All Features
As quality professionals, we frequently report such facts as proportions (percentages), process capability indices, averages and standard deviations as if we know what we’re talking about. But what’s our actual level of confidence? All of our observations and our understanding are based upon data…
Quality Digest
Voltaix Inc., a manufacturer of chemicals and gases for the semiconductor and photovoltaics industries, recently announced that 15 of its employees recently received Green Belt certification. Voltaix provided the employee training to invest in customer support relationships and improve product…
Quality Digest
Canadian real estate companies are reportedly finding Six Sigma a useful tool to reduce data errors. The Canadian newspaper, Globe and Mail reports that although the industry has been slow to fully adopt the methodology, an increasing number of companies are using it to drive the decision-making…
”Cause and effect, Chain of events, All of this chaos makes perfect sense” —Joe Diffe Third Rock From the Sun In my recent article, "How to Lead with Six Sigma: What are you solving for?" I discussed the need for leaders to clearly identify just what they’re…
Quality Digest
In an effort to improve the quality of instruction in its classrooms, the Los Alamos Public School District in New Mexico has adopted the Baldrige Award criteria. The Los Alamos Monitor reported the Baldrige Award criteria adoption has already been met with some success. The district’s main office…
Quality Digest
RABQSA International and the National Quality Institute of Canada have joined forces to promote personnel training and certification throughout Canada. The agencies will temporarily allow people and organizations currently registered to standards by NQI to also be registered to one or more of…
Quality Digest
A consultant who helped Xerox Business Services win a Baldrige Award will be speaking about organizational performance improvement at an upcoming seminar. John Lawrence, a consultant and former senior executive at two Fortune 500 companies, will present a program entitled “Mapping the Journey–A…
Quality Digest
Minitab recently started offering its software to academic customers at discounted rates through e-academy.com, an online provider of brand-name software. The site offers MINITAB 14 in multiple languages, MINITAB French 13 and Minitab Quality Companion for as little as $29.99 per semester. Free,…
Quality Digest
A recent study shows that hospital administrators are heeding advice to integrate and embrace quality improvement efforts.Researchers from the Yale School of Medicine interviewed 100 directors from a randomly selected cross-section of all acute-care hospitals and compared their responses with those…
Quality Digest
A new book concludes that medical practitioners need a better grasp of quality management principles, methods, programs, systems and experiences. The issue is the topic of a recently published book, Core Curriculum for Medical Quality Management, (Jones and Bartlett Publishers Inc., 2005). It…
Quality Digest
Several Ohio health agencies are mounting an effort to improve the quality of health care in the state.Greater Cincinnati Health Council and 17 of its member hospitals will partner with the Ohio Hospital Association to launch the Greater Cincinnati Hospital Quality Improvement Project, reported the…
Quality Digest
An international workshop to help local governments implement quality management systems based on ISO 9001 will be held May 22–23 in Veracruz, Mexico. The aim of the meeting is to produce an international workshop agreement (IWA) to allow more-rapid ISO 9001 implementations in governments, shorter…
Quality Digest
Northwest Analytical Inc. recently released an updated version of its flagship NWA Quality Analyst SPC suite. The solution allows manufacturers to more easily analyze process data to identify process improvements and execute quality initiatives such as Six Sigma, CAPA and ISO standards. It includes…
Quality Digest
Rath & Strong recently released a new pocket guide for practitioners of GE Work-Out, a methodology that helps improve Six Sigma and lean projects. GE Work-Out was developed by General Electric as a companion to already-established quality improvement programs. It creates a method to deal with…
Quality Digest
User satisfaction with federal e-government Web sites leveled off after nine months of steady improvement, according to the latest quarterly findings of the American Customer Satisfaction Index. The new data shows a slight decline to an aggregate government Web site score of 71.9 from the December…
Quality Digest
APQC and the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals are collaborating to provide no-cost supply chain measurements for benchmarking. The organizations developed and are promoting online supply chain surveys as a reliable and cost-effective way for organizations to learn how their…
Quality Digest
A new study by Best Practices LLC contains performance metrics from which pharmaceutical companies can perform gap analyses to assess manufacturing performance and identify improvement opportunities. “Pharmaceutical Manufacturing: Cost, Staffing & Utilization Metrics,” contains the following…
Quality Digest
AMR Research recently released a study that predicts that the cost of compliance for companies will reach $80 billion over the next five years. The firm also estimates that regulated organizations will spend close to $15.5 million on compliance-related activities in 2005. Although an average…
Quality Digest
Medidata Solutions Inc., an electronic clinical data management solutions provider, will provide Pro-Pharmaceuticals Inc. with a state-of-the-art electronic data capture technology for an upcoming clinical trial for cancer research. Medidata’s RAVE will allow Pro-Pharmaceuticals to correctly and…
Quality Digest
More than 18 companies recently announced support for Microsoft Corp’s new Digital Pharma solution, a framework designed for the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries to improve their performance. The solution is applicable to many areas in the pharmaceutical value chain, from drug…
Quality Digest
The International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering will host a training series for those who are new to the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries next month in Denver. The courses will be held April 4–7. The offered courses include: Biotech Basics Biopharmaceutical Process…
Quality Digest
Waters Inform 2005, a symposium for laboratory data management process improvement, will be held May 24–26 in Baltimore. The event will include tutorials covering the range of the Waters Laboratory Informatics suite: Empower, Millennium, MassLynx, NuGenesis SDMS, eLab Notebook, and the Q-DIS family…
Laura Smith
In hopes of cutting administrative costs and streamlining the amount of time it takes to get new drugs to consumers, eight global pharmaceutical manufacturers have formed a coalition, SAFE-BioPharma, to support the widespread adoption of the new global digital identity standard, Secure Access for…
Quality Digest
Leading businesses identify customer satisfaction, cost savings and productivity improvements as the primary drives for their quality improvement initiatives, according to a new study from Best Practices LLC. Based on analyses from 46 major companies, the survey concludes that: There is a…
Quality Digest
SigmaXL recently released a new version of its SigmaXL v. 4.0 software. The solution is an add-in for Microsoft Excel.The add-in is designed for statistical and graphical analysis. New features include Recall SigmaXL Dialog, which allows users to recall the last data worksheet they used; run charts…
