- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Environmental Manag. and Sustainability
- Global Quality
- Innovation
- ISO 14000
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Metrology
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Safety
- Six Sigma
- Social Responsibility
- Software Quality
- Standards
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Theory of Constraints
- Total Quality Management
- ISO 22000
- ISO 26000
- Compliance
- Risk Management
- Information Management
- Customer Requirements
- Food Safety
- Economic Case for Quality
Expert Answers: April 2013
Root cause analysis tools ... Calibration data for a fee ......
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....
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....
Out in Front
“The job of management is not supervision, but leadership.” … “The aim of leadership should be to improve the performance of man and machine, to improve quality, to increase output, and to simultaneously bring pride of workmanship to people.”...
Career Corner: Should You Blow the Whistle?
Becoming a whistle-blower is no easy choice, even for quality professionals knowledgeable of organizational behavior and accustomed to audit processes with clear guidelines for nonconformance and corrective action....
Perspectives: Taken for Granted
The ISO 9000 series is Quality 101, and as quality practitioners, we should never forget it....
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....
Measure for Measure: Under the Microscope
Audits are chances to see where improvements can be made and to find areas that can be improved upon. If you approach an audit with the right mindset, it can be a great opportunity for all parties involved....
Measure for Measure: Where Does It Say That?
I'm amazed by how many experienced, trained, professional calibration personnel do not know what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations say about calibration requirements....
Career Corner: Ethical Excellence
As the first decade of the new millennium unfolds, opportunity abounds—and so does risk. We are confronted daily by a bombardment of news about undesirable human behavior. The ratio of bad news to good news weighs heavily on the average...
Career Corner: Lesson Learned
In fall 2009, when I remarked to university educators that a particular decision-making tool was widely used at Toyota, their response was respectful interest. When I did the same this February, a similar group laughed derisively at the comment...
Career Corner: Right, Wrong, Good, Bad or Indifferent?
Although the new guidance standard for social responsibility (SR), ISO 26000, will be a completely voluntary guidance standard—not a certification standard1—how best to implement and sustain the organizational behaviors it will prescribe deserves...
Measure for Measure: Out of Sync
During the holidays, when children everywhere wonder whether they’ll have presents or coal waiting for them on Christmas morning, my thoughts always turn to the concept of good and bad—or, more broadly, to the idea of perception....
Measure for Measure: What Really Counts
People are not stupid, and we are tired of companies trying to fool us. By sifting through the misdirection of the advertisers, we can get to the truth and measure what really counts at work, at home and in our communities....
Social Graces
Social networking is old hat by now, and most people dabble in it or participate with little impact. But social networking is an important means of branding yourself, your skill set and your company’s capabilities, products and services....
Salary Survey 2009: Holding Steady
QP’s salary survey is interesting in good times, and even more so in lean times. My observations for the 2009 version fall into three categories: profiles of success, limits of the survey and questions readers might ask to reflect on career development....
Salary Survey 2009: The Complete Report
52 section 6 Salary by Number of Work Hours Online section 7 Salary by Nonexempt vs. exempt Status Online section 8 Salary by Number of Years in Current Position Online section 9 Salary by Number of Years in Current Position and in the Quality Field Onli...
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)....
Dare to Care
Healthcare is the third-largest area in the Standard & Poor’s 500, behind only financial services and IT. Considering the amount of knowledge, labor and materials devoted to the industry, there's no doubt healthcare is a major economic force in society....
Measure for Measure: Be Honest
I realized early in my career in metrics and metrology that doing the best I could meant bringing a sense of honesty and integrity to my work. In truth, they are the foundations for making a quality measurement....
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....
Practice What You Teach
Many education institutions do not have a foundation conducive to sustainability efforts. For many, change will be cumbersome. Opportunities exist, however, and persistence will be an ally....
What's Up?
Study participants outlined the forces, four scenarios in which they might play out, and the implications to quality, organizations and the profession. Study participants were asked to envision the implications of the key forces and scenarios for quality ...
Online Sidebars Sanders
Increasing movement from quality of product to quality of management and the organization. The systems approaches the quality profession has evolved through ISO 9000 and other management system standards will be valued by organizations looking to bring qu...
