- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Engineering
- Innovation
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Metrology
- Problem Solving
- Basic Quality
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Project Management
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Reliability
- Safety
- Six Sigma
- Social Responsibility
- Standards
- Statistics
- Teams
- Theory of Constraints
- Risk Management
- Awards
- Product-Service Design
Expert Answers: May 2013
Lean case studies from IT organizations...
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?...
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....
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....
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.”...
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....
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....
Innovation Imperative: Put It on Paper
Last year, the ASQ Quality Management Division’s Innovation and Value Creation Technical Committee conducted its first evaluation of ASQ readiness for innovation certification....
Get Them in the Game
The key to developing a high-performance, quality-oriented workforce is maintaining a high level of employee engagement....
Back to Basics: Breaking It Down
A3 thinking is based on the plan-do-check-act cycle. This powerful way of thinking is transcribed on a piece of paper (the A3 report) a team of employees can use to produce a desired outcome for a proposed process....
Online Figures - December Back to Basics
alt section Remove engine Critical inspections Hydro cks Adjust 2410 Adjust 2410 TCI/ TCTO Supply Get topics E/ E AFG Fuels A/ V A/ R Egress B/ M NDI Looks Tools Egress Egress flow cks M/ T AFG & lube Remove elevators Weigh elevators AFI Props RFLTS TCR ...
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....
One Good Idea: Keep Moving
Many decision makers do not properly distinguish uncertainty from risk. When this occurs, there’s a tendency to spend too much time studying the problem, leading to a phenomenon often called “analysis paralysis.”...
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....
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....
Measure for Measure: Measuring Your Worth
I’ve run across this type of situation in which a calibration technician might feel he or she is not as important as others in the organization. Nothing could be further from the truth....
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....
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....
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....
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....
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...
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?...
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....
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....
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....
Rethinking Design
Design thinking offers several tools and concepts that can complement problem-solving approaches normally taught and used by quality professionals....
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....
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: 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....
Online (Taylor)
Insights from developing a quality management and continuous improvement curriculum can be applied in an operations management context to teach quality principles to general management....
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....
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....
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....
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....
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....
Natural Selection
It is mind-boggling to find widely contradictory reports of improvement programs from companies using the same improvement methods. Executives don’t know what to believe. Two similar Six Sigma implementations can have two very different end results....
Statistics Roundtable: Taking Stock
Recently, there has been exciting discussion about statistical engineering and its potential to redefine the role of statisticians and increase our influence in business through expanded participation in decision-making for high-impact problems....
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....
HU Goes There
After you've identified the root cause of a problem, what tool do you use to fix it? Enter a problem-correcting tool called the harmful/useful (HU) diagram....
Back to Basics: Behold the Bullet List
When using a cause and effect diagram to find root causes, beware of clutter. Using a list instead of a diagram makes the cause and effect tool easier to use and allows more flexibility. But whether you use the traditional diagram or a bullet list, put...
One Good Idea: Dancing Around Innovation
Being innovative, or using applied creativity, is difficult when you fail to recognize it as a process and approach innovation opportunities as an artisan....
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...
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,...
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...
Statistics Roundtable: Proper Blending
Since we proposed the idea and theory behind statistical engineering, we’re often asked: “Is it just another term for traditional applied statistics?” That’s a legitimate question....
Walking the Talk
Frequent service interruptions led Argentina-based Telefónica Group to establish a project that increased the reliability of its network and, in the process, garner gold honors at the 2010 ASQ International Team Excellence Award competition....
Are You A Good Problem Solver?
If you are like most people, you probably think you are a pretty good problem solver and have a good overall understanding of problem-solving practices. Yet, because you are reading this article, you also understand the value of continuous learning to...
Leveling the Playing Field
I would never have guessed I had something to offer professional athletes from a quality professional’s perspective. I was proven wrong, however, after a little experiment with a simple quality tool....
Expert Answers: April 2011
Size matters when remedying poor quality ... Examining process capability indexes....
Go With the Flow
In an effort to implement lean Six Sigma initiatives, many companies forget that data flow and material flow are two sides of the same coin. This starves the Six Sigma methods of data, which causes the enterprise to run at a suboptimal level....
Standards Outlook: Righting the Wrongs
Most organizations do not have a clue when it comes to root cause determination, and their inability to meet the requirement can be disastrous from regulatory and business perspectives....
Time for Action
Action learning is a simple yet intricate problem-solving strategy that engages participants in issue analysis, reflective questioning, listening and feedback. Its premise is that the answers to most problems lie within individuals....
Doomed to Fail
Ben looked around his new office, happy to still have a job but apprehensive about his new position. He had just been reassigned after his boss’s boss, the CEO, decided the continuous improvement initiative he had been leading was just not working out....
Statistics Roundtable: Further Explanation
The purpose of a roundtable is to facilitate discussion. Here, we want to facilitate discussion on statistical engineering....
Circling Back
THERE STILL SEEMS to be much confusion today surrounding W. Edwards Deming’s plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycle. How did Deming’s PDSA cycle evolve? Did Deming create the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle? Are PDCA and PDSA related?...
Guru Guide
The quality world certainly has its game-changers, and as part of its annual quality basics issue, QP is highlighting six individuals who indelibly altered the course of quality....
3.4 per Million: Firefighting With DMAIC
As quality professionals, we like to solve problems by finding root causes and putting fixes in place. As a rule, we don’t like to fight fires, but sometimes we have to....
Dealing With Disconnect
"Tips" was retiring. He was smiling, and with good reason. I was not, and with equally good reason. As the company’s senior auditor, his leaving meant things would never quite be the same....
