- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Engineering
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Problem Solving
- Process Capability
- Basic Quality
- Process Management
- Project Management
- Quality Control
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Reliability
- Six Sigma
- Social Responsibility
- Software Quality
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Total Quality Management
- Economic Case for Quality
- Strategic Planning
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....
Make the Leap
Kaizen events, also called kaizen blitzes or workshops, are intensive drives by dedicated teams of workers to fix broken processes or design new ones. They are arguably the best change vehicles in the organizational change fleet....
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....
3.4 per Million: Know What You Want
Having learned Six Sigma in the 1980s now creates an interesting box to live in today. Six Sigma was a strategy to achieve the corporate vision of total customer satisfaction....
3.4 per Million: The Way to Fail
Several months ago, I received a call from a lean Six Sigma leader from a large multinational organization who was concerned because his organization was having great difficulty completing projects....
Surf's Up
In essence, a disconnect within the Telefónica Group was throwing off and disconnecting its customers from the internet....
Expert Answers: October 2011
A QMS checklist ... Selecting a Six Sigma project ......
Growth Chart
Globalization, as well as demands from people, business and technology, require organizations to deliver high-quality performance to remain competitive. Quality methods can allow alignment with rapidly changing and increasing customer expectations....
Survey Says
To make software quality assurance less taxing, one organization used online survey tools as a creative means of addressing and resolving the difficulties inherent in performing process review data collection with limited resources....
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....
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....
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...
3.4 per Million: The Right Decision
As the Six Sigma Academy led large deployments at Allied Signal, GE and other organizations in the 1990s, one of the great benefits realized was linking define, measure, analyze, improve and control-based project improvement to financial performance....
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....
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....
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....
3.4 per Million: Control and Grow Your Enterprise
To achieve maximum efficiencies and financial results in turbulent business and financial markets, executives and senior managers must revisit their business models to make certain measurements lead to the right behaviors....
Contacts That Count
A team dedicated to improving member contact rates at Healthways Inc. pulled just about everything from its lean Six Sigma toolbox while working on a project and was recognized in ASQ’s International Team Excellence Award competition....
3.4 per Million: Putting It All Together
For companies that have been asking themselves how to achieve even more improvement, the answer lies in developing a comprehensive process management system that integrates three critical components....
Incredible Journey
In response to personnel’s safety concerns and rising workers’ compensation costs, a team at Boeing’s C-17 site developed a solution to thwart injury and save money....
Map Quest
Raytheon Six Sigma is a proprietary six-step process that Raytheon Co., a defense and aerospace systems supplier, has embedded into its culture. It was developed by an internal team that was guided by the company’s top leadership....
It All Ties Together
At a time when gas costs have skyrocketed and companies across the board are doing their bit to be greener, a team of individuals from CSX Corp. came together to develop a solution to combat the large amount of fuel wasted while locomotives sat idling....
Expert Answers: March 2008
Outlook on outsourcing ... When does Six Sigma suffice?...
Quality Tools, Teamwork Lead Boeing Team to a System Redesign
A team from Boeing, as well as members of the Air Force and suppliers, worked to fix the C-17's inert gas generating system that previously needed constant repairs. Using quality tools, the team identified cause and came up with the best solution for...
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....
Avoid Random Acts of Improvement With Baldrige
Organizations can use the best project execution methods, such as Six Sigma and lean, but be disappointed with the results if key strategic goals are not addressed. Improvement efforts should begin by first considering the characteristics of the...
Deployment: Start Off on the Right Foot
Deploying lean Six Sigma can produce fantastic results that are worth all the hard work of deployment. Managing change, securing leadership commitment, managing talent, and getting the right accountability will make the difference between a...
3.4 Per Million: How to Identify and Select Lean Six Sigma Projects
Lean Six Sigma is a powerful method for improving existing products, processes and services. Six Sigma was developed by Motorola in 1987. Motorola’s Six Sigma yielded significant financial results...
Statistics Roundtable: Turning Shewhart?s Challenge Into Opportunity
Statisticians must step forward and lead management to become more statistically minded.
Nearly 70 years ago, quality pioneer Walter Shewhart threw down the gauntlet: "The long-range contribution of statistics depends not so much on getting a lot of highly trained statisticians into industry as it does...
3.4 per Million: Control Charting at the 30,000-Foot-Level
In my "3.4 per Million" columns past, I first described a traditional and a 30,000-foot-level procedure for creating control charts and making process capability/performance assessments for a continuous response with multiple sampled subgroupings....
3.4 Per Million: The Hard Part: Holding Improvement Gains
You've overcome the obstacles to launch your latest improvement initiative: scarce resources, time pressure, unforeseen glitches at every turn. Now comes the hard part--sustaining the gains....
3.4 Per Million: Deploying the 'D' in DFSS
As Six Sigma initiatives at many organizations have matured, the switch from reactive improvement - based on the DMAIC methodology - to proactive improvement - based on design for Six Sigma (DFSS) - has become pervasive....