Futures Study
Forces of Change From All ASQ Futures Studies Table 1 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 Changing values Partnering Quality must deliver bottom- line results Globalization Globalization Globalization Learning systems Management systems will increasingly absorb the...
Online Figure 1 Ramu
Outsourcing BoK Expected cognition Perceived weight CMQ/ OE CQE CQA CSQE ( New) CRE CSSBB CSSGB CCT CBA CHA CQT CQPA CQIA CQI Project management 10 Project charter Create Create Apply Project estimation and tracking Analyze Apply Apply Apply Understand C...
From the President: Quality and the Three Conversations
For generations of authors, that intimidating D-word—deadline—makes even the bravest among us cringe. So when QP’s editor reminded me at a recent board meeting that the due date of this column, my first as ASQ president, was quickly approaching...
Strong Foundation, Solid Future
In the wake of the scandals five years ago that shook consumer confidence in business leaders and the economy, I co-wrote an article about the resurgence of social responsibility on the corporate landscape and increased public awareness on the topic....
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....
Career Corner: Corporations Tout Social Responsibility
The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award has added “governance and social responsibilities” to its leadership criteria, codes of conduct are more prevalent, and ethics has taken on new importance in corporate training and business school curricula. In ...
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....
Career Corner: Adapt to Today's Risk Based Environment
Not long ago, during a discussion about innovation, a nontraditional student of mine told me that if my ideas were more than 18 months old, they were probably out of date....
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...
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....
Quality Focus Good for Business
Premier Inc., a San Diego-based healthcare alliance, is a 2006 recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) in the service category. The firm credits employee involvement, experience gained while earning a state quality award, and...
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...
Advancing From Compliance To Performance
Poor ethics has recently been recognized as a controllable factor that can either make or break and organization. If organizations would practice ethics as a logic-based discipline and quality problem, they would reach higher levels of performance that...
New Standard Guides Internal and Supplier Audits
A supplement to enhance ISO 19011:2002, Guidelines on Quality and/or Environmental Management Systems Auditing, has been developed by U.S. experts. The supplement provides guidance for internal and supplier programs and the use of the standard by small...
Help Has Arrived
Change or pay a price for remaining the same. This saying applies to life in general and the auditing profession in particular....
Baldrige - Just What the Doctor Ordered
The Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) University Hospital Hamilton's commitment to quality has won it the 2004 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the healthcare category. Part of the hospital's existing quality program is its five pillars of excellence...
Compliance and Ethics Group Formed
Recently I learned about a new organization, the Open Compliance and Ethics Group (OCEG). I immediately found its website (www.oceg.org) and was impressed....
Sarbanes-Oxley and ISO 9000
Critics say ISO 9000 doesn't measure up to robust quality programs such as Baldrige Award criteria, lean and Six Sigma, and they complain about the law's excessive documentation requirements. Yet by providing records and internal controls, the...
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....
Quality Attitudes Start in Childhood
My beliefs and behavior have had four major influences: my parents' teachings, stringent requirements during elementary and middle school years, the basic principles of my religion and IBM's corporate culture....
A Roadmap For Change
This excerpt is from the book Juran Institute's Six Sigma Breakthrough and Beyond. The book is available from Quality Press, item P1089. Copyright restrictions do not allow its individual sale or its placement on My ASQ....
A Tribute To Phil Stein
ASQ and the metrology community lost a powerful champion and a wonderful friend with the passing of Philip G. Stein....
Managing Project Quality
Quality professionals who normally deal with ongoing processes need to know how to manage project quality effectively. Quality initiation and quality closure stages, unique because of the temporary nature of such projects, are often neglected. Failure...
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...
Quality in the First Person
Four quality professionals discuss how they used quality principles and tools to improve their personal lives. In Control Charts and Your Real Hourly Wage, Jonathan...
Quality in the Fast Lane
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has developed a streamlined approach to assessing its field offices using Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria as a guide. In the past, field office assessments used either self-assessment or outside...
100 Years of Juran
An interview with Joseph M. Juran reveals an inspirational story of his struggle to overcome the challenges of emigration, childhood poverty, and the Great Depression to become one of quality’s leading gurus....
