Trends and Developments : Economic Case for Quality
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....
Expert Answers: November 2011
Proving quality's worth ... Proper control charting...
Put JIB on the Job
An organization implemented a proven training program that improved quality and efficiency plantwide during the recession, positioning it to perform at higher levels when demand increased after the economy recovered....
A Frank Discussion
The Pittsburgh section has been an ASQ stalwart. It was one of a handful sections that co-founded ASQ in the 1940s. Because of the concentration of manufacturing in the area, Pittsburgh has always been home to many ASQ members—and a hotspot for quality....
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....
Expert Answers: February 2009
Executives hear money talk ... Customer feedback: What works best?...
Talent Show
When an HR team determined it could save its company millions of dollars through stronger retention of customer service (representatives, leadership raised a collective eyebrow and quickly asked HR to make it happen....
Drill Deep for Strategic Alignment
Internal auditors must understand an organization’s strategy and how each process fits into that strategy. Internal auditing for strategic alignment and execution requires that the auditor understand the organization’s desired strategy and how each proces...
Standards Outlook: Down With Silos
Businesses today have multiple management systems, including financial, quality and environmental. Unfortunately, these management systems usually do not talk to one another....
Blurred Vision
Many quality professionals have noticed that business leaders still consider quality and business improvement to be separate topics. While this isn’t the case everywhere, it appears to have become more common....
10 Auditing Rules
All auditors receive training in the basics of planning, conducting and reporting audits. Unfortunately, this is the only training many ever receive....
Expert Answers: May 2008
Government and cost of quality ... Understanding the slack factor....
A Framework for Business Ethics
Profit maximization is, of course, the main and foremost objective for any commercial organization. Most modern organizations realize that to survive in today’s competitive arena, customers have to be satisfied....
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....
Construyendo un Equipo de Calidad
Pasos simples para poder involucrar al resto del personal de su empresa en la mejora continua....
Six Sigma, Value and Competitive Strategy
Aligning Six Sigma deployment with an organization’s strategy is complicated by the fact that most organizations have three levels of strategy – corporate, strategic business unit (SBU), and competitive. The tools of Six Sigma are most effectively...
The Quality Diet: Building a Healthy Business
Quality is not always an easy sell. As a result, the challenges facing a quality professional trying to help a company are a lot like those facing a dietitian trying to help a client succeed with a diet. Quality professionals could even be called...
Reaching Out to CEOs
Interested in promoting quality as an agent of profit and prosperity, ASQ asked the Pittsburgh section to participate in a pilot run of the Economic Case for Quality by surveying local business leaders to determine how they perceived the impact of...
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...
Financial Control and Quality
The case for quality should be easy to make, but it is not always obvious to top management who must be aware of and control the corporation’s finances in order to comply with federal regulations. There are two aspects to measuring financial control -...
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.
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