- Cost of Quality
- Customer Satisfaction and Value
- Data Quality
- Global Quality
- Innovation
- ISO 14000
- 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
- Social Responsibility
- Software Quality
- Standards
- Statistical Process Control (SPC)
- Statistics
- Supplier Quality
- Teams
- Theory of Constraints
- Total Quality Management
- ISO/TS 16949
- Compliance
- Risk Management
- Information Management
- Customer Requirements
- Food Safety
- Economic Case for Quality
- Awards
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....
Don't Lose Patients
Clinch Valley Medical Center—a for-profit, 175-bed hospital operating in western Virginia and part of a healthcare organization with operations in 18 states—has been undertaking lean Six Sigma initiatives for approximately three years....
Expert Answers: September 2012
Sustaining excellence ... Blood bank error...
Rethinking Treatment
Changing and improving complex processes in healthcare settings are no easy tasks. They require a systems approach using a variety of quality improvement methods and tools....
Statistics Roundtable: Go With the Flow
Years ago, while on my way to conduct a statistical process control short course at a local ASQ meeting, I was stopped by a man who told me he had attended my short course the previous year and got a lot out of it....
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....
Beyond the Basics
A movie sequel often can be as, if not more, captivating than the original. Essentially, a sequel builds on the original, continuing a journey with familiar characters and settings, developing ideas and unveiling more insight....
Rethinking Design
Design thinking offers several tools and concepts that can complement problem-solving approaches normally taught and used by quality professionals....
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....
Standards Outlook: Clearly Defined
It seems that everyone knows the difference between a system and a process. We know processes and systems are related, but most of us aren’t sure when one begins and the other ends....
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....
Risky Business
In highly regulated industries that manufacture pharmaceuticals, foods and cosmetics, quality control scientists have been known to perform sampling and testing to determine the acceptability of finished products. Throughout the last decade,...
Organize How You Innovate
It is difficult to underestimate the role of innovation in the success of an organization. ISO 9004:2009 redefines the role of improvements and innovations within a quality management system....
Expert Answers: June 2011
Cleaning up your flowcharts ... Building a control chart....
Best of Both Worlds
Combine flowcharts and turtle diagrams to simplify the presentation of information and clarify process interactions, making employee training and quality management system auditing easier....
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....
Measure for Measure: Well Equipped
If you're experiencing consistent customer dissatisfaction with your product, it's possible your measurement information may be of such poor quality that it prevents you from making sound decisions related to your product or service....
Online Figures ReVelle
com 1 Responding to voice of customer / online Figure 1 Kano model of customer expectations / online Figure 2 What the user really wanted As received by the customer As produced by product operations As designed by engineering As specified in the request...
What Do You Say?
With the help of an arsenal of lean tools, Boeing homed in on the root cause of its troubles, created equipment to address the issue and saw drastic improvements that earned it a bronze award at the 2009 International Team Excellence Awards....
Discussion Warranted
Warranties are important attributes of most business transactions. Their comprehensive impact on a company’s bottom line, however, is not always clearly understood—even by the people who deal with product quality and reliability on an everyday basis....
One Good Idea: What's the Plan?
Launching a project without a plan is a blueprint for disaster. So, when ER-One needed to transition the management of newly acquired hospital emergency departments to its organization, it turned to advanced implementation quality planning....
Seamless Transactions
Customer service is certainly important to any business, in any industry. But when a company’s purpose is to process millions of financial transactions on behalf of its customers—who depend on the company’s speed, accuracy and professionalism...
Brewed Awakening
Manufacturers often rely on an established network of distributors to move finished goods to retailers and consumers. A typical U.S. beer maker may depend on a network of 500 distributors to deliver its beverages to more than 700,000 retail accounts....
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....
Standards Outlook: Trust, but Verify
Grouping product, service and process audits together is somewhat natural, because a process audit may include a product or service audit. I’ve dubbed the combination a verification audit....
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....
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....
Riding the Storm Out
Virtually everyone and every organization has been touched in some way by today’s turbulent economy. Smaller budgets, unexpected layoffs and workplace shake-ups have become commonplace....
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....
Standards Outlook: Major Upgrades
The new fourth edition of the Chrysler, Ford and General Motors (GM) Potential Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) Reference Manual, which was released last year, is a significant upgrade from the third edition published in 2001....
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...
FMEA Minus the Pain
Failure mode effects analysis has stood the test of time as a powerful risk assessment tool for products, processes and systems....
