- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Environmental Manag. and Sustainability
- Global Quality
- Human Resources
- Innovation
- ISO 9000
- Leadership
- Lean
- Problem Solving
- Process Capability
- Basic Quality
- Process Management
- Product Development and Recall
- Project Management
- Quality Control
- Quality Function Deployment
- Quality Management
- Quality Tools
- Safety
- Six Sigma
- Social Responsibility
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Teams
- Theory of Constraints
- Total Quality Management
- ISO/TS 16949
- Compliance
- Certification/Registration (management system Standards)
- Risk Management
- Customer Requirements
- Economic Case for Quality
- Change Management
Statistics Roundtable: One Size Does Not Fit All
The need to improve is ever present in all endeavors and will continue to be so. We live in a dynamic world. As predicted in the second law of thermodynamic and entropy, the world will continue to change....
Quality Around the Clock
It’s in your DNA. It’s how your mind works. It’s what you do. It’s who you are. When you work in quality, you see things differently. You approach problems and scenarios in certain ways. It happens after you’ve signed off....
Back to Basics: To DMAIC or Not to DMAIC?
Define, measure, analyze, improve and control is a structured problem-solving method. Each phase builds on the previous one, with the goal of implementing long-term solutions to problems. Most problem-solving efforts benefit from a disciplined method....
Volviendo a los Fundamentos: ¿DMAMC o no DMAMC?
Definir, medir, analizar, mejorar y controlar (DMAMC) es un método estructurado de resolución de problemas. Cada fase de DMAMC se basa en la fase anterior, y el objetivo es implementar soluciones a largo plazo a los problemas....
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....
Up and Away
Do you want to quickly test your creativity? Take a sheet of paper and draw a big circle on it. Draw a dot on the paper. This exercise is part of a test given to children entering kindergarten to find out their baseline levels of creativity....
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....
Career Corner: Keep Your Toolbox Full
Be aware of all the tools at your disposal to excel at your job. Your career as a quality professional depends on your ability to recall a specific quality tool and apply it when necessary....
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....
The Secret to Sustainment
Of all the problems and projects encountered by most continuous improvement professionals, the most challenging is making change last. In fact, sustaining change tends to be an afterthought for many....
On the Clock
Whatever the business, customers expect timely and efficient service. They expect their phone calls to be answered in two or fewer rings. They loath waiting in long lines and want transactions handled as quickly as possible....
Online Sidebar Watson
Inova Mount Vernon Hospital’s first change activity focused on the front-end processes of getting a patient triaged and into a bed, as shown in the highlighted boxes in the emergency department (ED) process flow in Online Figure 1....
A Lean Transformation
Sacred Heart Hospital CEO Steve Ronstrom first learned about lean while working on boats in Alaska. There, they didn’t waste a thing—they wouldn’t even throw away a piece of rope. When he later returned home and worked in a hospital, he observed...
Loud and Clear
An company's use of metrics to drive and measure success can help it maintain a leadership position in its industry. A commitment to applying performance management tools has increased efficiencies, reduced cost and improved customer satisfaction scores....
Refresh and Revitalize
Textron would be the first to admit it was stuck in a rut. In particular, two of its business units, Avco Lycoming and E-Z-GO, were trapped in 1950s management styles. Both units had limited new product development and a less-than-engaged workforce....
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?...
Keep It Simple
In his book, My Life and Work, Henry Ford laid out the basics of the lean system. But, if he and others have been able to use elements of lean successfully, why does it seem so many lean and lean Six Sigma initiatives fail?...
Expert Answers: September 2010
Soft-dollar savings ... crisis management's effect on quality....
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...
Making the Connection
Connectivity can refer to the predecessor-successor relationship existing between two or more tools for continuous improvement. The output from one tool, such as a Pareto analysis, can become the input to another, such as cause and effect analysis....
