- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Engineering
- Environmental Manag. and Sustainability
- Global Quality
- Innovation
- ISO 14000
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Problem Solving
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Project Management
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Safety
- Six Sigma
- Social Responsibility
- Software Quality
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Best Practices
- Theory of Constraints
- Total Quality Management
- Compliance
- Certification/Registration (management system Standards)
- Risk Management
- Information Management
- Economic Case for Quality
Balancing Act
With common quality methods and standards in place, manufacturing organizations share a daunting challenge: an increased volume of electronic and paper-based data collected during process development and manufacturing....
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....
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....
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....
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....
In the Trenches
Deploying a quality change program is something every organization needs to do sooner or later, whether it involves lean, Six Sigma, the Baldrige criteria, kaizen or any other improvement effort. But managing a change program is a double-edged sword....
Change Ability
Building on the creative spirit of each individual joined with others is at the heart of transforming organizations so they don’t just weather forces of change, but also capitalize on the immense energy inherent in the surge....
Career Corner: Mapping the Future
As quality professionals, one technique we are all taught is change management. But how we learn to embrace and manage change doesn’t just apply to our job tasks and duties. Career development also requires applying a change management process....
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....
Innovation Imperative: Time for a Change
A quality manager’s career is far from predictable. It depends on the attitude of an organization’s leadership toward quality and, perhaps more importantly, leadership’s understanding of what quality is....
In the Spotlight
Based on what we know about the skills needed for innovation management, what quality management functions, responsibilities and skills can be applied to manage innovation?...
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....
Standards Outlook: Know Your Future
The future is a subject of great interest to quality practitioners. So let’s look for initiatives that may be right around the corner. Armed with the right information, you should be able to get a head start on the competition....
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....
How Do You Compare?
Organizations often are unable to leverage benchmarking as a process to deliver excellence in business performance. This could be due to a lack of understanding of benchmarking as a process or lack of clarity on where it could add business value....
A Decade of Distinction
In the first six months of 2010, Telefónica Group launched 60 simultaneous quality improvement projects. These 60 projects represent nearly 30% of the total number of improvement projects conducted in the company during the last decade....
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....
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...
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....
Quality in the First Person: Share the Wealth
When I received my doctorate in statistics in 1997, I had never heard of quality control in a statistical context. But by 2002, I was teaching statistical quality control (SQC) at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York...
Handle With Care
An internal auditor walks into a drug manufacturer’s production area and sees three containers staged outside the weighing room of the formulation section. She asks the first container, “Where are you from, stranger?”...
Proof Positive
Implementing change is challenging. Implementing change while driving growth and profitability is even more difficult. But when growth and profitability are at a premium, the need to accelerate positive change becomes even more critical....
Two in One
The terms risk analysis, risk assessment and risk management—often used interchangeably—can mean a variety of different concepts and metrics. There is no one single approach to risk management....
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...
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....
Take a Bite Out of Inefficiency
Providing consistent and effective service or product requires a consistent and effective framework for implementing, maintaining and improving tactical and strategic operations. Dentistry is no different....
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....
Perspectives: Adapting to Troubled Times
Quality personnel should recognize the economic climate as an opportunity to demonstrate the impact quality can have. It’s up to them to adapt their skills, techniques, tools and leadership styles to help their companies navigate the troubled waters....
No Longer Waiting for Answers
The emergency department at Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, NC is often stretched beyond capacity. Patient volume in the 43-bed ED has jumped 34% in the past four years, and more than 86,000 people are expected to seek care there this year....
What's Up?
Study participants outlined the forces, four scenarios in which they might play out, and the implications to quality, organizations and the profession. Study participants were asked to envision the implications of the key forces and scenarios for quality ...
Online Sidebars Sanders
Increasing movement from quality of product to quality of management and the organization. The systems approaches the quality profession has evolved through ISO 9000 and other management system standards will be valued by organizations looking to bring qu...
Futures Study
Forces of Change From All ASQ Futures Studies Table 1 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 Changing values Partnering Quality must deliver bottom- line results Globalization Globalization Globalization Learning systems Management systems will increasingly absorb the...
Back to Basics: Outputs versus Outcomes
When project objectives are set, the term “deliverables” is often used to specify those tangible things produced by the project. Two key factors, however, are often overlooked....
