- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Engineering
- Environmental Manag. and Sustainability
- Human Resources
- Innovation
- Inspection
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Metrology
- Problem Solving
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Six Sigma
- Social Responsibility
- Standards
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Theory of Constraints
- Career Development
- Risk Management
- Customer Requirements
- Awards
- Certification (ASQ)
- Strategic Planning
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....
What Makes You Tick?
Uncoordinated internal operations create organizational inefficiencies, a lower level of customer service and unnecessary delays in management decisions, resulting in increased costs....
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....
Career Corner: Build Your Economic Case
Do you realize that one of the greatest means for professional development is attending a quality industry conference? But first, you need to get there....
Don't Lose Patients
Clinch Valley Medical Center—a for-profit, 175-bed hospital operating in western Virginia and part of a healthcare organization with operations in 18 states—has been undertaking lean Six Sigma initiatives for approximately three years....
The Right Blend
Faced with cost reductions and scheduling changes, a chemotherapy mixing room (CMR) implemented the define, measure, analyze, improve and control method and lean tools to optimize operations....
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....
Quality in the First Person: Failure of Inspection
Inspection often occurs at the end of the production line. As a result, the information gained from identifying problem pieces comes too late to make adjustments in the process, let alone isolate places in the process that are causing the problem....
Statistics Roundtable: Follow the Rules
Despite appearances to the contrary, I am not old enough to have participated in the first discussions of control chart rules....
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....
Salary Survey 2012: Crunching the Numbers
The 2012 survey was sent to 54,337 members. Of the 6,857 individuals who started the survey, 6,857 completed the questionnaire for a response rate of 11.2%....
Salary Survey 2012: Part 1, Section 17: Salary by Highest Level of Educ. and No. of Yrs. in Quality
Qp 157 Salary by highest level of education and years in quality for U. S. respondents / Figure 1 51,289 64,242 76,781 59,756 65,897 75,339 71,705 89,217 99,561 85,232 103,187 113,211 99,562 109,591 138,626 $ 20,000 0 $ 40,000 $ 60,000 $ 80,000 $ 100,000...
Expert Answers: December 2012
A better supplier scorecard ... Inspecting your suppliers ......
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 ...
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....
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....
Quality in the First Person: Pursuing Excellence
This is the story of my journey from lackadaisical and passive performance to data-driven dominance during my collegiate football career as a punter....
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....
Making Contact
For an organization to be able to truly understand how well it’s meeting customer expectations, more concrete, measureable metrics must be used....
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....
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....
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....
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....
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....
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....
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....
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....
Back to Basics: Creative Combination
I have been facilitating lean Six Sigma projects and coaching other belts through their projects since 2002. Combining tools is a technique I use with teams when potential root cause analysis through a fishbone diagram does not show any obvious direction....
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....
Rethinking Design
Design thinking offers several tools and concepts that can complement problem-solving approaches normally taught and used by quality professionals....
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....
3.4 per Million: Inputs Into Action
A year ago, I wrote about the nine-step Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) business management system and how it can be used to integrate voice of the customer (VOC) sources with other improvement efforts so an entire enterprise can benefit....
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....
Salary Survey 2011: Slow and Steady
A single organization’s actions may be reported several times if multiple employees of that organization responded to the survey. Director: Oversees all aspects of an organization’s quality or business improvement efforts, such as developing and administr...
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....
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....
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....
Back to Basics: An Eye for Design
Six Sigma often comes under scrutiny because some organization leaders believe it stifles innovation. One fundamental misconception companies using Six Sigma often have is that it only focuses on process improvement....
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....
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....
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....
Perspectives: Wake Up and Smell the Cookies
MY RECENT TRANSITION from the automotive sector to a company in the food industry held some unusual surprises: • The overall equipment effectiveness, capabilities and yields were shockingly low in the food industry....
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....
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....
If You Build It, They Will Come
After decades of rising healthcare costs and individual stakeholder initiatives to cut expenses, annual medical cost trends continue to outpace all other employer economic indicators. The current economic crisis and federal healthcare reform discussions...
A Lean Transformation
Sacred Heart Hospital CEO Steve Ronstrom first learned about lean while working on boats in Alaska. There, they didn’t waste a thing—they wouldn’t even throw away a piece of rope. When he later returned home and worked in a hospital, he observed...
The Bright Side of Failure
Nobody wants to be associated with a project that fell short of expectations. But, as any good quality professional knows, failed projects can provide a mechanism for continuous improvement....
Loud and Clear
An company's use of metrics to drive and measure success can help it maintain a leadership position in its industry. A commitment to applying performance management tools has increased efficiencies, reduced cost and improved customer satisfaction scores....
Know More, Do More
If organizations want to take advantage of a changing landscape dotted with new opportunities, products and services, they need to make a substantial investment in educating and retaining a competent labor force....
Statistics Roundtable: Why Statisticians Model Data
What follows is an apology. Not an apology as in “I’m sorry,” but an apology as a justification or explanation. You might be thinking it shouldn’t be necessary to explain why statisticians model data. It is just their nature....
3.4 per Million: Integrating Inputs
Obtaining voice of the customer information is always important because a business’s survival depends on a person choosing its products over a competitor’s products....
Statistics Roundtable: Further Explanation
The purpose of a roundtable is to facilitate discussion. Here, we want to facilitate discussion on statistical engineering....