Making Stakeholders a Strategic Asset
Employees and business partners have an important role to play in organizational improvement. Quality models indicate that managing stakeholders to enhance their value generation capability can be a winning strategy....
Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate scandals such as those involving Enron and WorldCom may finally be awakening corporate America to its social responsibilities. Such scandals are creating concern about business ethics and governance....
Ethics, Auditing and Enron
Were quality auditors to blame for the Enron scandal? No. Do quality auditors face ethical dilemmas such as those faced by the Enron and Arthur Andersen employees? must decide whether or not to...
Quality's Path to the Boardroom
Combining the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 20021 and elements of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 quality and environmental management standards may provide a powerful tool for elevating the quality assurance function status in many U.S. companies....
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...
Column: Career Corner: Quitting, Even In Tough Times
Quitting is tough. But controlling your career is your responsibility, and quitting a job can be a tactic that allows you to take control. Even in these uncertain economic times, the quality field offers job opportunities....
Column: Career Corner: Plenty of Opportunities
[Abstract from article]
If you are seeking a job because you are unemployed or simply want new challenge or advancement, don't let the bad economic news get you down. There are positions open in the quality profession, and many may be right in your...
The Changing Role of Quality Professionals
In the spring of 2002 a survey ASQ Fellow Members was conducted asking opinions and comments on the changing role of the quality professional. A brief compilation of survey results is presented, along with some predictions of expected directions...
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...
Column: Standards Outlook: The Whole Truth And Nothing But the Truth
Lying to the FDA will always get you in trouble
It usually starts as a little white lie. The worst case finale is a not so brief vacation at the federal penitentiary. The philosophy is usually the same: What they don't know won't hurt them. The truth is what they don't know...
Curriculum Assessment - A Systems Approach
Curriculum assessment (CA) is receiving a lot of attention as more educational institutions focus on the quality of their academic programs. Institutions that don't have formalized plans for integrating CA activities into their cultures, however, will...
How To Compare Six Sigma, Lean and the Theory of Constraints
Many process improvement methodologies appear to conflict with each other, making it difficult to decide which best fits an organization's needs and culture. Three improvement methodologies - Six Sigma, Lean thinking, and Theory of constraints - are...
From Design to Action: Developing a Corporate Strategy
Some economists believe that today's turbulent world does not lend itself to traditional strategic planning approaches. Almost daily, sudden changes in the environment challenge carefully constructed plans and require fundamentally new approaches. The...
Quality in the Classroom
Institutions of higher learning have only recently begun to address the issue of how to offer quality products and services. The present turbulent economy coupled with the accreditation requirement for relatively low individual faculty course loads...
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)....
Annual Quality Awards Listing
The annual resource guide is provided for automotive, government, international, national, regional, and state quality related awards and award programs. Awards are organized by type, the award's name and sponsor, criteria, contact information, and...
Quality Tools Largely Absent From Nation's Newsrooms
In 1990 Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., soon to become the publisher of the New York Times, set out to remake the newspaper based on the philosophy of W. Edwards Deming. Senior editors rejected Deming's approach, however, and a decade later it's clear his...
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...
Quality Awards Listing
The list includes national, international, state and regional quality awards and award programs and industry-specific quality awards programs. The listed awards are related to the practice of quality, do not limit eligibility to members of the...
President's Quality Program Honors Government Organizations
The President's Quality Award Program recognizes federal organizations for their accomplishments in continuous improvement via quality management principles and practices. The award was created in 1989 and is administered by the Office of Personnel...
A Trio for Quality
Health care organizations can use quality approaches developed for other industries. Accreditation standards developed by the Joint Commission on Accreditations of Healthcare Organizations can be used in combination with criteria of the Malcolm...
Questions Lead, Answers Follow
Six Sigma performance metrics help point the way
In the language of Six Sigma, these questions are shown in Figure 1. As a business leader, I can guide my organization to answer each of the 384 possible questions represented by the chart. In summary, it can be said that Six Sigma is a quest for the qual...
