- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Engineering
- Inspection
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Metrics
- Metrology
- Problem Solving
- Process Capability
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Safety
- Six Sigma
- Small Business
- Software Quality
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Best Practices
- Theory of Constraints
- Total Quality Management
- Certification/Registration (management system Standards)
- Risk Management
- Information Management
- Customer Experience Management
- Customer Requirements
- Economic Case for Quality
- Change Management
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....
Avoiding an Avalanche
Organizations that make products with rigorous quality requirements face numerous challenges associated with meeting objectives—ranging from complying with standards to operating in highly-regulated and frequently audited environments....
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....
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....
Follow the Signs
Many change models have been proposed, but one stands out: the transtheoretical model, also known as the health behavior change model. The model originates from directly observing how people really did or didn’t change in response to urgent medical needs....
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....
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....
Email Matters
It is commonly accepted that 80% of data within an organization is unstructured. Emails are considered a part of the definition of unstructured data. But with the right processes, it is possible to get email under control....
Healthy Skepticism
It’s important not to underestimate the intense, personal nature of change as each employee in the healthcare industry transitions from the familiar paper-driven world to an entirely electronic one....
Expert Answers: June 2011
Cleaning up your flowcharts ... Building a control chart....
Expert Answers: January 2011
Implementing two systems simultaneously ... Cut-off date for ISO 9001:2000 ... Tips for a more effective survey....
Measure for Measure: Calibration Evaluation
What do you do when a supplier does not have accreditation to the required quality standard? How about when the particular test or calibration item is not covered under the scope of accreditation?...
Expert Answers: July 2010
The "quality police" perception ... cutting down data-entry errors....
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)....
Prepared for Battle
Organizations need to remember that while the impact of a recession may be significant from a psychological perspective, the application of sound quality management principles has a much more significant effect on an organization’s success....
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....
One Good Idea: Beyond Sensors and Scopes
Technicians in a testing lab had access to some of the most powerful microscopes and analytical technology available. But, until they employed lean tools, they couldn’t see the solution to a problem that had challenged them for years....
Keep on Truckin’
In July 2005, a transportation representative at Bayer MaterialScience identified a potential problem with the way the company chose its shipping carriers. Bayer, a global manufacturer of polymers used as raw materials for products such as compact...
Online Sidebar 3.4 per Million: Nine Steps to Align Projects With Business Needs
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....
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....
A Dose of DMAIC
Ruby hospital, a multispecialty for-profit facility in Calcutta, India, was the first in Eastern India to embrace ISO 9001 and is the only one in the country to have successfully deployed a Six Sigma improvement program....
Helping Ease the Transition
Six Sigma and process improvement projects include implementation steps that typically alter workflow and deployment of labor to create a more effective and efficient process. New connections and relationships are established that reinforce new methods....
A Less Costly Billing Process
Applying lean Six Sigma techniques can identify root causes, streamline the billing process and reduce errors. After describing the concepts of lean and Six Sigma, this article illustrates how companies can apply lean Six Sigma techniques to identify root...
Eight Steps to Sustain Change
Improvement projects often focus on a problem, its measurement, analysis, and eventual solution, but fail to consider how improvements will be permanently integrated into the daily routine. Resistance is a natural response to change, but it can be...
Lean Lessons: In the Office: Where Lean and Six Sigma Converge
When focused on the reduction in process variability, Lean Six Sigma efforts can improve the predictability of the office environment and improve the flow of information....
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...
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: Practicing Quality in Kabul
When I was deployed to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in April 2005, I knew it would have an incredible impact on my life and family. I would be gone for a year, and my whole purpose would be uniquely different....
Big Improvements for Small Parts
National Semiconductor Corporation is a process-driven manufacturer looking for additional ways to cut costs. Having experienced dissatisfaction with an earlier continuous improvement program, it became clear that reducing costs while maintaining...
Corral Your Organization's Knowledge
One useful method of determining organizational performance is to assess how well it manages critical knowledge. Definitions of knowledge management may vary, but they generally fit into one of four categories: Information technology, organizational...
Clean House With Lean 5S
Lack of organization in the workplace wastes time and lowers productivity. By implementing a lean 5S system – sort, set in order, shine, standardize, sustain - organizations can create a clean, well ordered, and disciplined work environment. Many...
Lean Glossary
A glossary defines terms commonly associated with lean...