Standards Outlook: Dynamic Duo
Lean and Six Sigma are two methods aimed at improving the quality of an organization’s operations and its financial results. Both concentrate on customer satisfaction and improved business performance....
Off the Ground
None of the 4,000 fasteners that were hand drilled into the fuselage of any C-17 cargo plane was misaligned or had gone missing. For years, Boeing has been building these top-notch planes. It just wanted to build them better....
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....
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....
Online Figures Schooley
Radiology transport w/ o phone calls Map emergency downtime plan for TSystem Midlevel in Triage, Improvement Measurement: # MLP Discharges daily Action Item List from 2/ 6/ 08 National MD goals Room to MD ( 22 min), MD to dispo ( 74 min) Post times in ME...
In the Know
More and more organizations are choosing outsourcing as a necessary means of remaining competitive in the global economy. Quality professionals must consider building a body of knowledge completely dedicated to the subject of quality in outsourcing....
The Great Debate
Two auditors meet over breakfast. One is a quality management system (QMS) auditor and the other an environmental management system (EMS) auditor....
Back to Basics: Building a Quality Team
A series of simple yet effective actions can help you, the quality leader, direct change and build momentum by tying company objectives to operating profit....
Achieve Compliance Through CI
Using Six Sigma tools for continuous improvement (CI) is a proven method for meeting or exceeding FDA requirements for medical devices. Optical Integrity Inc., a manufacturer of medical devices, used the Six Sigma define, measure, analyze, improve...
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...
Statistics Roundtable: Turning Shewhart?s Challenge Into Opportunity
Statisticians must step forward and lead management to become more statistically minded.
Nearly 70 years ago, quality pioneer Walter Shewhart threw down the gauntlet: "The long-range contribution of statistics depends not so much on getting a lot of highly trained statisticians into industry as it does...
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...
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....
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...
Empowering Employees to Pull the Quality Trigger
The successful implementation of a quality management system calls for a shift in decision making from quality managers to shop floor operators empowered to initiate a corrective action in the event of a quality event. While the widespread use of data...
Using a FMEA in a Service Setting
ISO 9001 requires organizations to take preventative action to avoid the occurrence and reoccurrence of nonconformities. A failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is a tool that allows users to predict potential for failure and plan for control through...
Standards Outlook: Process Auditing and Techniques
Process audits are highly focused, but their effective techniques are not always understood. Because there is no sanctioned process audit standard, anyone can claim to be doing process audits....
Help Has Arrived
Change or pay a price for remaining the same. This saying applies to life in general and the auditing profession in particular....
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....
Service + Quality: A Formula for Growth
Have you assessed your career goals and skills in relation to the job market lately?...
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?...
Quality Problems and Their Real Costs
When considering the cost of poor quality, it is important to consider the hidden cost of managerial transactions. If management is distracted from its normal responsibilities, these activities require additional resources. Quality problems respond only...
Simple Tools Improve Complicated Processes
The combined use of simple lean/Six Sigma tools has enabled Wausau Window and Wall Systems in Wisconsin to benefit customers and shareholders by trimming costs and improving cycle times. The method uses fact based analytical tools and methodologies that...
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...
How to Implement and Audit the Process Approach
If you organize your management system according to how business processes work instead of by departments or elements of a standard, you are using the system-process management approach. The ISO standards community has provided several guidance documents ...
Column: Emerging Sectors: ISO 9000 for Small Service Companies
Should a small service company pursue ISO 9000 certification? If your customers aren't well informed about the benefits of hiring a certified company, why invest the time and money to achieve the goal?...
Process Mapping's Next Step
The sophisticated technology of process simulation is explained from a nontechnical viewpoint. Simulation technology enables the accurate analysis of complex business processes. The key benefit is that all the analysis and testing take place in a...
Column: Emerging Sectors: Using ISO 9001 To Make Our Skies Safer
Transportation Security lab certifies explosive detection systems' test process
The Transportation Security Research, Engineering and Development Division (known as AAR-500), an organization within the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) of the U.S. Department of Transportation, recently achieved...
On Today's Menu: Quality
Despite concerted efforts by the food industry to comply with federal food safety regulations, the number of food safety incidents has been steadily increasing. Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) is a quality management system that...
7 Steps to Improved Safety for Medical Devices
In medical devices, Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) is a quality control process that covers every production phase from raw material procurement through distribution of the finished product. HACCP is a standalone program that...