Back to the Future
The ASQ Foresight 2020 project has generated scenarios on the future of quality and the role of the quality professional. Facilitated by the Institute for Alternative Futures, the project is a successor to ASQ's first futures study, which had 2010 as...
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....
Quality in Nonprofits: No Longer Uncharted Territory
Anixter Center is a nonprofit human-service organization that has experienced the 11 challenges faced by nonprofits. As a large rehabilitation agency serving people with disabilities through more than fifty programs, Anixter Center received a...
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...
The Call of Quality: Doing Right Things Right
Models of excellence and doing the right thing are found in codes of ethics, certification programs, and award criteria. In this era of competitiveness and complexity, people and their organizations are challenged to understand the multiple aspects of...
ISO 9001:2000 -- The Beginning of the End?
The latest revision of ISO 9001:2000 includes many improvements, but it also is a disappointing, wordy document with some new requirements that are vague, unnecessary, confusing, and probably costly to implement. The draft document has been produced...
Cyberquality: Teams Expand into Cyberspace
Virtual teams use electronic methods to bring together members from a variety of geographic and organizational locations. These teams are gaining popularity because of developments in groupware, global competition, and working at home. Organizational...
Can Single Sourcing Work in R&D?
Research and development (R&D) organizations can benefit from long-term relationships with single suppliers for material purchasing and especially for contract research. The principle of single sourcing is linked to the fourth of W. Edwards Deming's 14...
What's Your Future?
One-half-by-two-by-three rule is key.
Companies want to focus on what they do best--their core competencies or core processes. The inner ring, the organizational core, is composed of corporate insiders, managers, and professionals. This inner ring also determines the organization's core proce...
The Red Bead Experiment for Educators
In education, tests for ranking and competency should follow designs that take into account the effects of variation. A red bead experiment adapted from manufacturing to the educational environment can help teachers see the role of total quality in...
Intelligence Everywhere: How Technology Can Enlighten and Empower
Automation linked with human insight enhances quality deployment. Information technology and quality are means to pursuing organizational goals. They support evolution of the workplace toward the ideal of a paperless environment in which wisdom and...
Doing the Right Things Right
The 1997 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award winners were honored at a ceremony in which President Clinton noted that continuous improvement and the elevation of employees serve the bottom line and the general public. Solectron Corporation won its...
The Criteria: A Looking Glass to Americans' Understanding of Quality
Business Results is Category 7 in the 1997 criteria of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA). As the last of seven installments on the Baldrige criteria, this article notes the distinction between ingrained core values and superficial...
What a Wonderful World It Could Be
A community quality council (CQC) brings the principles of total quality management (TQM) into daily community life. It is a forum through which all elements of the community can use TQM principles to maintain leadership, create a vision, establish a...
Keeping Neat Records of Noncompliance Is Not Quality
Quality management must be embedded into the operations of the organization. It requires a culture in which transactions and relationships are consistently successful. Leaders of successful organizations need the absolutes of leadership: agenda for...
How Ethics Can Improve Business Success
An ethics management model provides the opportunity to increase competitiveness and reduce operational inefficiencies. Ethics is a field of philosophy dealing with principles of behavior. Many managers feel that unethical behavior is a problem and...
Measuring Performance with Customer-Defined Metrics
Clear and manageable indicators guide the 700-member Information Systems Contract (ISC) team in providing information services to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The contract included 187 metrics, such as the maintenance...
Obstacles vs. Obsolescence
There are challenges to the development of the quality profession in the business environment. The lack of a consistent knowledge base with a scientific foundation is an obstacle to clearly identifying the quality professional's role. Multiple...
Eating the Elephant One Bite at a Time
The ISO 9000 registration process for a software company relies on humor, a sense of proportion, critical success factors, and the avoidance of typical mistakes. A sense of humor can soften internal criticisms, while a sense of proportion helps avoid...
Power in Organizations: A Look Through the TQM Lens
Successful relationships between empowered employees and their supervisors depend on judicious use of organizational social powers. These powers can help elicit commitment from employees in the TQM (total quality management) environment. The three...
Factoring Ethics into the TQM Equation
A technician was summoned to company to repair a major piece of manufacturing equipment. The plant manager anxiously looked on, since the entire production line was stopped....