Window of Opportunity
By employing lean Six Sigma, a supplier for one of the Big Three automakers met its goals and developed technology that is projected to be applicable to any and every automobile—from two-door coupes to full-size vans—within five years....
Leaning Toward Green
Lean practitioners have long challenged employees to question why a process is performed in a particular way, whether it is necessary, and to shift their paradigm to implement a simpler, more efficient way to provide value to the customer....
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....
Career Climb
You don’t need to be jobless in today’s economy to feel stressed and apprehensive about your current situation. You don’t need to be reminded there aren’t any guarantees in today’s world....
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....
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....
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....
Online Figures Jing
QP 2 Pure bonding / online Figure 5 Part one Part one Part two Part two Left distance Right distance Step one Step two Heat DMAIC Mind- set / online Figure 4 30- 50 10- 15 4- 8 KPIVs 8- 10 KPIVs Critical KPIVs 3- 6 Key leverage KPIVs Inputs variables Mea...
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....
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....
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....
3.4 per Million: Smart Talk
When you examine the success of Six Sigma at Motorola, one characteristic that is frequently listed as a critical success factor is the common language it created. That attribute meanders its way into all types of Six Sigma conversations....
Volviendo a los Fundamentos: Día de la Capacitación
Es difícil en cualquier industria, capacitar eficazmente al personal del proyecto y también difundir y capturar la experiencia....
Back to Basics: Training Day
Effectively training project staff and capturing and diffusing the training is difficult within any industry. At the company I work for, Cadforce Inc., we used a forgotten program from World War II America to help train construction field staff....
Back in Circulation
As the applications for lean expand, organizations must realize lean’s usefulness goes beyond environmental efforts. But first, we must look at the history of lean and to understand how its future fully complements social responsibility....
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....
A DMAIC Makeover
Define, measure, Analyze, improve and control (DMAIC) is the common roadmap for Six Sigma projects. But there are potential weaknesses in this roadmap that could be addressed with a simple, proven adjustment to DMAIC....
Geared Toward Innovation
The role of innovation is being vigorously debated among quality professionals and in society at large. It is therefore appropriate that innovation has been elevated to one of the most important strategic issues for the quality profession....
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....
Who's Keeping Score?
There’s one tool you won’t find for sale at Sears. One of the retail giant’s divisions has started using a quality management tool extensively to maintain and improve its own quality management system....
Sharp HealthCare Gets to the Point in Managing Diabetes
With literature from the last five years demonstrating that poor control of blood sugar in acute healthcare settings equates to negative outcomes in diabetics, Sharp HealthCare in San Diego decided to control it everywhere....
Lean Six Sigma's Evolution
When Motorola rolled out its initial Six Sigma system in 1987, there were no Green Belts, Black Belts, Master Black Belts, Champions or any of the infrastructure or focused training we have come to associate with modern practices in Six Sigma....
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...
3.4 per Million: Use DMAIC to Make Improvement Part of the Way We Work
Faster, better, cheaper. That’s what organizations across almost all major industries must now do to remain competitive....
Lean Lessons: Lean Kaizen in the 21st Century
Adapted from a chapter of Lean Kaizen, the author offers key takeaways from the Toyota Production System (TPS). He describes how the kaizen method is the foundation of the The Toyota Way and how it emphasizes efficiency, problem solving and...
From One-Man Show to Baldrige Recipient
Mesa Products Inc., which manufactures and installs cathodic protection systems for underground piping and other metal structures, was the recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality award in the small business category in 2006. Mesa’s quality...
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...
Quantifying Machinery Availability Loss
Possibly the most misunderstood and abused metric in performance based manufacturing is machine availability. When examining quality, performance, costs, and cycle time improvements, it is assumed that any performance metrics take into account a...
Six Sigma at Cigna
In 2002, Cigna Corp., a provider of employee healthcare and insurance benefits, launched a grass-root driven quality program based on Six Sigma. Leadership made it clear that the approach would be holistic and would require behavioral changes and a...
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....
