- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Engineering
- Human Resources
- Innovation
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Process Capability
- Basic Quality
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Six Sigma
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Total Quality Management
- AS9000
- Information Management
- Customer Requirements
- Economic Case for Quality
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....
Standards Outlook: Hand in Hand
Beginning July 1, all aviation, space and defense (AS&D) quality management system (QMS) certification body audits were required to be conducted according to a newly released AS&D QMS standard....
Starting From Scratch
Graduate students studying quality developed the Quality Systems Development Roadmap to help organizations do this, using application templates from the Lean Six Sigma Quality Transformation Toolkit. However, new companies, organizations without an enterp...
Raising the Bar
Now more than ever, companies must measure and manage their quality costs to compete at a high level in today’s global marketplace....
Agency Files Away Inefficiency, Saves Taxpayers a Bundle
Caseworkers for the SunCoast Region of the Florida Department of Children and Families won a silver medal in the 2007 International Team Excellence Competition by redesigning its paper based document filing and retrieval system and bringing it into...
Linking the Supply Chain to TQM
In today's environment of global outsourcing, supplier quality management must transform itself from simply measuring supplier compliance to gathering knowledge, managing risk, and executing project management. Total quality management (TQM) ensures...
Promoting Quality In Your Organization
A 2004 survey of industry executives showed that while nearly all agreed that quality favorably influences profits, few had actually used quality methods. Quality professionals can play a significant role in supporting performance management initiatives...
Reflections on the Future of Quality
Over the years, the intent of quality systems has evolved from enhancing customer satisfaction by meeting their needs to improving overall organizational performance and capabilities. But quality management systems have always lagged behind evolving...
A Statistician Looks at Inventory Management
A major problem facing companies today is how to promptly deliver products to customers without tying up too much capital in the form of inventory buffers. The incorporation of statistical models into supply chain management tactics helps in sizing and...
Column: Emerging Sectors: All Aboard the ISO 9000 Express
The Chicago Transit System, serving approximately 1.5 million riders every day in Chicago and 38 neighboring suburbs, is a vital component of Northeastern Illinois' economy. Operated by the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) and including buses, trains and...
Gain a Competitive Edge By Preventing Recalls
Product recalls are a serious problem for consumer products companies. Each year, thousands of products representing hundreds of millions of product units are recalled in the United States for safety reasons....
Column: Emerging Sectors: ISO 9000 for Small Service Companies
Should a small service company pursue ISO 9000 certification? If your customers aren't well informed about the benefits of hiring a certified company, why invest the time and money to achieve the goal?...
Effective Strategic Planning
Many business leaders have difficulty translating their strategic planning strategies into business results. One reason is that carefully devised strategies are often poorly deployed and implemented. To successfully launch a business strategy, an...
Making Managers More Effective Agents of Change
Successful implementation of valuable solutions relies not only on management's expertise, but also on the cooperation of other stakeholders who interact within the organizational system. Effective application of the Baldrige criteria as a framework to...
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...
A Comparative Analysis of National and Regional Quality Awards
Organizations are using quality award programs in their pursuit of total quality management. Industries realize that quality awards offer models and tools for implementing quality strategy, benchmarking best practices, performing self-assessment, and...
Linking Six Sigma with QS-9000
Six Sigma is changing the way the automotive industry approaches quality improvement. Ford Motor Company is the first automaker to use Six Sigma to focus on customer satisfaction, and several other automotive suppliers plan to use the approach as well....
Tapping into People
Respironics, Inc., a manufacturer of medical equipment, wanted to assess the general well-being of its employees by surveying them. The development of the survey and the survey process led to the coverage of topics and the identification of uses for...
Six Sigma: A Breakthrough Strategy for Profitability
Statistical tools and interventions can lead to major cost reductions and quality improvements. The six sigma strategy is a key to such breakthrough improvements. It involves measuring the capability of processes to produce services or products that...
Conducting an Organizational Self-Assessment Using the 1997 Baldrige Award Criteria
A 52-item operational assessment questionnaire identifies strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement. Its seven sections correspond to the elements of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, and the resulting assessment rating can be...
The Criteria: A Looking Glass to Americans' Understanding of Quality
Human Resource Development and Management is Category 5 in the 1997 criteria of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. As the fifth of seven installments on the Baldrige criteria, this article notes the relationships among work systems, employee...
The Criteria: A Looking Glass to Americans' Understanding of Quality
Strategic planning is Category 2 in the criteria of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. As the second installment on the seven categories, this article demonstrates the impact of strategic planning on change management and competitive...
The Criteria: A Looking Glass to Americans' Understanding of Quality
Leadership is Category 1 in the criteria of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. As the first installment on the seven categories, this article uses the experiences of others to outline eight lessons about leadership and its assessment. First,...
Achieving Performance Excellence
Ten core values support the criteria of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. They are vital for optimization of performance in any organization. First, customer-driven quality requires that employees listen to and act on the demands of...
Where's the Q in TQM?
Understanding organizational change is prerequisite to a successful TQM (total quality management) initiative. Resistance will be a problem especially if change is imposed or is expected of only some levels of the organization. Even when change is...
Making Performance Appraisals Consistent with a Quality Environment
Employee evaluations can reinforce quality principles. Old performance appraisal methods did generate fear and ignore teamwork, but today's methods can be fair and valuable. The appraisal process for city government managers in Milwaukee has evolved...
Strategic Planning: The Missing Link in TQM
Integrating total quality management (TQM) into the business strategy of a company gives direction to its improvement efforts. This happens when the TQM philosophy and strategic planning become a single process. The process should be customer driven...
1994 Baldrige Award Recipients Share Their Expertise
The 1994 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award winners are: AT&T Consumer Communications Services (CCS); GTE Directories Corporation; and Wainwright Industries, Inc. AT&T CCS has 44,000 employees and more than 80 million customers. More than 90% of...
