All Features
Praveen Gupta
Six Sigma was officially launched January 1, 1987, at Motorola, and it took more than nine months to make Six Sigma real. Twenty years later, Six Sigma has grown from a good baby methodology into a mature system that affects thousands of corporations and millions of people and that saves billions…
Quality Digest
Bill Evanson, a Six Sigma Black Belt and former Kodak supply chain executive, recently accepted a position as vice president and general manager of a warehousing and product delivery company. Evanson will manage JDF Distribution’s facility in Texas, which provides warehousing and…
Quality Digest
The Turkish Society for Quality (KalDer) held its 15th Annual Quality Congress in Istanbul, Turkey, in late November. More than 2,200 quality professionals attended the three-day event, including Grace Duffy, vice president of the American Society for Quality. The conference featured…
Quality Digest
In November 2006, the Pentagon sent a letter to Sikorsky Aircraft criticizing its management for quality control and delays in the production of Black Hawk helicopters. Sikorsky, a division of United Technologies, subsequently submitted a plan for addressing the concerns in a Level III…
Quality Digest
The 2007 Baldrige criteria for performance excellence in education and health care, and in business and nonprofit organizations, were recently published on the Baldrige National Quality Program Web site, along with the 2007 Baldrige award application forms.The Baldrige criteria help…
Quality Digest
EFQM will offer a workshop on May 10–11 designed to allow business, process and quality managers to meet like-minded people, to learn new ways to define their innovation agenda, and to measure their innovation performance and improve their competitiveness.Innovation brings added value…
Quality Digest
Accelper Consulting recently published ISO 9000:2000: An Implementation Guide (BookSurge Publishing, 2006) to help small to large corporations achieve an effective quality management system.The book contains a summary of ISO standards requirements and methods for conducting value-added…
Quality Digest
Trying to raise awareness of and promote standardization, the International Organization for Standardization recently introduced the ISO Award for Higher Education in Standardization to encourage a positive appreciation of and involvement in standardization among children—the future…
Bill Kalmar
Those of us in the acting profession hear those words regularly at the end of a particularly grueling day from a director attempting to extract perfection from a group of actors. (I’ll discuss my own celluloid exploits later).It’s appropriate to utter similar words at the end of 2006—a grueling,…
Quality Digest
Abbott Laboratories has completed its acquisition of Kos Pharmaceuticals Inc., which specializes in treatments for cardiovascular, metabolic and respiratory diseases, and is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Abbott Labs. Abbott reports that the acquisition broadens its portfolio of products…
T. J. Becker
In our increasingly wireless world, the air is chock-full of electromagnetic signals carrying data from one place to another. Yet, while new wireless technologies advance our options in security, commerce and entertainment, they also produce interference that may cause problems for…
Quality Digest
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) recently kicked off a multimedia campaign to raise public awareness of diabetes. Nearly 21 million Americans know they have diabetes, and as many as 6.2 million more have it and don’t know that they have it. The purpose of…
Quality Digest
Pharmaceutical services company i3 has entered the next phase of its global expansion which includes organic and acquired growth in India, Latin America and Europe. Coupled with acquisitions in Canada and Asia Pacific that i3 made earlier this year, the additions will help i3’s…
Quality Digest
Three out of four life sciences companies polled in a recent survey said that their current documentation practices are inefficient. The survey was conducted in November and focused on key areas of life sciences firms that are heavily involved with complex documentation practices,…
Quality Digest
Comerica Bank recently announced three winners of its annual National Quality Excellence Award program. The award recognizes outstanding contribution to Comerica’s vision and core values. This year’s winners are Adagio Graphics, SHI and Standard Register. Adagio Graphics designs…
Quality Digest
The president and executive coach of the Juran Institute, Joe DeFeo, recently received the 2006 North East Quality Council Special Recognition Award. The award is presented to professionals from the Northeast who have made significant contributions to the quality and business communities…
Quality Digest
Heartbeat Software Inc. has named Six Sigma Black Belt Irena Petsche its new vice president for professional services. Heartbeat Software is a provider of software for the life sciences industry. Petsche has 20 years’ experience in the software industry and was most recently director of…
Quality Digest
John Wilkerson, a Six Sigma Black Belt, was recently certified as the first international lead management consultant in the United States. Wilkerson is executive director of Bellwether Services, a lean Six Sigma consultancy and training organization. Published in 2003, the international…
Steven Ouellette
In this installment of my arbitrary and capricious list of the Top Ten Stupid Six Sigma Tricks (SSST), let’s talk about an error that is perhaps less frequently made now than it has been, but is still common. I call this error SSST No.6, constraining your improvement activities to…
Quality Digest
The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers and the Automotive Industry Action Group will meet in Shanghai April 23 and 24 for the 2007 China-US Automotive Supply Chain Summit, produced by the Shanghai International Auto Parts Sourcing Center.The theme, “Cooperation, Exchange and…
Quality Digest
H.H. Sheikh Mohammed honors Award for Arab Management 2006 winners The 2006 winners of the Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Award for Arab Management were recently announced at the 4th Arab Strategy Forum in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.Recognized…
Douglas C. Fair
If you read my previous two columns, you’re well educated on the top 10 mistakes that manufacturers make when implementing statistical process control (SPC). Several of these mistakes are indicative of what I call the “check-box mentality.” This mentality is typically the result of an…
Quality Digest
Comerica Bank recently granted National Quality Excellence Awards to SHI, Standard Register and Adagio Graphics. The award recognizes suppliers nominated by Comerica employees for their outstanding contribution to the company’s core values and vision. “The contributions of our three winners are…
Quality Digest
TrackSpeed, a supply chain technology and tracking company, recently launched surplustrack.com, an innovative remarketing solution that allows companies all over the world to sell, trade or transfer their surplus inventory. SurplusTrack.com uses the best practices of auction, remarketing and…
Quality Digest
Dubai Industrial City, a member of Tatweer, recently developed an integrated management system for all manufacturers operating within Dubai City. Based on international quality, health, safety and environment (QHSE) management standards and applicable manufacturing best practices, Dubai…