Classroom Lessons Learned
Public education often tries to emulate the successful methods of industry. However, the experience of a school district in California offers several lessons about achieving continuous improvement in the corporate world....
Ghysels Online Sidebar: What Students Think
Moreover, by teaching how to align teachers’ goals to students’ goals, the teachers were more apt to pay attention to organizational goals. Even though we were initially cautious about calling students or parents “external customers” or teachers “interna...
Salary Survey-Regular Employee and Self-Employed Consultants Results
45 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 of Quality Experience and Highest Level of Education Online Section 9 Salary by Number of Years in Current Posit...
Part 2 Section 1 Base Earnings by Quality Experience, Education, ASQ Certification and Six Sigma Training (Self-Employed Consultant Results)
In all, 20 part- time U. S. consultants reported no base earnings for the period between June 2006 and June PART 2. SELF- EMPLOYED CONSULTANT RESULTS Section 1. Base Earnings by Quality Experience, Education, ASQ Certification and Six Sigma Training FIGU...
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....
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...
Lean Lessons: The Benefits of Kaizen and Kaizen Events
Kaizen is a Japanese word typically translated to "continuous improvement." Originally this word referred to subtle, gradual improvements that are made over time. A baseball analogy is hitting singles all game long to score runs....
The Power of Process Orientation
Hidden barriers to the success of continuous improvement programs exist in most companies and often transcend tactics applied to produce cultural change. These cultural conditions are not always obvious, but their symptoms include organizational silos...
Standards Outlook: Developing the Voluntary Healthcare Standard
The new Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) voluntary standard for healthcare delivery is in its second review, with an anticipated launch no later than early 2008. AIAG also is pursuing partners for the publication from the healthcare sector....
Lean Lessons: Keeping Lean Alive
We know we cannot stand still in the face of global competition. Our rivals are not standing pat--they are improving their processes and systems to catch up or overtake us. If we do not improve, sooner or later our customers will prefer our rivals....
Standards Outlook: Supply Chain Management Remains Aerospace Challenge
The aerospace industry is in the process of shedding new light on the customer-supplier relationship, especially in the never ending quest to deliver defect free, safe and reliable product....
Make Healthcare Lean
The principles of lean manufacturing are as applicable to healthcare as they are to the automobile industry. However, unlike manufacturing, healthcare management structures are not usually hierarchical, and hospitals generally are not-for-profit. Value...
Core Roles in a Strategic Quality System
When establishing and maintaining a strategically viable quality system, senior management defines the roles played by groups, departments, or functions within the organization using risk/benefit analysis to determine the best fit in terms of logistics,...
Lean Lessons: Building Blocks
Is your organization wasting its valuable resources? Waste can directly impact your organization’s costs, quality and delivery, and may lead to excess inventory, unnecessary movement, unintentional waiting time, untapped......
Advancing From Compliance To Performance
Poor ethics has recently been recognized as a controllable factor that can either make or break and organization. If organizations would practice ethics as a logic-based discipline and quality problem, they would reach higher levels of performance that...
Faster Turnaround Time
In 2004, North Shore University Hospital (NSUH) used Six Sigma to reduce bed assignment delay turnaround time that made it difficult to balance capacity needs. A capstone project revealed incorrect use of the hospital's bed tracking system. The goal was...
Lean Lessons: All About Lean
Lately, lean has been receiving a lot of attention from quality professionals, management and the media. After getting its start in manufacturing, it has now migrated to nonshop floor activities in sales, customer service, accounting, HR......
After Six Sigma - What's Next?
A systematic scientific approach is fundamental to dealing with problems of variability that cause costly defects and quality problems. This idea has remained the foundation of numerous incarnations of quality management and is the basis of the current...
3.4 per Million: Put the Pieces Together
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This isn't a particularly new idea; it has been around for years. We even have an entire profession built around it....
ISO 9000 In Service: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
When the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began requiring ISO 9001 certification for its new business contracts, claims processing contractor Palmetto GBA decided to pursue certification for its existing contracts as well. Getting a...
Curse of the Super-fish-al
Root cause analysis teaches us to ask, "Why?" five times, and from this I developed these five ways not to use a fishbone....