Career Corner: Get Rid of Clutter
Futurist John Naisbitt focused on 11 purposeful cognitive tools that contribute to successful anticipation of and adjustment to change. No. 10 is about leveraging quality: "Don't add unless you subtract," Naisbitt says....
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....
Merging Quality Cultures in Contract Manufacturing
When EPIC Technologies acquired the Siemens Electronic Manufacturing Center operations in Johnson City, Tennessee, it became necessary to merge its quality culture with those of its new subsidiary while continuing to keep its original customers happy....
Switching From Improvement to Innovation on the Fly
Proceeding with an improvement methodology when it becomes obvious the process lacks the potential to achieve the desired capability can be damaging to an organization's continuous improvement initiatives. Goals will not be reached, and the resulting...
One Good Idea: Bringing the Fishbone Diagram Into the Computer Age
The cause and effect, or fishbone, diagram is an established problem solving tool. It is particularly suitable for use by cross functional teams, helping a group organize a problem's potential root causes in an easily understandable visual format....
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....
A Second Look at 5S
While Six Sigma has largely replaced 5S (lean), that doesn't mean that 5S doesn't have the potential to deliver benefits beyond cleaning up the shop floor. 5S is an idea that can change the perception of the workplace and provide a foundation for all...
Building Quality at Veridian Homes
Veridian Homes in Madison, Wisconsin uses several quality methods to improve productivity while reducing impact on the environment. To achieve its goal of promoting and coordinating quality throughout the company, the company employed the National...
Bringing Lean To the Office
Lean methods produce quicker results than other quality methods, and they readily apply to office work. Lean uses three principles to create more value while reducing waste and cost. A team of college students gained hands-on lean experience with two...
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...
Lean Lessons: Value Stream Mapping--an Introduction
Value stream mapping (VSM) can be an extremely powerful tool, combining material processing steps with information flow as well as other important related data. VSM is arguably one of the most powerful lean tools for an organization......
Selling Quality Ideas to Management
Many great ideas fall by the wayside because management does not accept them. This may be because the idea must compete with other priorities or the owner doesn't do enough to sell the idea to management. Three effective ways to enhance an idea are to...
Career Corner: How To Become an Internal Consultant
This article is not about how to become an external consultant - it is about enriching your quality job by assuming a role of internal consultant....
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......
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...
When Worlds Collide: Lean and Six Sigma
Facing unprecedented pressure to improve performance across the board, organizations cannot afford to forego the benefits of either Six Sigma or lean....
Soccer Team Scores Its Goals With ISO 9001
Like other members of the Grupo Salinas (GS) family of companies, the Mexican soccer team Monarcas Morelia must create value. GS relies on a quality management system and ISO 9001 registration to compel managers to seek continuous improvement and...
Lean Thinking for Knowledge Work
Productivity in the service sector trails manufacturing by a wide margin. Since the early 1990s, the Toyota Production System (TPS) has been heralded as the standard for manufacturing environments, but early attempts to apply it to nonproduction work...
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...
Back to the Future at Ford
The U.S. automotive industry, and U.S. industry in general, have seen significant change over the past thirty years, and the results haven’t always been positive. While specific details differ, Ford Motor Company's experience with the major system...
Sarbanes-Oxley and ISO 9000
Critics say ISO 9000 doesn't measure up to robust quality programs such as Baldrige Award criteria, lean and Six Sigma, and they complain about the law's excessive documentation requirements. Yet by providing records and internal controls, the...
Minimize Your Waste Line
Many companies see the enthusiasm surrounding new quality initiatives wane once the immediate benefits decrease and realities of day-to-day operational procedures override long term goals. While no plan can provide instant, lasting improvement, the...
What Do CEOs Think About Quality
Quality professionals can count on the support of the American Society for Quality when justifying the cost of quality to upper management. ASQ has conducted a survey of top executives in manufacturing, service, healthcare, and education to determine...
