- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Design of Experiments
- Engineering
- Environmental Manag. and Sustainability
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Quality Management
- Six Sigma
- Small Business
- Standards
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Total Quality Management
- ISO/TS 16949
- Economic Case for Quality
- Continuous Improvement
Standards Outlook: Confidence Game
For the second time in my 55 years on this Earth, we are seeing a crisis of confidence. This stems from many factors, including the devastating recession of 2008 to 2009 and the slow and painful global economic recovery we are witnessing....
Lasting Impression
A recent paper found that quality initiatives have made significant contributions to three primary indicators of economic well-being: gross domestic product, corporate tax revenues and employment....
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....
Career Corner: Waiting for the Phone to Ring?
Whether you're employed or unemployed, if you are waiting for the phone to ring or for an email to arrive inviting you to explore a new job opportunity, you are awaiting a miracle. And we all know how often a miracle occurs....
Statistics Roundtable: The Sin of Spin
We live in an age in which media and marketing often spin data and end up misleading and misinforming the consumer....
Acquiring Assets
Manufacturers face a growing threat to quality and productivity. The coming wave of baby boomer retirements, alongwith a projected decline in the number of new recruits, poses the threat of a gap in skilled workers that are critical to success....
Salary Survey 2009: Holding Steady
QP’s salary survey is interesting in good times, and even more so in lean times. My observations for the 2009 version fall into three categories: profiles of success, limits of the survey and questions readers might ask to reflect on career development....
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...
Managing Expectations
One condition is vital for initiating, implementing and sustaining a viable quality initiative: management support. Surprisingly, very few articles and books on quality even mention this need, let alone what to do if support isn’t there....
Career Corner: Changing Times
In consulting and planning with not-for-profits—especially universities, unaccustomed to market turbulence—I often use the phrase “glacial change.” The phrase implies change that is large but so gradual that human beings don’t see...
Quality in the First Person: Make a Pit Stop
With each passing day, it seems as though the economy get a little worse. The stock market, unemployment rates and layoffs all paint a grim picture of the current state of the nation. While everyone is looking for an end to the economic crisis...
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...
Be Your Own Boss
Traditional quality positions are not offering future opportunities, but quality is ever more important, and people delivering its results are doing this from new positions and new organizations. Positions for trainers, process and supply chain...
Prepare for the Worst
Quality professionals face the same problems as those in IT, software development, programming, automaking and numerous other fields, loss of jobs to overseas outsourcing....
Three C’s + Q = Success
When Bill Thomas left the corporate world to start his own company manufacturing khaki pants patterned after the original World War II U.S. Army issue pants, he found it difficult to find suppliers for the materials required to make the product...
Column: Career Corner: Fact Based Career Decisions
Use readily available data to make career...
Column: Career Corner: AIM High and Succeed
Are you unemployed and depressed about your options? Are you frustrated in your current position and feeling out of alternatives? Take heart. I have personally experienced both these scenarios, and I found the keys to unlocking the vault...
Column: Career Corner: Quitting, Even In Tough Times
Quitting is tough. But controlling your career is your responsibility, and quitting a job can be a tactic that allows you to take control. Even in these uncertain economic times, the quality field offers job opportunities....
Column: Career Corner: Plenty of Opportunities
[Abstract from article]
If you are seeking a job because you are unemployed or simply want new challenge or advancement, don't let the bad economic news get you down. There are positions open in the quality profession, and many may be right in your...
First to the Top
A small, scattered school district in a remote part of Alaska, a suburban school district near New York City, and a mid-sized public university have become the first winners of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the education category. The...
Column: Standards Outlook: Automotive Quality Management System Evolves
ISO Technical Specification (TS) 16949, based on ISO 9000, is an international fundamental quality management system specification for the automotive industry. The author looks at the second edition's significant changes from...
Column: Career Corner: Rules Change, Careers Change
Be ready to ask for help and take risks...
Making Teams Work
At the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, a one-year pilot project for introducing a team environment generated seven major observations. The pilot project covered both leader-directed teams and self-directed work teams (SDWTs). The...
Unusual Data and Other Information
Job opportunities vary widely from industry to industry, but everyone feels pretty good. If you've been with a company for more than five years, change your perceptions and expectations of this new job market. About 63% of employers say the job candidate ...
Applying Quality Concepts to Community Issues
Communication and process are keys to overcoming political barriers in community improvement efforts. In Tacoma and Pierce County, WA, the ideas of W. Edwards Deming are coming to life in a partnership between Tacoma and the Deming Institute. The...
ASQ's Accelerating Change Collaborative Series: A Challenge for Industry
Cooperation and learning are fostered by sharing knowledge and focusing on subject matter. The ASQ ACCS (American Society for Quality Accelerating Change Collaborative Series) initiative encourages organizations to spread knowledge and learn from each...
What a Wonderful World It Could Be
A community quality council (CQC) brings the principles of total quality management (TQM) into daily community life. It is a forum through which all elements of the community can use TQM principles to maintain leadership, create a vision, establish a...
Communities as Systems
Community improvement requires systems thinking. W. Edwards Deming urged leaders of Japan and the former Soviet Union to think of their countries as systems. Americans also should think of their communities as systems. For example, a systemic...
Reengineering and Dumbsizing: Mismanagement of the Knowledge Resource
The information economy is based on intellectual capital, but radical redesigns of organizations can harm the people who supply this capital. Harm is most dramatic in reengineering, a term sometimes used synonymously with "downsizing." When positions...
Is This What's Really Going On?
Quality Progress readers respond to the Editorial Comment on "What's Going on at U.S. Universities" in the September 1996 issue. These 22 letters fall into three groups. Seven of the letters suggest that higher education responds to its markets by:...
Presidential Candidates Tackle Today's Quality Issues
President Bill Clinton and Senator Bob Dole respond to questions on five quality issues. On health care, Clinton cites the Health Insurance Reform Act; his support for Medicare, Medicaid, and the Women, Infants, and Children Program; research funding...
Everyone Benefits from Guaranteed Employment Security
High productivity in the American steel industry is a direct result of employment security and employee involvement programs. These programs came into being in the 1985 partnership agreement between the United Steelworkers of America and National Steel...
Quality and Its Environment in 2010
Four scenarios of the year 2010 have been developed by the American Society for Quality Control Futures Team. First, the global reality scenario is one of worldwide wealth and technological revolution. The information society of 2010 is surrounded by...
Survival for Quality and Unions
Collaborative efforts by quality professionals, labor personnel, and other stakeholders can strengthen job security and avoid wasteful layoffs. The quality profession is evolving through waves of values that emphasized first the scientific method and...
Small Companies Learn How to Design in Quality
The Design of Experiments (DOX) program at the University of New Hampshire is a partnership between industry and academia. Since 1992 DOX has helped 29 teams from small companies use designed experiments to improve their processes and products. Every...
Quality Management Benchmark Assessment
A series of task-oriented checklists with 253 requirements enable a firm to compare itself and its suppliers to the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria and to the Q9000 standards of ANSI/ASQC (American National Standards Institute /...
