovery of defects and nonconformities....
Innovation Imperative: The Greater Good
Innovation can provide solutions to many social problems, but it can also be the cause of those problems. The financial sector is a good example of an area in which both sides of the social responsibility coin are evident....
Statistics Roundtable: Going on Feel
Customers consider consistent quality to be one of the most important product and service attributes. Often, it’s the most important....
Beyond the Basics
A movie sequel often can be as, if not more, captivating than the original. Essentially, a sequel builds on the original, continuing a journey with familiar characters and settings, developing ideas and unveiling more insight....
Statistics Roundtable: On Overlapping
While teaching a workshop for a small manufacturing firm, two of the participants approached me to discuss what seemed to be a simple problem they had encountered at work....
Back to Basics: Creative Combination
I have been facilitating lean Six Sigma projects and coaching other belts through their projects since 2002. Combining tools is a technique I use with teams when potential root cause analysis through a fishbone diagram does not show any obvious direction....
A Tangled Web
In simple terms, software as a service is on-demand access to software via the internet. It seemingly eliminates the installation and testing of the software by the customer—or does it?...
Email Matters
It is commonly accepted that 80% of data within an organization is unstructured. Emails are considered a part of the definition of unstructured data. But with the right processes, it is possible to get email under control....
Statistics Roundtable: Right Answer, Wrong Query
Recently, I was reminded of one of my favorite statistics-related quotes from John W. Tukey: “Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.”...
One Good Idea: Branch Out
It can be difficult to identify the appropriate discrete distribution to use when attempting to determine probabilities in a particular situation. The decision tree can help you determine the appropriate distribution....
Back to Basics: Understanding Variation
Organizations with quality management systems compliant to ISO 9001:2008 are required to take action to eliminate the causes of nonconformities. If determination of variability type is absent from problem-solving methods, it leads to ineffective actions....
Quality Curriculum
Does quality exist as an entity independent of business? Are the business of quality and the quality of business simply two sides of the same coin? No matter—the quality discipline has become inextricably woven into business....
Wasted Words
Lean tools are embedded with elements that encourage effective communication. Whether it’s color-coded work spaces or transparent parts bins, these tools foster an environment in which cycle times are reduced while raising quality....
The Power of Positive
In his 2006 book, The World is Flat, Thomas Freidman cites the many challenges globalization puts on corporate life: changing political realities, social entrepreneurship and the effects of the internet....
One Good Idea: Prevent Memory Loss
All quality personnel can benefit from a good habit many successful people live by—note-taking and documenting meeting minutes....
Career Corner: Keep Your Toolbox Full
Be aware of all the tools at your disposal to excel at your job. Your career as a quality professional depends on your ability to recall a specific quality tool and apply it when necessary....
3.4 per Million: Inputs Into Action
A year ago, I wrote about the nine-step Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) business management system and how it can be used to integrate voice of the customer (VOC) sources with other improvement efforts so an entire enterprise can benefit....
Heavy Mettle Victory
After 23 years of service, I retired from Heavymet. Heavymet is a colossus: 65,000 employees in 55 plants in six business units in six countries. I lived in interesting times there. Many asked how I felt about our progress in process management....
Fail-Safe FMEA
The appropriate use of quality risk management can help organizations comply with regulatory requirements, such as good manufacturing practices or good laboratory practices....
Practice Makes Perfect
Significant problems can occur during full-scale production when new manufacturing processes are poorly conceived. Therefore, it is incumbent on R&D organizations to employ effective procedures that ensure sound manufacturing process development....
Safe and Secure
Organizations everywhere are expected to do more with less in all areas of business. Safety and risk management are not necessarily immune when organizations must make difficult decisions about cuts in personnel and funding....
Standards Outlook: Clearly Defined
It seems that everyone knows the difference between a system and a process. We know processes and systems are related, but most of us aren’t sure when one begins and the other ends....
