- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Environmental Manag. and Sustainability
- Human Resources
- Innovation
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Metrology
- Problem Solving
- Basic Quality
- Process Management
- Project Management
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Safety
- Six Sigma
- Social Responsibility
- Standards
- Teams
- Risk Management
- Customer Experience Management
- Food Safety
- Economic Case for Quality
- Strategic Planning
- Change Management
Career Corner: Boost Your Brand
Your personal brand is your style. It is composed of your values, abilities, strengths and limitations. The most successful workers, knowingly or not, align their personal brands with their organizations’ cultures....
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....
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....
Tool Time
“Does everybody know what time it is? It’s ‘Tool Time’!” On “Home Improvement,” one of the most watched TV sitcoms in the U.S. in the 1990s, Tim and his assistant, Al, demonstrated to their television audience what tools they had and how to use them....
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....
The Right Ingredients
In Out of the Crisis, W. Edwards Deming writes, “Everyone doing his best is not the answer. It is first necessary that people know what to do.” To ensure people know exactly what to do, all activities within the organization should be system oriented....
Know the Why
One of the primary reasons improvement projects fail is a lack of alignment with an organization’s vision, mission, goals and objectives. In an attempt to avoid that issue, a government agency in Guyana deployed a multi-tool method for improvement....
Perspectives: The Unending Search
Recently, Stephen K. Hacker wrote that “many of our organizations remain mired in their current states, frozen in old mindsets.”...
3.4 per Million: Box Paradox
Without any data to support this, I’m willing to wager that anyone who has been employed in a manufacturing or transactional environment for five years has either been directed to or heard someone direct others to “think outside the box.”...
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...
Standards Outlook: Corrective Action Challenge
The purpose of corrective action is to prevent the recurrence of the problem. There are usually many actions that can be taken to address the problem, ranging from incremental changes to innovative solutions....
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....
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.”...
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....
Get Them in the Game
The key to developing a high-performance, quality-oriented workforce is maintaining a high level of employee engagement....
Salary Survey 2012: Part 1, Section 14: Salary by Organizational Quality Infrastructure
Salary by quality department membership for U. S. respondents / Table 3 Part of a quality department Not part of a quality department Percentage Average salary Percentage Average salary All respondents 80.7% $ 84,445 19.3% $ 96,346 analyst 63 64,330 37 7...
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....
Standards Outlook: From the Trenches
ISO 9001 and the COSO internal control guidance document used by financial organizations that must comply with the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act don’t have a lot in common, but one thing they share is the need to update the current version....
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....
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....
Healthy Returns
The future of any enterprise depends on the quality of its customer service. All organizations—even those manufacturing products—are service organizations because all create value for customers by performing services....
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....
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....
(Re)visionary Thinking
The preeminent ISO standard on environmental management, ISO 14001, is being revised to incorporate new approaches in the field of environmental management systems and meet stakeholder expectations that have evolved since it was first published in 1996....
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....
Pointed in the Right Direction
Last November, ISO published a new edition of ISO 19011—Guidelines for Auditing Management Systems. This marks a further evolution in management system auditing and in ISO’s approach to the drafting of management system standards....
Expert Answers: September 2012
Sustaining excellence ... Blood bank error...
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....
Innovation Imperative: A Question of Balance
Many people say that mentioning standards and innovation in the same breath is a contradiction in terms. Evidence from the real world says otherwise....
Rethinking Treatment
Changing and improving complex processes in healthcare settings are no easy tasks. They require a systems approach using a variety of quality improvement methods and tools....
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....
In the Trenches
Deploying a quality change program is something every organization needs to do sooner or later, whether it involves lean, Six Sigma, the Baldrige criteria, kaizen or any other improvement effort. But managing a change program is a double-edged sword....
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....
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....
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....
Innovation Imperative: Time for a Change
A quality manager’s career is far from predictable. It depends on the attitude of an organization’s leadership toward quality and, perhaps more importantly, leadership’s understanding of what quality is....
Expert Answers: July 2012
Reigniting quality ... Going nuclear...
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?...
Quality for Tomorrow
The work of the quality profession has evolved over the years from quality control to quality assurance to quality management. But what is the next stage of evolution from quality management?...
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....
Valuable Resource
Talent development is addressed in three key components of sustainability management systems: international standards, social responsibility (SR) reporting and performance excellence frameworks....
Career Corner: Survive and Thrive
An understanding of how the entire workplace dynamic is changing and the ability to adapt to those changes with a united workforce comprised of multiple generations is critical not only to a company’s success, but also its survival....
One Size Fits All
There’s a reason why simple tools endure: They work, regardless of the situation. That’s a characteristic shared by the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence....
Expert Answers: April 2012
The right way to roll out Six Sigma ... Dealing with troublesome auditees....
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: Theory of Evolution
Thumbing through W. Edward Deming’s timeless classic Out of the Crisis, it’s striking to see how the current economic crisis can be attributed to the factors he pointed out so many years ago as roadblocks to quality and productivity....
Eradicating Inconsistency
When most people imagine the Orkin man, they visualize a uniformed technician driving a white truck from house to house. What’s probably not as widely known is that the technicians stop at many places other than homes....
Standards Outlook: Complex Relationship
In addition to being required to master a multitude of global requirements, regulatory professionals must address other issues that impede their ability to function expeditiously....
Innovation Imperative: Unplugged
Many people think technology drives innovation. In fact, the opposite is true....
Taking the Wheel
Customer experience has become the mantra of senior management looking to enhance revenue and margins. In fact, more companies are trying to differentiate themselves not only on product quality but also on total customer experience....
Get on Board
Although it is difficult to find a universally accepted definition of what it actually means, quality management is still the dream of every organization on the planet—or at least it should be....
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....
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....
