- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Engineering
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrology
- Problem Solving
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Quality Control
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Six Sigma
- Small Business
- Social Responsibility
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Theory of Constraints
- Total Quality Management
- Risk Management
- Awards
Standards Outlook: World View
The global economy has provided organizations with many opportunities that didn’t exist even 10 years ago. On the other hand, the internet and extensive outsourcing have “flattened” the Earth, presenting organizations with many new risks....
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....
On the Right Course
In today's competitive business environment, organizations do not always limit their concerns to those of shareholders and customers....
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....
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....
Career Corner: Seeing Through the Smoke
This question risks giving away my age, but it’s for a higher cause: When you hear the phrase “smoke gets in your eyes,” what is the first thing that comes to mind? If it’s not the Platters, the doo-wop group, and if you aspire to the management ranks...
Jersey Score
For most, it takes years to reach a point at which an organization can expect to be seriously considered for the Baldrige award. But that didn’t deter New Jersey-based healthcare provider AtlantiCare, one of five award recipients for 2009....
Tune Up
Six Sigma has many meanings. In its simplest context, Six Sigma can be defined statistically as the attempt to achieve near-perfection by having no more than 3.4 errors per million opportunities, or being 99.997% correct (or defect-free)....
Progress Report
Six Sigma has been a hot topic discussed and implemented globally in the business world, nonprofit organizations and even governments. There is comparatively less research, however, into how to assess the maturity of Six Sigma implementation....
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....
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...
Make Healthcare Lean
The principles of lean manufacturing are as applicable to healthcare as they are to the automobile industry. However, unlike manufacturing, healthcare management structures are not usually hierarchical, and hospitals generally are not-for-profit. Value...
What Do Online Customers Value?
Burgeoning e-commerce sales point to the pivotal role of the Internet as an effective marketing tool. An online survey was used to determine which website design features have the strongest consumer appeal. One section of the survey gathered background...
Lean Glossary
A glossary defines terms commonly associated with lean...
Quality Management's Role in Global Sourcing
Globalization and the evolution of quality management systems from a focus on controlling product conformity to a much broader focus on overall enterprise capability have resulted in the need to redefine the role of quality management in dealing with...
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...
Does Baldrige Make a Business Case for Quality
The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) is a widely accepted model promoting quality management as a means to business success. However, because business results are themselves part of the model, the contribution of the approach-deployment...
Column: Standards Outlook: Quality Management System vs. Quality Improvement
What should we tell the CEO?
A column by James Harrington, a former company COO began, "All quality programs, whether TQM, Six Sigma or ISO 9000, require an organization to shift away from the status quo."
The article was about resistance to change, but the choice of words of a...
A User Friendly Financial Reporting System
In the late 1980s Master Industries, Inc. began implementing W. Edwards Deming's 14 points and management philosophy to create a customer focused and employee oriented culture committed to continuous improvement. More recently, the company integrated...
Measurements For Business
Measurements are the principle tool used to manage businesses. Quality professionals who support process improvement must understand the principles and processes behind the measurements they make. The popular Balanced Scorecard approach divides the need...
Quality Professionals Around the World Share Similar Concerns, Experiences
The International Chapter of ASQ has grown from about 25 members in 1956 to more than 5,000 members in about 90 countries by 2000. Quality professionals worldwide want to hold on to a core set of principles, and similar challenges face the quality...
Continuous Process Improvement When It Counts Most
Managers are challenged to address the radical changes that have occurred in the manufacturing industry in the past two decades. Managers often use continuous process improvement and computer simulations to help them reduce waste, improve quality,...
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...
TQM's Human Resource Component
A survey of manufacturing firms in Georgia examined human resource (HR) factors and outcomes of implementing total quality management (TQM). Of about 350 firms receiving the survey, 91 produced usable results, 35 of these being from firms using TQM....
India's Quality Movement
Awards and standards lead the way to significant achievements
To meet the product and service quality challenges of multinational companies operating in India and to realize export potential, both private and public sector Indian companies must resolve quality and quality management issues. The CMM model has been de...