Salary Survey 2010: Part 1, Section 10: Salary by Number of Employees Overseen
QP 65 Part 1. Regular Employee Results Section 10. Salary by Number of Employees Overseen Rewards for Supervising Others Figure 1 includes results for: x Full- time employees, Part- time employees, x U. S. employees, x Canadian employees, International e...
Salary Survey 2010: Not Out of the Question
Every year, QP’s Salary Survey sparks countless questions for quality professionals and gets them thinking about their careers and personal development: How do I compare with others? What can I do get ahead? Are things getting better out there?...
Salary Survey 2010: The Complete Report
experience by gender / FIGURE 2 More than 20 years 10.1- 20 years 6.1- 10 years 3.1- 6 years $ 6,000 Male Years of experience in quality profession Years of experience in quality profession Female $ 4,000 $ 2,000 0 $ 2,000 $ 4,000 $ 6,000 1- 3 years Less...
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?...
Online Figures Ellifson
Customer relationship management model / ONLINE FIgurE 1 Evaluation and improvement Strategic planning process ( SPP) step 1: Review customer inputs and analyze processes to refine feedback mechanisms, customer relationship strategies, and action plans (...
Tip of the Iceberg
HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS KNOW it’s not enough to treat a patients’ conditions and send them on their way. Often, the patient’s condition and symptoms are simply the tip of the iceberg. Many other factors—including human behaviors and societal conditions...
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....
Flush with Success
While implementing ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and lean, I’ve worked with a number of companies that use oils and other biotoxic materials. With increasing attention on the environment—through legislation and social pressure—safely disposing...
Expert Answers: September 2010
Soft-dollar savings ... crisis management's effect on quality....
One Good Idea: Number Nine
Keeping the eight lean wastes in mind when creating a process flowchart is a great way to target improvement opportunities. But during the course of several projects, I’ve come across another form of waste....
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....
3.4 per Million: The Driving Force
Not long ago, I conducted a workshop at a client’s site to help develop a pipeline of meaningful lean Six Sigma projects. Before I had a chance to describe the workshop, members of the client’s team began rattling off project after project....
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?...
Expert Answers: June 2010
Changing industries ... Organizing your quality department....
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....
0410 One Good Idea Online Figure
Phase 1: Analysis Site visit/ gap analysis Project management and quality planning Provider recruiting Phase 2: Pre- start Process improvement ( close the gaps) Provider credentialing/ scheduling Communication plan ( internal and external) Phase 3: Imple...
Power to the People
The economic environment is so profoundly different from the beginning of this millennium, it begs the question of whether organizations’ primary relationships have changed, including those with customers and their employees....
Seamless Transactions
Customer service is certainly important to any business, in any industry. But when a company’s purpose is to process millions of financial transactions on behalf of its customers—who depend on the company’s speed, accuracy and professionalism...
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....
Get the Whole Picture
Most Americans have experienced our healthcare system directly. For the last three years, I’ve acted as my father’s primary caregiver. In this role, I’ve seen firsthand the shortcomings of our healthcare system in many ways....
Test Run
In 2008, 14,906 people took ASQ certification exams, and 9,394 of these people—or 63%—passed. So how can you avoid being one of the certification exam takers who will not pass this year?...
Cover Your Bases
Recently, we were asked to give a presentation to a graduate-level organizational development (OD) class comparing process focused management (PFM) to OD. The request led us to conclude the complementary nature of PFM and OD is not well understood....
Salary Survey 2009: Lingering Effects
Like almost everyone, quality professionals are feeling the effects of the economic recession. In all, 4.9% of respondents to QP’s 23rd annual salary survey indicated they are unemployed, retired or laid off....
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...
3.4 per Million: Digging the Holistic Approach
Few will argue we live in a dynamic world where change is accelerating. What often goes unnoticed is that along with this rapid change, there is the opportunity and the need to improve....
Score One for Improvement
Five years ago, Intel’s IT organization decided to improve internal customer satisfaction and the efficiency of IT projects with a CMMI-based process improvement activity to develop standard processes for project management....
Critical Stage
Has Six Sigma been a good thing? While this is a straightforward question, there isn’t a simple answer....
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)....
Quality in the First Person: Call to Order
In summer 2001, I was working as a quality engineering manager in New Hampshire. While living there, I became involved in local government—much to the chagrin of my patient wife. Among other positions, I was serving as a member of the town’s budget...
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....
Don't Just Talk the Talk
Many companies and organizations talk big about knowing the best way other businesses and groups can work to drive continuous and process improvement. Often, these businesses don’t take their own advice. Once in a while, however, a group comes along...
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....
The Right Mix
Six Sigma offers a framework for process improvement based on objective data. W. Edwards Deming once said, “In God we trust: All others bring data.” For many Six Sigma practitioners, that’s become their undying motto....
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....
Know Thyself
There are two schools of thought when it comes to improvement: project-centric improvement and culture-centric improvement. Traditional thought says these approaches have their separate places. But PCI and CCI are inextricably linked....
Change That Sticks
Process improvement is gaining more attention as organizations face budget cuts, competition from developing markets overseas and a challenging economy....
Small Change, Big Impact
Little has changed in the fourth edition of ISO 9001, which was issued late last year by the International Organization for Standardization. ISO 9001:2008 contains no new requirements, so the transition should be painless for most organizations....
Human Touch
“No job is so important, nor service so urgent, that we cannot take the time to perform our work safely.” Those familiar with the old Bell System will remember this safety creed. It helped guide many decisions in potentially dangerous situations....
Expert Answers: March 2009
Return policy ... restructuring activities ... sample size....