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 Solid Foundation
Any discussion of implementing Six Sigma is typically accompanied by a conversation around top management buy-in and the fiat that it is a top-down initiative. They are independent issues, so I'll separate them for discussion and clarity....
A Roadmap For Change
This excerpt is from the book Juran Institute's Six Sigma Breakthrough and Beyond. The book is available from Quality Press, item P1089. Copyright restrictions do not allow its individual sale or its placement on My ASQ....
What's Wrong With Six Sigma?
Many organizations experience disappointment with the results of their Six Sigma deployment efforts. This is because they may be applying Six Sigma on too grand a scale, when, in fact, its tools may be used separately or combined with other techniques....
Simplify Baldrige for Healthcare
The growing number of applicants for the Baldrige award in healthcare points to the need for a set of tools to help organizations assess themselves. A healthcare self-assessment matrix and opportunity for improvement worksheets are provided to help...
Next Generation ISO 14001
ISO 14001, the international standard on environmental management system (EMS) requirements, has been undergoing review and revision for five years....
Next generation ISO 14001.
ISO 14001, the international standard on environmental management system (EMS) requirements, has been undergoing review and revision for five years....
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...
Handling the Human Side of Change
Quality efforts and their accompanying flurry of training activities continue unabated in many organizations. Many have morphed to adapt to the current crazes of Six Sigma and lean....
Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate scandals such as those involving Enron and WorldCom may finally be awakening corporate America to its social responsibilities. Such scandals are creating concern about business ethics and governance....
The Message Is Clear
This abstract is based on the ]In 2002, the CGISS division of Motorola won the Baldrige award in the manufacturing category. Through strict process improvement measures, the division was able to increase its direct customer loyalty, customer...
Managing Supplier Relationships
Effective supply chain management (SCM) can provide companies the competitive edge by adding stability and predictability to their supply stream. Manufacturers can identify vendors that provide high quality service and developing close,...
Quality's Six Life Cycle Stages
A tool referred to as “quality life cycle” provides a strategic mechanism to chart and sustain quality while proactively countering shortcomings of its implementation, such as stagnation and limited application, which can ultimately result in failure....
Best Practices in Process Management
Process improvement tools have been used to evaluate business processes ranging from employee satisfaction to customer help desk support....
Create a Lean, Mean Machine
"Lean" has been defined as a systematic approach to identifying and eliminating waste through continuous improvement. Lean focuses on value added flow of resources from the customer’s point of view. To compete in today’s economy a company must...
Column: Frontiers of Quality: Implementation and Institutionalization
Effectively managing the overwhelming volume of change is the only option for today's leadership teams. Some basic things to help enable other change efforts are:
- Create a change program.
- Create an...
What Should Be Changed?
Tools from two change management systems are compared to show which give managers the best results when implementing changes. The theory of constraints (TOC) features a set of five tools to examine the entire system for continuous improvement. One of...
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...
Column: Standards Outlook: From Deming to ISO 9000:2000
Lip service isn't enough; management must understand and carry out its obligations to achieve sustainability and growth
For quality programs to be successful, management must take an active role in their implementation. Plenty of guidelines are available in the work of quality leaders such as W. Edwards Deming and in more recently developed standards and programs such...
Learning From Mistakes
As U.S. companies strive to compete globally, they face increasingly rigorous quality standards that are difficult to meet, even for the most able companies. As a result, more firms are seeking to implement the lean production system developed at the...
Intentional Change By Design
Quality initiatives and other organizational changes often disrupt normal internal functions. Many stakeholders, especially executive managers, aren't fully aware of the consequences of a "quality system of the month" approach, and they frequently...
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...
Implementing Six Sigma in Europe
A cross-cultural perspective
Yes, Six Sigma focuses on process improvement, design and management. Be sure to incorporate soft skills training (for example, facilitation and change management) in your Six Sigma training curriculum. And the CEO of every company that embarks on Six Sig...
Building a Better Doctor
Both the content and delivery of the medical education program at the University of Sydney in Australia changed in fundamental ways due to the application of quality tools. With the participation of staff and students, the Faculty of Medicine initiated...