A Bare Bones Look at the Bottom Line
A basic premise of the quality revolution is that quality increases profits. While customers generate profit in the traditional way, quality focuses on money not spent as the result of improved practices. Quality alone, however, does not guarantee...
Better Processes = Better E-Commerce
Successful e-commerce (EC) requires customer and supplier interaction to be seamlessly integrated with existing business processes. Quality professionals must keep this in mind when redesigning business processes, particularly in the service industry....
A Statistician Looks at Inventory Management
A major problem facing companies today is how to promptly deliver products to customers without tying up too much capital in the form of inventory buffers. The incorporation of statistical models into supply chain management tactics helps in sizing and...
Effective Process Management
Let’s say you have a generic product development, first article inspection or supplier development process. How would you consistently follow it and keep appropriate records each time someone performed it from start to finish?...
ISO 9001 Takes On a New Role – Crime Fighter
In July of 2003 the Phoenix Police Department’s Records and Identification Bureau (RIB) became the first law enforcement organization in the U.S. to achieve ISO 9001 registration as a means of reinforcing its reputation as a reliable information...
Overcoming Resistance to Change
Organizational changes fail not for technical reasons, but because of people’s inherent resistance to change. Because the price of failure is so high, change should not be attempted until readiness to accept change is measured. Two methods to gauge...
Make Work Cells Work for You
The standard practice of dispersing production processes among geographically separate shops creates a potential for quality problems. These problems and their root causes are lost between intra-shop inventories and the number of potential flow...
TQM vs. BPR
What’s the difference between total quality management (TQM) and business process reengineering (BPR)? Though the terms themselves aren’t heard much anymore, many organizations still use the tools in these programs to make changes....
Gain a Competitive Edge By Preventing Recalls
Product recalls are a serious problem for consumer products companies. Each year, thousands of products representing hundreds of millions of product units are recalled in the United States for safety reasons....
Print Perfect
Branch-Smith Inc., a fourth-generation printing company, had its origins in the unlikely success of a boy born without arms in 1868. The company as it exists today takes inspiration from founder Aaron Smith, who taught himself to type with his toes,...
Column: Emerging Sectors: Searching for Improvement
Management Search Inc. (MSI), a recruitment and employment placement firm with more than 50 employees across three states, began in 1983 as the idea of two men about how to build a better mousetrap....
Running Like a Bottled Tornado
Many experts have extolled the benefits of transforming hierarchical, autocratic organizations into adaptive, self-organizing learning organizations. Their descriptions of these organizations are often complex and confusing, calling for a new analogy...
A Chip Maker's Unique Improvement Approach
CANDOS, the continuous improvement process at Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), is an acronym derived from a series of steps: Clearing, Arrangement, Neatness, Discipline, Ongoing improvement, and Safety. Its principles of maintaining a safe and...
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...
Resolving The Process Paradox: A strategy for launching meaningful process improvement
Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) is critical to business strategy. To improve its value creating abilities, organizations must continuously improve their value creating processes. Before implementing process improvement, organizations should...
Six Sigma, E-Commerce Pose New Challenges
Companies feel a need to become more flexible and ready to respond to rapid changes due to the growth of e-commerce. Corporate systems for responding to such changes have the same role as that of the central nervous system in the human body. The...
An Early SPICE Experience
Assessment model provides measurement and improvement opportunities for a software oriented organization
CelsiusTech Australia, one of only a few software development companies in the world to deliver fully operational combat management systems to first of class naval ships, saw significant improvements after becoming an early adopter of the new ISO standard...
Intelligence Everywhere: How Technology Can Enlighten and Empower
Automation linked with human insight enhances quality deployment. Information technology and quality are means to pursuing organizational goals. They support evolution of the workplace toward the ideal of a paperless environment in which wisdom and...
Reengineering in Health Care: Chain Hand-Offs and the Four-Phase Work Cycle
The linguistic networks of human interaction are key to successful communication between customers and providers. In health care delivery, these interactions are elements of a chain of hand-offs and workflow cycles. At Continental Rehabilitation...
Law Firm Pioneers Explore New Territory
Attorneys who participate in total quality management (TQM) initiatives can improve customer satisfaction as well as their own work environment. Three law firms have done especially well in managing the cultural changes of TQM, in an industry that can...
This Couldn't Happen in My Back Yard!
Quality practitioners should have interdisciplinary training in engineering, management, and statistics, but few colleges and universities in North America provide such cooperative programs. A case study demonstrates the failings of those who do not...
