- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Global Quality
- Innovation
- Inspection
- ISO 14000
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrology
- Problem Solving
- Process Capability
- Basic Quality
- Process Management
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Six Sigma
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Theory of Constraints
- Total Quality Management
- Risk Management
- Information Management
- Food Safety
- Economic Case for Quality
- Awards
- Certification (ASQ)
- Continuous Improvement
Quality in the First Person: Who's On Top?
Leaders appear to encourage a fear-driven and reactive work culture by instituting limiting and detrimental work systems and policies. Throughout my career, I have witnessed these counterproductive efforts again and again....
Heart of the Matter
The goal of most processes in the manufacturing and service industries is to produce products or services that exhibit little to no variation. Variation is defined as “where no two items or services are exactly the same.”...
Before the Fact
The FDA has ratcheted up its surveillance and inspection activities on the suppliers of food and dietary supplements. Growing concern over protection of America’s food chain has been voiced by the FDA’s commissioner of food and drugs....
The Right Ingredients
In Out of the Crisis, W. Edwards Deming writes, “Everyone doing his best is not the answer. It is first necessary that people know what to do.” To ensure people know exactly what to do, all activities within the organization should be system oriented....
Quality in the First Person: Keeping It Continuous
My journey into quality is a story that I’ve told a few hundred times because it’s become a part of my outreach to customers in beginning the relationship-building process. I am the founder of an accreditation organization for the healthcare industry....
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....
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....
Out in Front
“The job of management is not supervision, but leadership.” … “The aim of leadership should be to improve the performance of man and machine, to improve quality, to increase output, and to simultaneously bring pride of workmanship to people.”...
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....
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....
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....
Expert Answers: May 2012
Defining quality ... Consolidating certifications ......
Perspectives: Theory of Evolution
Thumbing through W. Edward Deming’s timeless classic Out of the Crisis, it’s striking to see how the current economic crisis can be attributed to the factors he pointed out so many years ago as roadblocks to quality and productivity....
Volviendo a los Fundamentos: Comprendiendo La Variación
La causa de una no conformidad debe coincidir con la presencia de una variación. Con respecto a esta variación, ¿es la causa fuente común o especial de la causa?...
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....
Get on Board
Although it is difficult to find a universally accepted definition of what it actually means, quality management is still the dream of every organization on the planet—or at least it should be....
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....
Expert Answers: February 2012
The best way to eliminate errors ... Adjusting to a new auditor....
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....
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....
Volviendo a los Fundamentos: Psicología Central
El conocimiento profundo debe residir en nuestro ser y debe ser desarrollado, transmitido y aplicado por la gente....
Back to Basics: Psychology Central
Understanding how people work is the purview of psychology—hence, psychology is the hub of the system of profound knowledge. Business and quality always come down to people. Knowledge of psychology is essential....
Quality in the First Person: Quality at Its Core
After leaving the manufacturing sector for 12 years and then returning, I found quality was still what drew me to the industry. Quality has carried me through my professional life, as well as my personal life, in ways I never realized were possible....
Tribal Quest
The continuing abundance of news stories about quality failures in the manufacturing, food, pharmaceutical, healthcare and education sectors is a reminder that award-winning organizations are islands in a sea of quality indifference....
Volviendo a Fundamentos: Cambiando el 'Quien' en el 'Como'
Según Rodger Talbert en su artículo, "The Blame Game (El juego de la culpa)," "La gente puede llegar a estar tan preocupada en asignar a un culpable que pierde de vista la resolución a los problemas. Para determinar cómo resolver los problemas, primero te...
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....
One Good Idea: On Purpose
When an organization has constancy of purpose with all members aligned with that purpose, productivity increases. A QMS that conforms to ISO 9001 can take advantage of requirements relating to constancy of purpose built into the standard....
Career Corner: Planning Ahead
When TQM became a strategic imperative for competitive advantage, celebrity CEOs became cheerleaders, quality maturity was measured by more vice presidents for quality, and academics traced quality’s history from inspection to customer-focused strategy....
Supporting Role
The ANSI/ISO/ASQ Q9000 Series of Quality Management Standards consists of three component standards. Taken together, the standards are components because they form a complete tactical approach to quality management....
