Bill Kalmar
You see and hear them everyday--signs and commercials heralding “Customer service is No.1,” “We treat you like family,” or “The customer is always right.” The other day I came across a particularly...
Craig Cochran
Customer focus doesn’t evolve on its own. It’s carefully cultivated over time through a variety of processes. At the forefront of this effort is leadership. The organization’s...
Russell T. Westcott
Early on you recognized the economic effect of shipping defective products to customers and/or providing inferior services. You countered this deficiency with elaborate inspection proceduresIn more...
"Es ris!" (“It’s snapped!”) This apocalyptic line from Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) referred to the thread of fate or destiny...
Thomas R. Cutler
Many organizations are turning to outside operations-expense management companies due to the recognition of billing scrutiny as a key quality control and quality assurance issue. “When...
Cheryl Ajluni
In today’s fast-paced electronics industry, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) design, manufacture and service a broad range of products that include fuel cells, pacemakers and wireless...
Thomas R. Cutler
In repetitive manufacturing, it’s possible to apply statistical process control (SPC) techniques to purchased components and manufacturing quality as well as scrap and yield. Statistical...
Paul McNamara
Brutally competitive markets are driving companies to design, build and improve their products faster and at lower costs. Faced with this economic climate, companies are understandably intent on...
Joseph A. DeFeo
Once the transformations described in the first of this two-part series have occurred, all organizations should follow a roadmap to achieve and sustain major, organizationwide and beneficial change...
Joseph A. DeFeo
The challenges leaders face now are greater, increasingly complex and more difficult than ever before. Their response will decide the success or failure of their organizations in the future. The...
Craig Cochran
Training is profoundly strategic. It’s a process aimed at improving the single most important resource in the organization: people. Nothing affects customer loyalty more than the behaviors and...
Robert F. Hart, Ph.D., and Marilyn K. Hart, Ph.D.
A steel mill had a quality problem in the manufacture of cold-rolled steel for use in applications such as automobile hoods. Several hot-rolled coils were welded end-to-end to form a long continuous...
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....
Shellye Archambeau
"Quality is never an accident, it is always the result of an intelligent effort"—John Ruskin (1819-1900)
A manufacturing company had annual sales of $250 million. Its quality department calculated...
Robert Nix
My first experience with the word “culture” comes from my high school science class. We grew a living organism on a nutrient base, which the teacher called a culture. The girls in...
Philip Crosby Associates
Ask employees at any financial institution to pick two words to describe a typical core system conversion, and "major headache" is likely the nicest description you’ll hear. Ask...
Craig Cochran
Editor’s story update 6/15/2017: This article was originally published on our site in 2004. Although it references ISO 9001:2000 rather than the current version of the quality management standard,...