3.4 per Million: Know What You Want
Having learned Six Sigma in the 1980s now creates an interesting box to live in today. Six Sigma was a strategy to achieve the corporate vision of total customer satisfaction....
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....
Perspectives: Taken for Granted
The ISO 9000 series is Quality 101, and as quality practitioners, we should never forget it....
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....
Lead On
In today's business environment, any organization that wishes to exceed customer expectations and stay competitive needs effective supplier management. Emotional intelligence plays an important role in dealing with suppliers....
Innovation Imperative: Risky Business
Norm Larsen celebrated 39 previous failures when he named his breakthrough new product WD-40. His example proves that innovators can’t be afraid to fail....
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....
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....
One Good Idea: Flurry of Inactivity
It won’t be long before snow starts to fall again. And as the weather cools, it reminds me of the blizzard that struck the New York City area last December and a lesson it can teach leaders everywhere....
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....
Standards Outlook: Know Your Future
The future is a subject of great interest to quality practitioners. So let’s look for initiatives that may be right around the corner. Armed with the right information, you should be able to get a head start on the competition....
3.4 per Million: The Way to Fail
Several months ago, I received a call from a lean Six Sigma leader from a large multinational organization who was concerned because his organization was having great difficulty completing projects....
Tribal Quest
The continuing abundance of news stories about quality failures in the manufacturing, food, pharmaceutical, healthcare and education sectors is a reminder that award-winning organizations are islands in a sea of quality indifference....
How Do You Compare?
Organizations often are unable to leverage benchmarking as a process to deliver excellence in business performance. This could be due to a lack of understanding of benchmarking as a process or lack of clarity on where it could add business value....
Standards Outlook: Know Your Role
When an organization has stale quality management system processes in the face of dynamic—at times chaotic— uncertainty, the entire system may become irrelevant....
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....
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....
Career Corner: Planning Ahead
When TQM became a strategic imperative for competitive advantage, celebrity CEOs became cheerleaders, quality maturity was measured by more vice presidents for quality, and academics traced quality’s history from inspection to customer-focused strategy....
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....
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....
Standards Outlook: How Will You Manage
While the required skill sets of quality and regulatory professionals constantly change, and capability upgrades must be ongoing to ensure success, it was hard to predict that branching out into project management would be the next hurdle....
Healthy Skepticism
It’s important not to underestimate the intense, personal nature of change as each employee in the healthcare industry transitions from the familiar paper-driven world to an entirely electronic one....
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....
Ford's Focus
“Triple bottom line” refers to the measurement of a business’s impact on people, planet and profits. These metrics may seem aggressive, but Henry Ford proved their intelligent interpretation and application makes them synergistic and mutually supporting....
The Right Stuff
The reality for many leaders is they are engaged in making decisions that affect everyone in the organization, but most of them have little evidence of whether decisions are being implemented as intended....
Quality in the First Person: Quality Helps Kick Cancer
As a quality professional, I can’t help but look for ways to use quality tools in anything from correction to prevention, from work to everyday life. I have two examples of how quality tools and processes can help people overcome life-changing challenges....
The Secret to Sustainment
Of all the problems and projects encountered by most continuous improvement professionals, the most challenging is making change last. In fact, sustaining change tends to be an afterthought for many....
Pushback Prevention
“Our quality program doesn’t seem to be working.” This statement, or a similar one, is frequently repeated by executives and managers who believe quality-focused projects are not meeting expectations. Such perceptions are often reinforced by published...
Certification at Work
Organizations face difficult decisions every day: where to invest, how to focus employees and how to drive a competitive advantage in their markets. A decision to launch employee training cannot be taken lightly....
Risky Business
In highly regulated industries that manufacture pharmaceuticals, foods and cosmetics, quality control scientists have been known to perform sampling and testing to determine the acceptability of finished products. Throughout the last decade,...
Put JIB on the Job
An organization implemented a proven training program that improved quality and efficiency plantwide during the recession, positioning it to perform at higher levels when demand increased after the economy recovered....
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....
The First Step
In his penetrating and perturbing 2009 New Yorker article, Atul Gawande explored the huge cost differential between care in McAllen, TX, and care at other spots in the country with similar demographics and medical sophistication. His conclusion was that...
Getting on Track
ISO 26000 is here. Are you ready? Maybe the better question is: Do you care? You should. ISO 26000 Guidance on Social Responsibility has been touted as the new standard that can help manage social responsibility issues at your organization....
Getting on Track/Por el Buen Camino
ISO 26000 is here. Are you ready? Maybe the better question is: Do you care? You should. ISO 26000 Guidance on Social Responsibility has been touted as the new standard that can help manage social responsibility issues at your organization....
What Have We Learned?
In a general way, the disaster in Japan provides us with a good context to see what lessons can be learned from fundamental quality management science....
Measure for Measure: Military-Grade Advice
In 1990, the new chief of the U.S. Air Force's laboratory certification office offered a few words of advice to the managers of the USAF calibration laboratories on how to set themselves up for success—advice still applicable today....
Climb to the Top
Who said it’s lonely at the top? For only the second time since the Baldrige program began in 1988, seven organizations were recognized last year with the nation’s highest presidential honor for performance excellence—the Baldrige Award....
Career Corner: The Missing Links
The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence presents an ideal pattern of values to which quality professionals can aspire. Tracking its development throughout close to a quarter century reveals shifts in the quality community’s thinking...
On the Clock
Whatever the business, customers expect timely and efficient service. They expect their phone calls to be answered in two or fewer rings. They loath waiting in long lines and want transactions handled as quickly as possible....
Online Sidebar Watson
Inova Mount Vernon Hospital’s first change activity focused on the front-end processes of getting a patient triaged and into a bed, as shown in the highlighted boxes in the emergency department (ED) process flow in Online Figure 1....
