If any clause in ISO 9001 has increased in importance since the release of the standard’s 2000 edition, it must be subclause 7.4 on purchasing. Not that the relative importance of the words has changed, but rather purchasing and outsourcing have become much more common and important in our day-to-day business. So the relatively small subclause on controlling purchasing may be much more important now than it was back in 2000. (I addressed outsourced processes in my May column, “Is a Controlled QMS Possible?” More about them later.)

The quality and process improvement professions tend to rely heavily on statistical information. The very science of quality control can be said to have begun with Walter A. Shewhart’s development of the control chart and discovery of the concepts of special cause and common cause variation. But few would argue with the statement that there is a downside, and a dark side, to statistics. I hereby present a few examples of good, bad, and ugly statistical usage.

It’s that time of year when we look back at what we have accomplished, at what we’re thankful for, and what lies ahead in the year to come. What a year 2008 has been: skyrocketing (and plummeting) fuel prices, an election that seemed like it would never end, a flood of foreclosures, a bunch of bank failures, and a sinking stock market.

One of the major causes of TQM and Six Sigma failures is selecting the wrong project. This selection is probably one of the most important decisions that management can make to support the improvement process.

There are many approaches that can be used to select projects. They range from management intuition to complex analyses of how the processes affect business opportunities. I will show you a weighted selection approach that is effective, using a health care example.