The Right Stuff
The reality for many leaders is they are engaged in making decisions that affect everyone in the organization, but most of them have little evidence of whether decisions are being implemented as intended....
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...
Know Your Limits
In more than 27 years of working with a variety of manufacturing concerns, it is still surprising to observe how many manufacturing operations people possess such limited understanding of the myriad limits they adhere to each and every day....
Perspectives: Regain Your Footing
The presence of warning signs that quality may be slipping doesn’t mean an organization is doomed. Instead, it can be redeemed with a three-step approach to reinvigorate quality....
No Surprises
When it comes to supplier control, having the right information at the right time is key to making a sound decision....
Career Corner: The Missing Links
The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence presents an ideal pattern of values to which quality professionals can aspire. Tracking its development throughout close to a quarter century reveals shifts in the quality community’s thinking...
3.4 per Million: We Are Different
A few months ago, I was speaking with a prospective client about continuous improvement, and I mentioned another organization that I helped. “I can see how it worked for them,” he said. “But, we are different.”...
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....
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....
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?...
Standards Outlook: Benefit Without a Doubt
In the typical executive reward system, bonuses are based, in part, on implementing creative solutions to complex problems rather than using standardization. for strategic advantage....
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....
Perspectives: Warning! Warning!
There are five warning signs that are indicators of a change in corporate attitudes toward quality. Some of these can occur naturally over time as corporations become enamored with their progress....
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....
Time to Align
Culture drives leadership behavior and expectations. It can knock down barriers to prosperity or create obstacles that threaten future success. It defines whether an organization embraces or resists change....
Expert Answers: July 2010
The "quality police" perception ... cutting down data-entry errors....
Reviving Healthcare
As a child in rural Connecticut, Don Berwick often was awakened in the dead of night by the piercing ring of a telephone coming from down the hall....
Added Traction
The balanced scorecard (BSC) has been accepted in the business world as a valid instrument with which to translate and deploy an organization’s business strategy throughout its infrastructure....
Waste Management
With the assistance of statistical process control and other quality methods, Fluor Hanford helped ensure all tasks were carried out safely during what has been called the world’s largest environmental cleanup project....
High Marks
The public is demanding more accountability of many private organizations, corporations and institutions of higher education. In response, the Department of Education instituted changes to the process of accreditation of higher education institutions....
Career Corner: Lesson Learned
In fall 2009, when I remarked to university educators that a particular decision-making tool was widely used at Toyota, their response was respectful interest. When I did the same this February, a similar group laughed derisively at the comment...
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....
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....
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....
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....
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....
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....
Extra Credit
Recent data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development indicate the United States ranks 12th among major industrialized countries in higher education attainment....
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)....
All Ears
Imagine you are presenting the analysis and findings of a critical operational issue or proposed improvement project to senior management. You feel confident because you’ve thoroughly measured and analyzed the data....
It Doesn't Add Up
Bewildered economists offer many theories as to what ultimately led to today’s financial woes. Analysts attempt to untangle how so many factors and variables—banks, mortgages and government oversight—contributed to the mess....
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....
Expert Answers: March 2009
Return policy ... restructuring activities ... sample size....
Building From the Basics
Quality control is about models, methods, measuring and managing. It’s about uncovering a problem and finding the solution. It’s about using the right techniques at the right time to make things better....
Quality in the First Person: From Class to Career
“Stauffer, on Monday morning, you will either be in that total quality leadership (TQL) class, or in front of the captain, explaining why you were not there!” With these words, my division officer inadvertently put my life on a different course....
The Quality Professional as Organizational Gardener
Many quality professionals understand that the answers to these questions require the ability to envision their organizations as living entities, existing within their understanding of systems theory. We work with organizations and people, not on organiza...
Standards Outlook: Automakers Shift Manual Into Another Gear
The Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) published the second edition of the Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) and Control Plan Reference Manual this summer....
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...
Smooth Approach
Traditional internal audits fulfill a need for companies with fresh ISO 9001 implementations. But for organizations with mature systems, an innovative approach called an appreciative internal quality audit can take them beyond compliance to excellence....
Bright Idea
There is an opportunity to apply statistical process control where it can have an impact on our daily lives by providing warning signs of pending outages, signal waste and process problems in the world’s largest machine: the North American power system....
