Quality Management : Quality Control
Career Corner: Out of Hiding
While I was the senior statistician for a manufacturing division of a major aerospace firm, I shared the concept of the hidden factory with a statistical quality control (SQC) training class composed entirely of senior and middle management....
Perspectives: First, Do No Harm
Healthcare costs in the United States are increasing at staggering rates. In fact, last year’s employer health insurance premiums increased by 5%, which is two times the rate of inflation....
One Good Idea: Find the Answers You Seek
Incidental differences—those with no impact on the component's performance—are often resolved by modifying the product print to match the samples. Microsoft Excel has a powerful tool called "Goal Seek" that makes this resolution a breeze....
Quality in the First Person: All Roads Lead to Quality
At 17, most high school students are trying to decide what they want to do with their lives. At graduation, I never would have thought that in 10 years I would work in quality assurance....
Expert Answers: June 2008
Calculating DPMO ... Origins of sampling plan....
NFL Teams Huddle Up Around Quality
Football has evolved to become big business, and with the big money comes the pressure for teams to win. Almost every NFL team today employs coaches and personnel dedicated to controlling the quality of actions on the field. NFL head coach Tom Landry is...
One Good Idea: The Probability of Reoccurrence: P(r)
Bob, the quality manager at Acme Co., was sent a supplier corrective action request(SCAR) from Acme's largest customer. Bob assembled a team of engineers to identify the problem and determine a root cause....
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....
Inefficiency With the Best of Intentions
As quality professionals, we are
all familiar with lean thinking.
We have spent years, sometimes
decades, trying to find waste
and eliminate it. But did you ever
wonder how the waste got there?...
Better Teaching with Deming and Bloom
The quality management concepts of W. Edwards Deming can be combined with Benjamin Bloom’s cognitive taxonomy to improve teaching methods. To integrate these concepts, a quality control sheet is developed to monitor improvement, integrate subject...
Control Charting at the 30,000-Foot-Level
For a given process, do you think everyone would create a similar looking control chart and make a similar statement relative to process control and predictability? This type of data traditionally leads to an and R control chart, as shown in Figure 1 (p. ...
Striving for Sick Sigma
A satirical look at common misuse of quality tools and flawed reasoning in actuality highlights one company's serious commitment to quality and customer...
The Game of Statistics
At the conclusion of the 2000 World Series, sportswriters looked at the data and selected Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter as the most valuable player (MVP). Performance in baseball is generally gauged by a set of multivariate data, so it's hard to argue...
Statistics Roundtable: Implementing Multivariate SPC Using Hotelling's T2 Statistic
Multivariate statistical process control (MVSPC) can be defined as the application of multivariate statistical procedures for the purpose of increasing the quality and productivity of a business. Hotelling's T2 statistic allows you to monitor many...
A World of Opportunity
Quality professionals often create and maintain connections via voluntary associations. A new approach designed by ASQ to revamp its approach to affiliations with other quality groups includes a revised international position statement, a new strategy...
American Statistical Association Conference on Statistical Practice
February 16–18 | Orlando, FL
Visit www.amstat.org/meetings/csp/2012/index.cfm.
ASQ Lean and Six Sigma Conference
February 27–28 | Phoenix, AZ
Visit http://asq.org/conferences/six-sigma.
ASQ members exchange comments, suggestions, questions and ideas inspired by articles or letters in Quality Progress.
Featured advertisers