Total Quality Management in Higher Education
A continuous quality improvement (CQI) team in the Admissions Office at Lamar University is using the plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycle for improving its services. Total quality management (TQM) initiatives had been needed at Lamar, because of declining...
International Society Brings Practitioners, Researchers Together
A tool to develop a world-class quality process
1. P. Helo, "Quality Documentation Distribution With Intranet Implementations," Productivity & Quality Management Frontiers--VII (Norcross, GA: Engineering & Management Press, 1998). 2. M. Laatu and I. Taksis, "Development of Systematic Customer Satisfact...
University, Inc.
Institutions of higher education can increase their competitiveness and product value by applying synchronization, zero-defect, and quality control techniques. Supporting such techniques is a systems view in which student education, courses, and...
Small Service Firms Face TQM Implementation Challenges
A survey questionnaire mailed to 1,000 small and medium-sized service firms in the United States plus 20 follow-up interviews examined the status, usefulness, and limitations of total quality management (TQM). Firms with 500 or fewer employees were...
Beyond Vision: Creating and Analyzing Your Organization's Quality Future
To establish a strategic quality future for an organization, there are seven futuring tools. The tools facilitate creation of a vision and critical examination of forecasts into the next five to ten years. The goal is to close the gap between present...
Advanced Quality Planning: A Guide for Any Organization
Implementation of advanced product quality planning (APQP) has long-term business advantages for any organization, while supporting the QS-9000 activities of firms in the automotive industry. This planning process, including a control plan (CP)...
Implementing Quality One Class at a Time
Total quality management (TQM) in the university setting empowers students to take responsibility for what they learn. One experiment aimed to improve an advanced university course in operations management. Titled "Manufacturing Processes," the course...
TQM Within FORTUNE 500 Corporations
A survey of Fortune 500 corporations examined implementation of total quality management (TQM). The 500 mailed questionnaires produced 95 responses. Almost all (91.5%) of the respondents have a formal quality management program. Of the 80 that follow...
Don't Throw Scientific Management Out with the Bathwater
The history of Taylorism is intertwined with the development of total quality management (TQM). Frederick W. Taylor's scientific management sought to reduce waste and increase productivity in the early 1900s. His seminal work was translated into...
TQM, Reengineering, and the Edge of Chaos
Complex-adaptive systems survive through evolutionary forces and self-organization (or positive feedback). This allows them to live on the edge of chaos, successfully balanced between the stagnation of stability and the self destruction of chaos....
Teams in the Age of Systems
Customer focus and systems thinking affect the implementation of teamwork. Without attention to these factors, teams can proliferate and become disconnected. A customer-in mentality means that customers drive the formation, activity, and evaluation of...
Maintaining Focus Within Your Organization
Vision brings common understanding to the stakeholders of a company. But they must be wary of the seven deadly distractions. First, employment involvement is ineffective if it does not include senior management. Second, training becomes wasteful when it...
The Art of TQM
Senior executives should provide constancy of purpose and leadership. Inadequacies in these areas are major causes of TQM (total quality management) implementation failures. Poor pilot improvement efforts also add to TQM implementation failures. The...
A Failure of Methods, Not Philosophy
Total quality management (TQM) is a way of thinking, not a collection of tools. It is a philosophy, the implementation of which differs from organization to organization. Even within an organization, the implementation tools and methods should evolve...
Texas Instruments' and Iowa State University's Experience with the University Challenge Program
Partnerships between higher education and industry support total quality management (TQM) in academia, though there still is some resistance. Iowa State University (ISU) and Texas Instruments (TI) have had such a partnership since 1993, through the...
How to Distinguish the Masters from the Hacks
To select a management consultant, apply seven sequential criteria. They guide the process of separating master consultants, like Perry Gluckman and W. Edwards Deming, from hacks. The master has a world view that relies on principles; a hack relies on...
When Murphy Speaks--Listen
When he reported the loss at the airline's lost baggage claim, the clerk said, " Ohyes, you were on that flight where you have to change planes in St. Louis. People are always losing luggage on that connection because the time between planes is. Such se...