3.4 per Million: Six Sigma Start-up at Small Companies
An executive chef oversees the activities of a tightly run kitchen operation at his fivestar restaurant, pairing the right foods together, guiding other chefs and staff in preparing exquisite offerings on the menu....
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...
Quality Intervenes at a Hospital
The Nebraska Medical Center, the state's largest teaching hospital, began implementation of Six Sigma in 2002 in response to a decline in patient volume in its interventional radiology department. A Six Sigma team was assembled to address problems in...
A Midstream Career Change
I began my life in the real world with a new engineering degree, a new job with a major aircraft manufacturer and a new baby. My first brush with the quality industry was after two years as an intern for the Boeing Co....
Control Charting at the 30,000-Foot-Level, Part 2
In my November 2003 "3.4 per Million" column (p. 67), I described a traditional and a 30,000-foot-level procedure for creating control charts and making process capability/performance assessments for a continuous response....
Managing Project Quality
Quality professionals who normally deal with ongoing processes need to know how to manage project quality effectively. Quality initiation and quality closure stages, unique because of the temporary nature of such projects, are often neglected. Failure...
Selecting Design for Six Sigma Projects
Every organization maintains and constantly changes its portfolio of existing and future development projects. Portfolio management is about allocating resources within the organization to minimize risk and meet strategic goals....
Faster Test Results
Southside Hospital used Six Sigma to reduce test turnaround times from 68 hours to an average of 32 hours. The use of quality tools helped the hospital improve the sigma level for stress test turnaround....
Column: Frontiers of Quality: The Six Sigma Sweep
Like the Packer Sweep, Six Sigma was not totally original. It was built on the work of others and continues to be enhanced. Six Sigma works because it emphasizes focus, planning, constant practice (every project is a practice session) and dedicated...
AQP Awards Promote Business Results
The National Team Excellence Award competition combines the application of continuous improvement tools, problem solving processes, team dynamics, project management, and communications skills to generate performance improvements. Many organizations use...
Column: Frontiers of Quality: Smart Project Selection
If proposed projects are evaluated numerically from 1 to 100, selecting the very best projects may lead into a situation where outliers must be identified. The author discusses a graphical tool known as a box and whisker plot and a version of a test...
Smart Project Selection
Narrow your list of improvement projects with outlier techniques
There are many statistical techniques for identifying outliers, but the two I will discuss here are a graphical tool known as a box and whisker plot and a version of a test called Dixon's outlier test. (Note: Box and whisker plots are often drawn to show ...
Column: Frontiers of Quality: The project selection process
Every company should focus on managing its project portfolio and creating an overall organizational improvement system
Six Sigma is about improving processes by solving problems. Typically, problems fall into two categories: solution known and solution unknown. Solution known projects are considered just-do projects and are completed by a...
Column: Frontiers of Quality: Something's Missing
An education in statistical methods will make employees more valuable to Six Sigma corporations
Education "implies development of the mind" while training "stresses instruction and drill with a specific end in view." The most effective further development of a Six Sigma program will necessarily involve well-informed...
The Essential Six Sigma
The disciplined quality improvement features of Six Sigma methodology offers companies nearly all of the elements of Total Quality Management (TQM), and it is much easier to incorporate into a business system. In addition, Six Sigma utilizes technical...
A Road Map to Six Sigma Quality
Many business executives interested in trying Six Sigma Breakthrough Strategies fail to realize that to be successful Six Sigma programs must become cultural revolutions that involve every member of the organization. What is needed is a road map that...
The Tip of the Iceberg
When asked to identify where operating costs can be cut, many executives would remove functions that provide quality and services to meet customer needs. This misunderstanding stems from the misconception that improving quality through initiatives such...
Dealing With the Achilles' Heel Of Six Sigma Initiatives
Project selection is key to success
The project is completed by assigning a project manager to the project, providing the needed resources and using good project management techniques. Selecting a Six Sigma project The characteristics of good Six Sigma projects are summarized in Table 1. Fi...
Evaluating Just-In-Time Projects From a More Focused Framework
If our goal is making more money, then productivity improvement would be a logical criterion regarding project selection. Goldratt's managerial accounting system, throughput accounting,4 provides the JIT project selection framework needed for internal con...
Column: One Good Idea: Evaluating Just-In-Time Projects From a More Focused Framework
While there is no way to guarantee a project's success, considering its contribution toward company goals is a step in the right direction. To see JIT project results, begin by articulating a goal that everyone agrees with....
Making the Pitch in the Executive Suite
Quality practitioners at six Baldrige Award winning companies have advice on helping senior executives buy into quality initiatives. At Texas Nameplate Company, Dale Crownover suggests documentation on monetary losses in areas like absenteeism,...
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...
Motorola Brings Fairy Tales to Life
Celebration, motivation, empowerment, and dollar savings are keys to Motorola's worldwide Total Customer Satisfaction (TCS) competition. Held annually for the past seven years, it has built on the firm's 1988 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award....
