- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Engineering
- Innovation
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Problem Solving
- Process Management
- Project Management
- Quality Control
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Six Sigma
- Small Business
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Teams
- Total Quality Management
- Career Development
- Certification/Registration (management system Standards)
- Information Management
- Awards
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?...
Back to Basics: Team Advantage
Process management teams provide a framework through which complex, cross-functional processes can be assessed and optimized. By focusing on these seven activities, process management teams can provide the value they are uniquely positioned to deliver....
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....
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....
In It for the Long Haul
When organizations experience rapid growth, the most important part of the business—the customer—can sometimes get lost in the shuffle....
Standards Outlook: Dynamic Duo
Lean and Six Sigma are two methods aimed at improving the quality of an organization’s operations and its financial results. Both concentrate on customer satisfaction and improved business performance....
Total Quality, Total Commitment
An innovative approach to quality helped A.V. Feigenbaum create the concept of total quality management. Indeed, Feigenbaum’s quality contributions have been praised by U.S. business leaders and quality professionals around the globe. Armand V. Feigenbaum...
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...
Expert Answers: September 2008
Information management systems ... The benefits of binomial probability plotting....
QMS Certification: Down With Disillusionment
Conformity assessment and international standards that cover products and quality and environmental management systems provide mechanisms to ensure the quality of goods and services, but a recent survey reveals that the various certification bodies...
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...
Lean Lessons: Using Lean to Meet Quality Objectives
For many years, proponents of lean and Six Sigma methodologies have worked to achieve a marriage of convenience. For the most part this has fared well....
Beyond PDCA - A New Process Management
The ISO 9001 quality management standard calls for the use of the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) model for managing processes. The author questions why check is included in the cycle when the goal is to reduce the need for verification activities. Current...
Use SPC for Everyday Work Processes
Despite the advantages of statistical process control (SPC), many organizational implementation efforts have not been successful or self-sustaining. This has nothing to do with the methodology, but is a case of using the right toolbox but the wrong...
Standards & Registrars Directory
TS TR TL RS QS MD 9KS 14K 9K CR CE AU AS TR CS SPC QS 9KS 14K 9K CS VD6 TS TR TL SPC QS MD 9KS 14K 9K CS CE AU AS TS TR SPC 9KS 14K 9K CS AU AS TS QS MD 9KS 14K 9K CSD AU AS 9KS 9K CR AU VD6 TS TR SPC QS MD 9KS 14K 9K CS VD6 TS RS QS 9KS 14K 9K CSD CS AS...
Engaging Physicians in Lean Six Sigma
Healthcare is one of the most difficult industries in which to install a quality system because of the confusing role of physicians, yet few process changes can be fully optimized without engaging physicians. One reason physicians resist change is that...
Develop a Process Based Management System
An ISO 9001 team charged with developing a process based quality management system needs a thorough understanding of the company's current business management system in order to avoid conflict and unnecessary paperwork. While the QMS development team...
The Legacy of Ishikawa
Kaoru Ishikawa was a prime mover of quality in Japan who believed in quality through leadership. His six quality concepts form the basis for a holistic approach that is the unique Japanese approach to quality improvement. Ishikawa’s focus on...
The Where and Y: A 1-2-3 Model for Project Success
A Six Sigma project may take longer to establish if key players fail to provide Green and Black belts with appropriate definitions of problems and goals for improvement projects. While the purpose of a Six Sigma improvement project should be focused on...
A Simple Process Map
This approach will help you easily identify areas for improvement
Traditional organizations built on functional lines suffer from a silo syndrome. Each function or department acts like a silo whose output is tossed over the wall to the next function....
A Quality Major
The doctorate in technology management program offered by the School of Technology at Indiana State University is unique because it is a consortium of seven universities, with ISU being the degree issuing institution. The program provides...
Simple Quality for Smaller Organizations
Involving everyone in an organization in a sustainable quality process requires that management understand that the process is both simple and difficult. Paul Revere Insurance Group and UICI Insurance Company each began their quality efforts with the...