Match the Change Vehicle and Method to the Job
Processes are at the core of continuous improvement, and improvement happens when a process is changed in one way or another....
Six Sigma in Metaphor: Heresy or Holy Writ?
We begin by assuming everyone knows what Six Sigma is. Even in this forum of quality professionals, we know this to be untenable, although it seems likely this is not the first time readers have heard the term...
Column: Standards Outlook: ISO 9000 and More
DVDs have become a very popular form of home entertainment. Movies released on DVD often feature bonus material and deleted scenes. Wouldn't it be nice if readers of print material could have this option from time to time!...
Lean and Six Sigma -- A One-Two Punch
To keep profits growing in these days of flat revenues, manufacturers are paying more attention to the advice of Poor Richard (a.k.a. Benjamin Franklin): A penny saved is a penny earned....
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: Back to Basics: QFD Explained
Quality function deployment (QFD), often referred to as listening to the voice of the customer, is a structured method for translating customer requirements into appropriate technical requirements for each stage of product development and production....
QFD Explicado
Utilice este proceso para asegurar calidad a través del proceso del desarrollo de producto
El despliegue de la función de la calidad (QFD) es un método estructurado para traducir requisitos del cliente en los requisitos técnicos apropiados para cada etapa del desarrollo de producto y de producción....
Hungary's Journey To Business Excellence
Hungary has emerged as a major European success story, its economy thriving despite the recent worldwide recession. Four Hungarian companies illustrate how quality has led to business success. Using total quality management techniques tailored to fit...
Column: One Good Idea: The Importance of Improved Design
How product design affects significant factors in manufacturing
When a company learned that they were losing money manufacturing the most expensive winch in their catalog, they contacted a local professor of design for...
A Quality Major
The doctorate in technology management program offered by the School of Technology at Indiana State University is unique because it is a consortium of seven universities, with ISU being the degree issuing institution. The program provides...
Big Results With Less
Recent world events have put pressure on companies involved in security-related technologies and systems to rapidly increase their production. Garrett Metal Detectors was able to respond to a 300 percent increase in orders for its handheld and...
Should You Transition to ISO 9001:2000?
With the deadline little more than a year away, indications are that fewer than 20 percent of organizations whose business and quality objectives include compliance to the ISO 9000 standards have made the transition. Six ISO 9000 experts present their...
The Status Quo's Failure in Problem Solving
In their quest to create and implement the newest initiatives, organizational leaders frequently fail to notice that simple changes in the existing system can ensure the success of future efforts. Problem solving is a critical link shared by all quality...
Quality Glossary
A handy reference is provided of quality terms, acronyms, and key people in the history of quality. Information is derived from a variety of sources and compiled by the editorial staff of the American Society for...
Connecting the Planners and Doers
Many companies are seeking a way to link business strategy to its implementation. The Two Rings model shows how senior and operations management, each represented by a ring, can contribute their respective knowledge and develop business strategies...
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...
Column: Standards Outlook: Where Does Quality Begin?
It begins with the PDCA cycle and an understanding of variation--not with ISO 9001
A quality system is not a standard, but rather a Deming-style "system of profound knowledge," consisting of: Appreciation for a system; Knowledge about variation; Theory of knowledge; and Psychology. Problems show up in the "corrective and preventive...
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...
Design for Six Sigma: 15 Lessons Learned
Despite its growing popularity, Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is a difficult transition for most companies. Six Sigma professionals from a number of major corporations share their experiences switching from a deterministic to a probabilistic design...
Demystifying ISO 9001:2000 (Part 2)
Three sections of the new ISO 9001:2000 standard, not examined in Part I of this article, are reviewed. Section 6.1 covers provision of resources, section 6.3, infrastructure, and section 6.4, work environment. Section 6.1 requires an organization to...
Column: Career Corner: Learn Lean; Your career may depend on it
Greg Hutchins interviews Norman Bodek, who brought the concept of Lean Manufacturing (or Just In Time) from Japan to the United States....
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...