Column: Statistics Roundtable: Chicken Soup for Processes
Understanding process variation is a prerequisite to using SPC
SPC can help hold onto gains once they are attained by being used for Shewhart's originally intended purpose -- to detect the entry of assignable cause variation....
How To Evaluate the Internal Customer-Supplier Relationship
Organizations in Poland and other Eastern European countries are increasingly adopting the principles of total quality management (TQM) as they make the transition from command to market economics. These organizations recognize that TQM's emphasis on...
Fit and Flow of Quality
Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) is a process that uses powerful tools offering a way to resolve problems before they affect customers. If the process is not approached in an appropriate manner, however, its result may be less than positive. The...
Roll Quality Roll
The University of Alabama is using the Baldrige Award criteria to measure its continuous improvement. As part of its effort, the university is raising its expectations of strategic quality plans to provide guidelines for improvements within colleges,...
Too Many Types of Quality Problems
Categorizing problem types can help practitioners in the quality field to focus their attention on relevant past experiences and problem solving techniques. This approach requires the definition of appropriate problem categories and communicating them...
Enhanced Quality Tools
Visibility tools support the management of improvement projects while providing information to investors in proposed projects. There are three categories of cost effective and useful visibility tools. First, object-based simulation software can show...
It's All About Improving Performance
Teams should be aware of their problem solving and decision making methods. This meta-problem solving and meta-decision making information can improve team performance of its four basic activities: define the problem; collect data to verify root...
Research: The Key to Quality Policies and Procedures
A structured research plan for analyzing a business process is the key to writing quality policies and procedures. Comprehensive and accurate policies and procedures are essential for meeting documentation requirements of standards like the ISO 9000...
Benchmarking Your Plant Against TQM Best-practice Plants: Part 3 of 4
The Tennant Co. plant is the third of four world-class operations described in a series of articles on quality practices. The total quality management structure at Tennant includes a quality manager, a senior vice president of industrial markets, and...
Benchmarking Your Plant Against TQM Best-Practices Plants: Part 2 of 4
The Rosemount Plant of the Emerson Electric Company is the second of four world-class operations described in a series of articles on quality practices. Rosemount has combined flexible manufacturing with total quality management (TQM) techniques and...
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...
Advanced Quality Planning: A Guide for Any Organization
Implementation of advanced product quality planning (APQP) has long-term business advantages for any organization, while supporting the QS-9000 activities of firms in the automotive industry. This planning process, including a control plan (CP)...
Continuous Process Improvement the Quick Step Way
Eliminating waste and reducing the time between order receipt and payment receipt characterize the Quick Step method of continuous process improvement. Quick Step principles include: implementation of simple, small projects via quick and creative...
Use PDSA for Crying Out Loud
The plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycle helped one couple decrease the amount of time their infant daughter cried during diaper changes. This quality improvement initiative took eight PDSA cycles. In cycle one, the parents collected and plotted run chart...
The Value-Added Ratio
The value-added ratio (VAR) can measure improvement in all processes in all organizations. For a given process, VAR equals the time devoted to process steps of interest to the customer divided by the total process cycle time. The typical VAR is less...
Creativity and Improvement: A Vital Link
Tools for creative thinking enhance quality improvement activities, which typically employ only critical thinking tools. Improvement requires change, and creativity reveals a variety of options, some not obvious, for implementing change. Creativity in...
The Evolution of a QC Guy
This story demonstrates how quality professionals and the profession itself must participate in change and improvement. By listening to and fulfilling the changing needs of his organization, this professional evolves from quality control technician to...
The Chicken Is Involved, but the Pig is Committed
Cascading teams can overcome resistance to change. Team members are both involved and committed. Two examples show how cascading teams work at Digital Semiconductor. First, a small team identified goals to improve product forecasting. This core...
Quality Quest: One Company's Successful Attempt at Implementing TQM
Introduction of total quality management (TQM) by a manufacturer of more than 2,000 products relied on training, involvement, and a pilot run of the problem solving process. Crosby's four absolutes of quality provided the foundation for this successful...
What It Takes to Be a Quality Consultant
The quality catalyst should be able to: overcome misperceptions; enable cultural change; encourage built-in quality; and help people find their own solutions. A TQM (total quality management) consultant must have these skills. Misperceptions to be...
Quality Costs: A Report Card on Business
Measuring the results of quality efforts is important at the corporate level. An important monetary measurement is cost of quality. Both service and manufacturing organizations can have quality costs systems. In service companies, rework is the major...