A Global Approach to ISO 9000
The implementation of quality management standards across multiple sites within an organization presents unique challenges. Johnson Controls' Government Systems and Services (GSS) changed its ISO 9000 approach and turned it into a model system for its...
Process Mapping's Next Step
The sophisticated technology of process simulation is explained from a nontechnical viewpoint. Simulation technology enables the accurate analysis of complex business processes. The key benefit is that all the analysis and testing take place in a...
Organize Your Quality Tool Belt
Quality professionals adopt and adapt techniques from other fields to satisfy the need to apply their skills to a wide variety of processes and situations. To someone new to the profession, this array of tools may seem overwhelming, but upon closer...
ASQ's Black Belt Certification - A Personal Experience
Together with the growing interest in and use of Six Sigma techniques comes the need to assess the qualifications of those seeking quality leadership roles in organizations. The ASQ certified Six Sigma Black Belt (CSSBB) exam is a practical and cost...
Peter F. Drucker: Delivering Value to Customers
Before Peter F. Drucker published his seminal book defining management as a formal discipline, there was no coherent body of knowledge addressing management issues. Drucker rejects the commonly held belief that the purpose of business is to make a...
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...
Expect the Unexpected
The Idaho State Department of Water Resources (IDWR), whose mission is to provide oversight for the management of water within the state of Idaho, recently converted its Cobol based ADABAS database system to an structured query language (SQL) server...
Teach What You Preach
To assess the demands of business and industry in Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, and Great Britain, European researchers identified eight important quality concept and skill categories. These included customer orientation, the practical knowledge...
Too Many Types of Quality Problems
Categorizing problem types can help practitioners in the quality field to focus their attention on relevant past experiences and problem solving techniques. This approach requires the definition of appropriate problem categories and communicating them...
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...
Putting Quality in Knowledge Management
Rapid access to expertise within an organization is a purpose of knowledge management. Quality professionals have critical leadership and educational roles in the harvesting of that knowledge and in the management of corporate memory. Knowledge is...
The Emancipation of Quality: Building Bridges and Closing Gaps
The recent name change of the American Society for Quality (ASQ) is indicative of the future of the quality profession. Quality goes beyond quality control in manufacturing. It extends to all organizations and to all work. Quality is not only for...
The Impact of Contracting on Quality Transformation in R&D
Outsourcing has an impact on the implementation of quality. R&D (research and development) managers often contract out some work, creating a dual work force. Studies being done in the Transformations to Quality Organizations project suggest that...
The Criteria: A Looking Glass to Americans' Understanding of Quality
Process Management is Category 6 in the 1997 criteria of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA). As the sixth of seven installments on the Baldrige criteria, this article notes that the MBNQA is driven by values for which the criteria are...
Getting the Most From an Over-the-Hill Body
Total quality management (TQM) tools and principles have maximized the author's training for the ten-event decathlon. Challenges have included the author's age of 40 when he began a five-year training regimen as well as the conflicting nature of the...
It's Time for Quality
Reengineering of the individual medical underwriting unit at Time Insurance Company involved teamwork and the redesign of key business processes. A reengineering team consisting of two consultants and nine Time employees led the way through this...
A Look at the Past to Predict the Future
From the industrial revolution to the era of total quality management (TQM) and beyond, the quality profession continues to evolve. The quality function developed out of the industrial revolution and scientific management either because of natural...
The Pursuit of Happiness
Market-based management (MBM) applies free-market concepts to organizations. It is an alternative to the traditional, Taylor-based management found in command-and-control firms. MBM management thrives in a community of individuals who are valued,...
Teamwork Brings Breakthrough Improvements in Quality and Climate
Scrap reduction at one U.K. company depended on cultural change, a problem-solving approach to process improvement, and teamwork. Prior to this initiative, the company's culture was traditionally hierarchical and based on fear. As a first step in...
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...
15 Years and Still Going . . .
At National Semiconductor, the total quality effort is in its third stage. The first stage started about 15 years ago. Programs introduced during this stage included: quality circles, total preventive maintenance, statistical process control, design...