No-Hanging Fruit
I first met the “no-hanging fruit” problem back in the day when ultrasonic impulse meters (like some quality problems now) were as big as a bread box—or bigger....
Taking the Reins
To stay in front of the competition, successful organizations know they can never stand still. There are always ways to innovate and improve the way they do business....
Past Is Prologue
Although it’s tempting to look ahead, it’s wise to look back and learn from the past. This axiom holds true for quality management, which is why the history of the discipline is worth closer examination....
Making the Connection
Connectivity can refer to the predecessor-successor relationship existing between two or more tools for continuous improvement. The output from one tool, such as a Pareto analysis, can become the input to another, such as cause and effect analysis....
Statistics Roundtable: Tried and True
A review of past Statistics Roundtable columns reveals that statisticians and quality professionals are always looking for better ways to increase the breadth and effectiveness of the use of statistical thinking and methods....
Bull's-eye
All companies want to build a stronger brand by ensuring customer satisfaction. Along the way, of course, the companies want to make a profit....
What's the Big Idea?
In the knowledge economy, agility in rolling out a stream of innovative products and services will be the determination of continued success. But how do you make innovation a way of life that isn't restricted to new product launches?...
Standards Outlook: Better Together
Even if everything is done appropriately during an audit, following up on the findings is just as important because it gives meaning to the audit....
What Do You Say?
With the help of an arsenal of lean tools, Boeing homed in on the root cause of its troubles, created equipment to address the issue and saw drastic improvements that earned it a bronze award at the 2009 International Team Excellence Awards....
Discussion Warranted
Warranties are important attributes of most business transactions. Their comprehensive impact on a company’s bottom line, however, is not always clearly understood—even by the people who deal with product quality and reliability on an everyday basis....
Under Scrutiny
For years, quality practitioners have been taught to find root causes of problems by using a set of tools based on the theory of cause and effect. Many users of these techniques, however, find that some problems keep happening....
Perspectives: TPS Troubles
It’s only natural to link the TPS to Toyota’s safety problems. But is the system the problem? And should organizations that employ a version of the TPS be concerned about their systems?...
Breaking From the Pack
Russ Ackoff's life story is instructive for quality professionals as they trace the development of systems thinking during its 60-year migration....
Customer Focus Sparks Invention
To reduce customer complaints and remain profitable, Littelfuse’s facility in the Philippines designed a voice of the customer (VOC) project. The executive team or project champion and project sponsor help the team set goals and expectations, and provide ...
Expert Answers: March 2010
Using fault tree analysis ... The value of fellowship ......
The Next Chapter?
A new version of Six Sigma shifts focus from reducing defects and cutting costs to growing an organization’s market share by identifying targeted products and markets and creating customer value....
Leaning Toward Green
Lean practitioners have long challenged employees to question why a process is performed in a particular way, whether it is necessary, and to shift their paradigm to implement a simpler, more efficient way to provide value to the customer....
Career Climb
You don’t need to be jobless in today’s economy to feel stressed and apprehensive about your current situation. You don’t need to be reminded there aren’t any guarantees in today’s world....
One Good Idea: Stir Up Trouble
There are many problem-solving tools at our disposal, whether it’s reverse brainstorming or a TRIZ technique that instructs the user to “do it in reverse.” I’ve used a similar tool, which my former company called “creating the trouble.”...
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...
Salary Survey 2009: Part 1, Section 4: Salary by ASQ and RABQSA International Certification
In all, 57.8% of those surveyed have at least one ASQ certification, and 13.3% have at least one RABQSA International certification....
Expert Answers: November 2009
The TOPS way of getting to the root cause ... Repair vs. rework...
Attitude Shift
In a used-car dealership group based in Richmond, VA, a lean culture change took place that started with a redesign of its process for reconditioning used cars and ended with numerous benefits, some of which it didn't expect....
Volviendo a los Fundamentos: Probando, Probando, 1, 2, 3
Así como es importante que un producto funcione correctamente, el manual del producto también debe funcionar. Propietarios o usuarios de productos deben ser capaces de encontrar fácilmente la información que necesitan para utilizar...
Critical Stage
Has Six Sigma been a good thing? While this is a straightforward question, there isn’t a simple answer....
Back to Basics: Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3
Just as it is important that a product function properly, the product manual must also work. Owners or product users must be able to easily find the information they need to use an item effectively. To achieve this objective, the content and organization...
Career Corner: Risks, Relationships and Rewards
Employers, employees and independent contractors alike have been affected by the turbulent economy. We see it all around us, whether at firms we own, organizations at which we work or businesses we patronize. Nonprofits are experiencing the same types...
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....
Online Sidebar Creasy
The evolution to 6TOC includes its predecessors, Six Sigma, lean manufacturing, lean Six Sigma and the theory of constraints...
Pyramid Power
The next evolutionary step for Six Sigma could be a method called 6TOC (pronounced “six-tock”) that combines principles of lean Six Sigma with the theory of constraints....
Career Corner: Are You Recession Proofed?
An observation I have made over the years is that organizations seem to make cuts in two specific areas when economic times are tough. The first department cut is safety, and the second is quality....
A Lean Six Sigma Breakthrough
The relationship between lean and Six Sigma may appear to be simple, but in practice it may be more challenging because there are so many ways to piece the two together....
Statistics Roundtable: Grab the Brass Ring
Remember going to the amusement park and riding the carousel or merry-go-round? During the ride, there was sometimes a brass ring you could grab from a dispenser.It took some dexterity to snatch the ring from the dispenser as the carousel rotated....
