All Features
Akhilesh Gulati
Since one of the pillars of lean thinking is the visual workplace, why hasn’t problem solving in the workplace been taken to the visual level?
Flowcharts are popular visual tools that can show what’s currently happening, what could be happening, or what should be happening—a great opportunity to…
Ron Kirscht
Donnelly Custom Manufacturing of Alexandria, Minnesota, a short-run injection molding company, knows that proper training is vital to productivity and quality. Still, using traditional methods, training at Donnelly was taking longer than desired and employees often weren’t retaining enough of what…
Denise Robitaille
E
mpowering people is a cool idea. Giving individuals authority and responsibility has many benefits. It fosters accountability and communicates confidence. It avails people the opportunity to contribute in a manner that allows their voices to be heard. They experience the self-satisfaction of…
Gregory Roth II
In the 1990s the theme seemed to be, “Don’t compete against your competitors, buy them and compete with yourself.” It appeared that every company was merging with another. To their stockholders, companies pitched, “We’re going to buy company XYZ and increase economy of scale for both companies and…
ISO
(ISO: Geneva) -- Organizations wishing to apply the quality management requirements of ISO 9001 to the acquisition, supply, development, operation, and maintenance of IT systems and related support services now have a valuable tool in ISO/IEC TR 90005, “Systems engineering—Guidelines for the…
National Committee for Quality Assurance
(NCQA: Washington) -- Data on clinical performance and patient experience for more than 85 million Americans enrolled in more than 400 commercial health plans are now available from the National Committee for Quality Assurance. NCQA’s Quality Compass, the United States’ most widely used database of…
American National Standards Institute ANSI
(ANSI: New York) -- The American National Standards Institute recently announced the recipients of its 2008 Leadership and Service Awards, who have been recognized for significant contributions to national and international standardization activities, as well as an ongoing commitment to their…
ASQ
(ASQ: Milwaukee, Wisconsin) -- The American Society for Quality recently awarded its 2008 Richard A. Freund International Scholarship to Amar Thiraviam, in Daytona Beach, Florida. This $5,000 scholarship, named after a past ASQ president, supports a quality professional’s graduate studies.…
(EFQM: Brussels) -- EFQM, a nonprofit membership foundation headquartered in Brussels, has announced the 11 finalists of the EFQM Excellence Award 2008. From this list of finalists, the award and prize winners will be named on October 28 in the Musée du Louvre at EFQM’s award dinner in Paris.
The…
(AHRQ: Rockville, Maryland) -- Potentially preventable medical errors that occur during or after surgery may cost employers nearly $1.5 billion a year, according to new estimates by the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
In a study…
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
(CMS: Baltimore, Maryland) -- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) announced payment of more than $36 million in bonus payments to many of the more than 56,700 health professionals who satisfactorily reported quality information to Medicare under the 2007 Physician Quality Reporting…
(ASQ: Milwaukee) -- While athletes from around the world prepared to spotlight their exceptional physical skills in the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, behind the scenes Olympic coaches are taking a new approach to building a winning performance. They’re turning to business improvement methods that…
(WCBF: Chicago) -- The Global Six Sigma & Business Improvement Awards, organized by WCBF, has announced that Mark Pigott, chairman and CEO of Bellevue, Washington-based PACCAR has been named the winner of its prestigious Six Sigma and Business Improvement CEO of the Year Award.
Six Sigma…
(BSI Group: London) -- All tasks encountered at work involve a process, some more complex than others. The output of many processes is often dependent on multiple inputs.
Are you sure that the output is the best that your process can achieve?
Could the output be improved by adjusting some of…
Lori Loethen
When organizations decide to deploy a Six Sigma initiative, there are several foundation stones required for a successful venture. One of those building blocks is leadership. From executive-level support to assigning champions and choosing the right projects, leadership is critical for Six Sigma…
Carolyn Clancy
Choosing a hospital that scores well on quality can make it easier and safer for you to recover from a serious event, such as heart surgery, or a routine one, such as having a baby. Doing a little homework before you choose a hospital can do more than give you peace of mind.
As a physician, let…
Akhilesh Gulati
Remember way back when you knew Newton’s Third Law, how to do long division, how to solve quadratic equations, and the difference between mean, mode, and median? As quality professionals, we’ve probably all had to learn these basic concepts at some point in our careers. Do we remember them?
While…
ISO
(ISO: Geneva) -- The seventh edition of the ISO International Standard for currency codes has just been published. ISO 4217:2008—“Codes for the representation of currencies and funds,” is the only worldwide, multi-industry, standardized currency code.
“Information interchange on an international…
American National Standards Institute ANSI
(ANSI: New York) -- Continuing education programs are growing in popularity as employees in a variety of industries work to keep up with new technologies and business strategies. According to a report released recently by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics,…
ISO
(ISO: Geneva) -- ISO 20712 standard answers the need to standardize a system for giving safety information related to aquatic activity that relies as little as possible on the use of words to achieve understanding. Water-safety signs and flags can be invaluable aids in bringing people’s attention…
ASQ
(ASQ: Milwaukee) -- Paul Borawski, American Society for Quality (ASQ) executive director and chief strategic officer, was recently awarded the Council of Engineering and Scientific Society Executives (CESSE) Leadership Award. The award was presented at the CESSE Annual Meeting in Detroit, July 15–…
American National Standards Institute ANSI
(ANSI: New York) -- In the state of California, crane operator certification bodies are required to be accredited by a California Division of Occupational Health and Safety (Cal/OSHA)-approved accreditation body. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Personnel Certification…
ISO
(ISO: Geneva) -- Have you printed your bus schedule today? Sent an e-mail? Made an online payment? At a time when information and communication technology (ICT) is becoming increasingly critical for fulfilling everyday tasks at home and at the office, an ISO/IEC standard will ensure that the…
Bill Kalmar
To illustrate how out of place he sometimes felt, comedian George Gobel once remarked, “Have you ever felt that the whole world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes?” When it comes to good customer service I sometimes feel like those brown shoes. Poor service seems to find me, as though…
James Jardine
The International Organization for Standardization has developed more than 17,000 international standards on numerous subjects. For medical device companies, the most important of these standards is ISO 13485, which provides internationally recognized guidelines pertaining to quality management…
