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Quality Digest
The National Committee for Quality Assurance will soon release its annual report on health care quality. This year’s report finds that while health plans participating in NCQA’s voluntary national accreditation program improved their scores substantially, the broader health care system is still…
Quality Digest
The American Society of Safety Engineers recently announced the availability of a new standard that provides guidelines for protecting workers from potentially dangerous equipment and energy. “Control of Hazardous Energy—Lockout/Tagout and Alternative Methods,” produced by the Z244 Accredited…
Quality Digest
A new book published by Productivity Press focuses on helping organizations understand and implement Baldrige criteria. Get It, Set It, Move It, Prove It—60 Ways to Get Real Results in Your Organization, by Mark Graham Brown, provides results-based methods for implementing the Baldrige criteria…
Quality Digest
WCBF recently launched the Six Sigma Leading Minds Club, an exclusive Six Sigma and process improvement community intended to facilitate the exchange of information on best practices, new ideas and even corporate management failures. Membership is based on individual achievement through a strict…
Quality Digest
Research and Markets recently announced the addition of a comprehensive and easy-to-use set of documents, The Six Sigma Toolbox, aimed at improving the use and adaptation of quality systems. The set covers principles that can be applied to all types of businesses and provides specific plans for…
Quality Digest
Michigan businesses will discover the key to success at the Henry Ford Community College event “Surviving to Thriving,” on Sept. 16. Specialists from local agencies will be there to exchange ideas and offer resources that can vault local business to the next level of success. The event will focus…
Quality Digest
Six Sigma is becoming an increasingly essential practice in marketing and sales because of the revenue growth and savings that organizations experience when they apply the methodology to those functions. It was with this thought in mind that the International Quality & Productivity Center…
The maintenance problem Too many times, in lean manufacturing and other lean environments, 10- to 40-year-old equipment is re-deployed, moved and organized into lean cells without adequate concern or attention to maintenance reliability. In a lean cell, unscheduled equipment downtime usually costs…
Barbara A. Cleary
Donald Trump’s dramatic, “You’re fired!” on the reality show “The Apprentice” is just entertainment to most people. To teams of summer interns at PQ Systems Inc. in Dayton, Ohio, however, it meant a challenge for the ensuing work week. The young interns, faced with the tedious task of contacting…
Quality Digest
2003 was a year of transition for ISO 9001 and a year of significant growth for ISO 14001, reports ISO in its annual study. Study results about ISO 9001 included: Up to the end of 2003, at least 500,125 registrations had been issued in 149 countries and economies. 2003 total registrations…
Quality Digest
The latest American Customer Satisfaction Index held steady for the second quarter of 2004, remaining at its highest level in 10 years. The index stands at 74.4, unchanged from last quarter. Economists report that the sunny news indicates high customer satisfaction, which generally contributes to…
Quality Digest
Improved product design would make manufacturing products less expensive than outsourcing to countries like China, according to a recent benchmarking study. The authors suggest that U.S. companies should do a better job of integrating cost analysis into product design. With rigorous cost analysis…
Quality Digest
School administrators looking for ways to meet tough federal requirements have found a new ally in a rather unlikely place—the quality profession. The need for continual improvement is familiar to quality professionals, but it’s relatively new to the education community. The No Child Left Behind…
Quality Digest
The American National Standards Institute recently awarded 2004 Leadership and Service Awards to six executives. The winners were recognized for their significant contributions to national and international standardization activities and commitment to the standards community. The winners are:…
Quality Digest
Sypris Test & Measurement will relocate its San Francisco Bay Area calibration lab, the company announced recently. The company moved from San Jose to Sunnyvale, California. Moving the lab places the company closer to existing customers in military, aerospace, communications, semiconductor and…
Denise Robitaille
Perhaps the single most pervasive reason top management resists the implementation of a quality management system relates to our failure, as quality professionals, to demonstrate the return on investment. We do a less-than-stellar job of demonstrating to executives the financial value implicit in…
Quality Digest
The recent acquisition of Quality Certification Bureau Inc. by QMI made QMI the largest registrar in North America, according to the registrar. The buy-out includes QCB Inc., QBC Corp., and QCB Organic, companies that are collectively based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. QMI reports it now has more…
Quality Digest
A joint committee of the American National Standards Institute and the American Industrial Hygiene Association recently released a draft Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems (OHSMS) standard for public review. The deadline to submit comments on the proposal is Oct. 15. ANSI established…
Quality Digest
Social Accountability International will hold its sixth annual conference in New York City on October 18. The conference, “Corporate Social Responsibility and Workplace Standards: Responsible Strategies for Global Sourcing,” will focus on the latest developments where supply chain management and…
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How did your quality system get so complex and redundant? Many companies established their quality systems after having purchased a software program with a “canned” quality manual and procedures. Software companies try to subliminally sell you the concept “more is better.” Purchasing companies…
Quality Digest
Lockheed Martin Corp. announced it will buy a coordinate measuring machine (CMM) and laser scanner from Leica Geosystems Inc. for use in its Forth Worth, Texas, headquarters. Under the terms of the contract, Leica’s metrology division will deliver an LR200 laser scanner (which combines radar,…
Quality Digest
The revised ISO 14001 standard is scheduled to be published by the end of the year, meaning significant changes to environmental management professionals. According to the International Organization for Standardization, the changes to the standard aim to clarify it and make it more user-friendly.…
Quality Digest
A partnership between Arc Second Inc. and Romer CimCore could signal the acceptance of indoor GPS as the measurement technology of the future. Several major metrology companies, including Romer CimCore, Metrologic Inc. and New River Kinematics, showcased Arc Second’s GPS technology at the 2004…
Quality Digest
FARO Technologies Inc. recently released an enhanced generation of its popular laser trackers. Highlights of the new trackers include ADM Smart Auto-Adjust, which improves accuracy by automatically adapting to conditions affecting measurement drift; Fast Laser Lock, which re-locks the laser in…
Quality Digest
Delcam Inc. is offering a free CAD viewer that will allow users to view CAD models in all the major formats, including CATIA versions 4 and 5, Pro/Engineer 2001 and Wildfire, SDRC, Unigraphics, SolidWorks and Solid Edge, as well as other industry standards. “Even though modern CAD software can…