Blurred Vision
Many quality professionals have noticed that business leaders still consider quality and business improvement to be separate topics. While this isn’t the case everywhere, it appears to have become more common....
Expert Answers: April 2008
Probability of failure ... Deming's contributions....
The Architect of Quality
Joseph M. Juran 1904 - 2008
Pioneer. Teacher. Consultant. Guru. Each of these words describes Joseph M. Juran, the man who became a giant in the world of quality management and changed how companies do business....
Good Vibrations
Modern quality management principles define quality as customer satisfaction with product and service. SCGC has a web page where guitar owners can have questions about their guitars answered by Hoover or Roberts. With employee empowerment accompanying goo...
3.4 Per Million: Forget Silver Bullets and Instant Pudding
There are no silver bullets or instant pudding waiting to be discovered. There never has been and never will be. This does not mean that there is not some level of benefit to be gained by an organization embracing Six Sigma, the new and improved...
Standards Outlook: Product vs. System Quality
We live in an era in which complex and technologically advanced products are produced on a regular basis. Little concern is given to the engineering and advanced process capabilities that are required to produce them....
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...
Quality Glossary
Five years after it published its first glossary of quality terms, ASQ has revised that glossary with updated definitions and new entries, many from the lean glossary published in 2005. This reference of terms, acronyms, and prominent figures in the...
10 Quality Basics
In an overview designed to give quality newcomers a glimpse of the knowledge they need to succeed, ten regular Quality Progress contributors write on 10 basic quality topics that are fundamentals essential to surviving in a quality role. Topics covered...
The Quality Diet: Building a Healthy Business
Quality is not always an easy sell. As a result, the challenges facing a quality professional trying to help a company are a lot like those facing a dietitian trying to help a client succeed with a diet. Quality professionals could even be called...
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....
Quality in the First Person: Quality on the Front Lines
"Always remain in a rigid state of flexibility" is the one thing about quality that has definitely stuck with me all these years. After checking the internet and finding no information on who might have coined that phrase, I shall claim it as mine....
3.4 per Million: Six Sigma in Everything We Do?
I was lucky to work for Motorola in the 1980s and early 1990s - right in the middle of the company's transformation. Motorola was at risk as were many U.S. businesses....
Statistics Roundtable: Process Variation: Enemy and Opportunity
As the giants of scientific management and the quality movement long ago pointed out, work takes place in a series of interconnected processes....
Look for Trouble
Organizational excellence depends on people, but human error remains a persistent problem. Most of what people do throughout the day follows a pattern of recognition, selection, and action, with very little conscious thought, leaving the mind free for...
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....
Linking the Supply Chain to TQM
In today's environment of global outsourcing, supplier quality management must transform itself from simply measuring supplier compliance to gathering knowledge, managing risk, and executing project management. Total quality management (TQM) ensures...
Career Corner: Maximize the Use of Your Abilities
In the December 2005 edition of Quality Progress, former editor Debbie Phillips-Donaldson asked, “Does your organization make full use of your abilities?” If the answer is yes, good for you and your organization....
12 Keys to Career Success
As the number of manufacturing jobs continues to decline in the United States, many quality professionals have become concerned about job security and opportunities to attain career success. But like Joseph Juran and W. Edwards Deming before them, each...
International Outsourcing: Value vs. Economics
International outsourcing has become the easy way out for many organizations seeking to stay competitive in a global economy, whereas establishing a lean Six Sigma organization requires sustained and consistent hard work. Proponents say outsourcing is...
Statistics Roundtable: The Hidden Laboratory
Ralph is a research scientist with 20 years of experience. Most of the products he developed have gone by the wayside. That doesn't frustrate Ralph. What frustrates him is the increased pressure to churn out new products in record time....
One Size Does Not Fit All
It has been said that academia has lagged behind practice in the development of quality management methods and philosophies, yet academia has done a good job of propagating these concepts. Now academic research has developed two new concepts that will...
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...
Promoting Quality In Your Organization
A 2004 survey of industry executives showed that while nearly all agreed that quality favorably influences profits, few had actually used quality methods. Quality professionals can play a significant role in supporting performance management initiatives...