Column: Career Corner: Great Quality Consulting
The future for quality consultants won't rest solely on their ability to improve processes, design interventions or give advice. "Improving processes or even improving internal performance is not sufficient if we cannot connect the improvement to...
Planning for Knowledge Management
Knowledge management (KM) can improve access to and use of information for decision making and fulfilling organization goals. Development and implementation of KM includes the following steps. First, create a culture that has long-term commitment to:...
Great Quality Consulting
Improvements must be connected to external results
Reid teaches the popular ASQ workshop "Skills for the Quality Consultant" and is the principal consultant with the Performance Design Group in Sarasota, FL. He offers some valuable thoughts and suggestions for those who want to position themselves as succ...
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...
Quality Today: Recognizing the Critical SHIFT
Five inevitable trends in quality exist today and will continue to develop. First, quality goes softer, in that organizations must attend to the emotional, psychological, and social needs of their employees. Only then can teamwork, cross-functional...
Putting Quality in Knowledge Management
Rapid access to expertise within an organization is a purpose of knowledge management. Quality professionals have critical leadership and educational roles in the harvesting of that knowledge and in the management of corporate memory. Knowledge is...
At the Crossroads of Computing and Quality
Information technology has and will continue to influence quality management. The early days of quality management, in the 1930s to early 1960s, focused on statistical process control. During that time, the computer eventually became one of several...
What Higher Education Should Be Teaching About Quality - But Is Not
A survey of colleges and universities revealed inadequate correlation between quality-related topics taught in schools and topics identified as important by winners of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The teaching of quality is vital in...
Incorporating the Tools of Creativity into Quality Management
Innovation and creativity are keys to the changes needed for business success. Research indicates that innovation is linked with financial performance, customer demands, competitor strategies, and change itself. Directed creativity is creativity based...
Continuous Improvement: The Key to Future Success
Business excellence is built on focused strategies and aligned initiatives. For Texas Instruments Defense Systems & Electronics (DS&E), the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria provide the foundation. After winning the Award in 1992, DS&E...
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...
Managing Transitions
The dynamics of change flow through several stages. To manage these stages of transition is to accept the reality that change is never-ending and that its success depends on how it is perceived. Transitions start with a disengaging phase, in which...
How to Stay Flexible and Elude Fads
Business process management is a comprehensive approach that goes beyond any single improvement technique. Benefits of its team orientation in the flat organization include process improvement and competitive advantage. The most essential processes...
More Voices Speak Out on the Future of the Quality Profession
Readers have reacted to the Quality Progress July 1996 special issue on the future of quality. Direct responses from about 24 readers to questions raised in the issue suggest that quality activities will become more integrated within organizations,...
What Should Higher Education Be Teaching About Quality?
Customer-supplier relationships, continuous process improvement, interpersonal skills, and teamwork are keys for those who plan to work in quality organizations. These are among the survey findings from seven 1988-1994 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality...
What Benchmarking Books Don't Tell You
Benchmarking teams should consider the following tips. First, decrease the usual nine to 12 months required for a benchmarking study by: having team members contribute at least 20% of their time; using expert consultants for parts of the study; and...
TQM, Reengineering, and the Edge of Chaos
Complex-adaptive systems survive through evolutionary forces and self-organization (or positive feedback). This allows them to live on the edge of chaos, successfully balanced between the stagnation of stability and the self destruction of chaos....
Yes, It Makes a Difference!
Three major problem solving tasks each has its own objective and its own tool. First, the repair task aims to return conditions to where they were prior to the problem. An example demonstrates how a sudden leak in an air conditioning system was...
The Secrets of Improvement-Driven Organizations
A survey of 300 organizations in 15 industries showed sharp differences in management practices between the top and lower performers. The purpose of the survey was to identify best practices and the links among these practices. A population of 585...
Small Groups Bring Big Results
Employee participation in quality circles and the leadership of executives as team facilitators enabled an oil refinery to implement total quality management (TQM) at the shop-floor level. This is a labor-intensive, continuous-cycle process industry,...
Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Ohio: A Profile in Change
Transformation from bureaucracy to action-oriented change management requires planning, leadership, and attention to basics. Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Ohio (BCBSO) has used this strategy to compete in the new health care industry. BCBSO's change...