Back to Basics: Psychology Central
Understanding how people work is the purview of psychology—hence, psychology is the hub of the system of profound knowledge. Business and quality always come down to people. Knowledge of psychology is essential....
Online Conklin: Baker’s Loaf
When recounting Plant Able’s successful struggle to implement process management, we compared it to raising children. That sums up the story when implementation is in your home plant....
Online Conklin: The Road More Traveled
After being part of a great team that implemented process management at Plant Able in the XYZ division of Heavymet, I took the show on the road to our sister facility Plant Baker....
Quality in the First Person: Quality at Its Core
After leaving the manufacturing sector for 12 years and then returning, I found quality was still what drew me to the industry. Quality has carried me through my professional life, as well as my personal life, in ways I never realized were possible....
Salary Survey 2011: Slow and Steady
A single organization’s actions may be reported several times if multiple employees of that organization responded to the survey. Director: Oversees all aspects of an organization’s quality or business improvement efforts, such as developing and administr...
Perspectives: Perfection Is Possible
Bob Galvin did more to change the way we manage quality in the United States today than any other executive leader. We will truly miss him, his ideas and his leadership....
Quality in the First Person: A Bad Sign
I kept my head down as I played hopscotch with the puddles on the mall parking lot. I started the engine, wiped some fog from the windows and started to back out, looking behind for cars. Suddenly—what was that?...
Salary Survey 2011: Land the Big One
Certification holders—or those thinking about obtaining certifications—should know that these assets make them more attractive to potential employers. In most cases, a certification offers the most value when it is held by a professional whose job duties ...
Salary Survey 2011: Part 1, Section 12: Salary by Industry
Nonelectronic measuring, analyzing and controlling instruments ( NAICS code 339): Balances, blood testing apparatus, Bunsen burners, centrifuges, distilling apparatus, laboratory incubators, SPonSoreD by Salary by industrial classification / Table 1 Unit...
Salary Survey 2011: Part 1, Section 17: Salary by Highest Level of Education and Yrs in Quality Fld
Salary by highest level of education and years in the quality field for U. S. respondents / FIGUre 1 Salary by highest level of education and years in the quality field for Canadian respondents / FIGUre 2 53,217 62,871 72,863 55,990 70,437 74,583 74,238 ...
Statistics Roundtable: Use What You Know
Engineers and managers often must make important decisions in situations in which there is substantial uncertainty because of limited data. In some such cases, the data analyses can be bolstered by incorporating engineering knowledge and experience....
All Over the Map
Innovation can be rewarding, and it’s taking on greater importance worldwide. There’s no better proof of this than the recent World Economic Forum analysis of the innovative capability of countries from all parts of the globe....
Career Corner: Add Risk to Your Job Title
Add risk to your job title if you’re a quality professional or a senior quality manager. This will enhance your marketability if you’re looking for a job and your chances for promotion if you’re employed....
Volviendo a Fundamentos: Cambiando el 'Quien' en el 'Como'
Según Rodger Talbert en su artículo, "The Blame Game (El juego de la culpa)," "La gente puede llegar a estar tan preocupada en asignar a un culpable que pierde de vista la resolución a los problemas. Para determinar cómo resolver los problemas, primero te...
Back to Basics: Turning 'Who' Into 'How'
When things go wrong, the goal should be to move away from trying to determine “who” was at fault and quickly transition into a problem-solving mindset of “how” to make things better....
A Decade of Distinction
In the first six months of 2010, Telefónica Group launched 60 simultaneous quality improvement projects. These 60 projects represent nearly 30% of the total number of improvement projects conducted in the company during the last decade....
40 New Voices of Quality
When QP set out to find the individuals who will give a voice to the new generation of quality professionals, one of the hopes was that the group’s makeup would lend insight into what the future holds....
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....
One Good Idea: On Purpose
When an organization has constancy of purpose with all members aligned with that purpose, productivity increases. A QMS that conforms to ISO 9001 can take advantage of requirements relating to constancy of purpose built into the standard....
Growth Chart
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....
