All Features
Donald J. Wheeler
Parts per million (ppm) is part of the language of Six Sigma. It pervades the sales pitch and is used in all sorts of computations as a measure of quality. Yet what are the rules of arithmetic and statistics that govern the computation and usage of parts per million? To discover the answers read…
Emily Ysaguirre
Corrective action is an essential tool for any business. It helps to identify adverse events and pinpoint any systemic issues that must be resolved. However, a corrective action system can’t work effectively by itself.
Leading quality and compliance management systems include a corrective action…
Jesse Lyn Stoner
Once upon a time, in a land called “Industrial Age,” the leaders of organizations resided at the top of a hierarchy, managers were in the middle, and workers were supervised.
It was the job of leaders to do the important thinking and come up with bright ideas to move the company forward, and the…
Mary McAtee
Among the fallout from the final draft of the ISO 9001:2015 revision is a contextual change in the concept of “continual improvement.” The standard’s intent that organizations preemptively address likely issues before they become problems hasn’t changed; if anything, there’s an explicit toughening…
Tim Lozier
With the recent release of the movie The Avengers: Age of Ultron, now is the perfect time to contemplate whether Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, needs a quality management system (QMS) to help him identify and prevent the disasters that seem to plague him.
Tony Stark is a billionaire genius who…
Dave Cranmer
“It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” —Ursula K. LeGuin
This is the story of how and why the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) was created. It’s the first in a series of tributes celebrating the upcoming 25th anniversary of a program…
Matt Treglia
We learned in science class that we should use the scientific method to evaluate hypotheses. We should study the problem, formulate a hypothesis, run a controlled experiment, analyze the resulting data, and then make an objective decision. We have also heard innumerable times that we should make “…
Bud Weightman
The fifth edition of ISO 9001, which is slated for publication in late 2015, has some good ideas regarding improvement and harmonization with other management system standards such as ISO 14001. However, ISO/Draft International Standard (DIS) 9001:2015 has taken away prescriptive language for a…
Annette Franz
You’ve no doubt heard (or can recall) Hans Christian Andersen’s story, “The Ugly Duckling.” If not, here’s a quick refresher: It’s about a baby swan who suffers abuse from his barnyard companions because of how he looks—he’s assumed to be a baby duckling, and an “ugly” one at that—until one day,…
Mark Rosenthal
Once a project is completed, a common question is, “How do we deploy this improvement to other areas in the company?” A fair number of formal improvement structures include the final step of “standardize,” implying that the improvement is laterally copied or deployed into other, similar situations…
Russell Desilets
Companies purchase scales because the value of goods entering or exiting a facility is based on their weight. Without assured scale accuracy, a company can lose thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars annually.
Depending on the requirements and type of weighing device, annual…
Kelly Graves
In my last article, I presented the psychological steps of change and how to overcome the natural human resistance to it. In this installment, I’ll present an example of how to transfer those concepts into plans, the plans into actions, and the actions into continuous behaviors.
This process…
John Keyser
Strong leadership and kindness are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they fit together effectively. The most successful leaders treat their team members with kindness. They realize that kindness is motivating. As Bob Kerrey has said, “Unexpected kindness is the most powerful, least costly, and most…
Patrick Stone
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a “Plain Jane” version of its Pharmaceuticals FY 2015 Action Plan. In this article, however, let’s look at some interesting wrinkles not necessarily contained in the document.
This “Plain Jane” action plan, taken straight from the document, reads as…
Matthew E. May
I am nothing if not a consumerist. Meaning, I am constantly impressing upon the companies with which I work the importance of a deep and empathic understanding of customers past, present, and future. This is especially true if a company is contemplating a strategic shift that entails repositioning…
Nicola Wilson
With quality the driving force behind innovation and operational improvements in the vast majority of organizations, it’s no surprise that every industry sector has embraced it, from manufacturing to the service. For some sectors, however, quality improvements can be the difference between life…
Jack Dunigan
What is the real value of those who work for your company? For that matter, what is your real value?
As employers and/or potential employers, it’s our responsibility to evaluate those who work for us. It isn’t by chance that the term “evaluate” is used here, because evaluate means to form an idea…
Bruno Scibilia
The Cp and Cpk are well-known capability indices commonly used to ensure that a process spread is as small as possible compared to the tolerance interval (Cp), or that it stays well within specifications (Cpk). Yet another type of capability index exists: the Cpm, which is much less known and used…
John Keyser
When I previously wrote about earning trust with co-workers, a friend, a true leader in the public policy field, called to suggest that a closely related and equally important subject is restoring corporate trust.
I immediately went to sit on my front porch and think about his observation. I…
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
Let’s begin with yet another example of a lack of understanding of the Perversity Principle, this one from a recent The Times of India report.
“Authorities in India have reportedly arrested some 300 people and expelled 600 students in connection with a massive cheating scandal in the northeastern…
Mike Figliuolo
Erin joined your team about a year ago. She came in with many other candidates for a job opening, and she impressed you during the interview. She was far and away the best candidate.
She has lived up to the high expectations she set in her interviews. She reduced the time it takes to deliver her…
Christine Schaefer
During the recent leadership plenary of the Baldrige Program’s Quest for Excellence Conference, senior leaders of the 2014 Baldrige Award recipients shared their insights and lessons learned.
Scott McIntyre, the U.S. leader of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) Public Sector Practice, said, “If we’re…
Mark Troppe
Spring has always been my favorite time of year. The flowers are out again in full bloom, it’s time to plant the garden, and baseball season is here again. Go Nationals!
My absolute favorite thing to do is spring cleaning, which provides the perfect opportunity to address all of the chores punted…
Dianna Booher
Leaders who empower their team members get better results. They make faster decisions, have the ability to act, and create dramatically better experiences for customers. Read on to learn how you can empower your teams.
“Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
Years ago, while in a traveling sales job that I hated, I stopped at a gas station and used the restroom. Someone, annoyed by the wet floors, had scrawled above the urinal, “We aim to please. You aim too, please.”
It was a classic bit of latrinalia that I’d seen a dozen times before. Written…
