All Features
ISO
Governments—local or otherwise—are under increasing pressure around the world to provide results that matter to the public, often within severe resource constraints. Now they are taking pointers from the private sector by using ISO 9001 for quality management to provide efficient and reliable…
Paula Oddy
The 2015 version of ISO 9001 is still more than a year away from publication, but ISO/TC 176, the technical committee responsible for the standard, has been hard at work on the revision since 2012. Registrants to the current version, ISO 9001:2008, are wondering about changes to the language and…
Ryan E. Day
Last month I, along with millions of other people around the world, celebrated Easter. For myself, a religious observance, for others a celebration of seasonal renewal. I think for most people, Easter is a time that elicits reflection on what matters most in the world. The state of the global…
David Fenn
When listening to people new to ISO 9001, one of the main stumbling blocks preventing them from starting is the belief that they simply don’t have the time. With so much on their plates, they argue, how could they possibly take on something as fundamental as ISO 9001?
At such times I like to…
NIST
JILA researchers have engineered a short, flexible, reusable probe for the atomic force microscope (AFM) that enables state-of-the-art precision and stability in picoscale force measurements. Shorter, softer, and more agile than standard and recently enhanced AFM probes, the JILA tips will benefit…
Patti Arms
When you consider rising energy costs, the uncertain nature of foreign fuel sources (regardless of the country in which you operate), and the environmental impact associated with many fuels, then any system that helps you wisely manage your energy consumption and improve your energy performance…
Dave K. Banerjea
Story update 4/24/2014: We bumped up the cost of accreditation based on comments that the original article was on the low side. We also added references to ILAC as well as additional accreditation bodies that operate in the United States (ACLASS, NVLAP, L.A.B.)
Getting calibration accreditation is…
Christine Schaefer
On April 6, 2014, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker presented two U.S. organizations with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest honor for organizational innovation and performance excellence.
The 2013 award recipients are: • Pewaukee School District in Pewaukee…
Miriam Boudreaux
In part one of this series I described how many auditors want your quality manual to repeat what is in ISO 9001, API Spec Q1, or API Spec Q2. Since auditors don’t always make the connection between how you wrote the quality manual (in a way that’s useful for you) and the standards in question, your…
Dan Nelson
Why is internal auditing important to your quality management system (QMS)? To ensure that processes conform to ISO 9001 requirements, or to ensure that the company conforms to management’s own defined plans? Although audits can be done for both reasons, the second choice is more important.…
David Muil
Management systems are sometimes misunderstood as nothing more than a heavy administrative burden providing limited business benefit. In fact, many organizations with management systems in place haven’t effectively defined the processes they actually employ at all. Perhaps it’s because they think…
Mike Micklewright
Editor’s note: This article discusses topics covered at greater length in episodes 19–23 of a new streaming video training series, Creating and Sustaining Lean Improvements—Integrating Principles, Culture, and Tools by the author and 360 Performance Circle, a sister company to Quality Digest.…
NIST
During the first six months in their special, new, four-bedroom home in suburban Maryland, the Nisters, a prototypical family of four, earned about $40 by exporting 328 kilowatt hours of electricity into the local grid, while meeting all of their varied energy needs.
Furthermore, these virtual…
MassMEP
MassMEP’s ISO 9001:2008 Collaborative was conceived as a way to make the certification process more accessible to small and medium-sized manufacturers. The project brings four to eight companies together in a collaborative setting to help share costs and ideas.
The program takes members through…
ISO
How can governments increase efficiency, prevent errors, and improve customer service? Answer: ISO 9001.
ISO 9001 is by far the world's most established quality framework, currently being used by more than 1.5 million organizations in 191 countries. Those are some impressive numbers—and among the…
Dan Nelson
Editor's note: Dan Nelson will be a guest on Quality Digest LIVE Friday March 14, 2014, at 11 a.m. Pacific.
Bill Cosby once did a routine about a funny aspect of human nature: How we all seem to have a hard time believing the obvious.
So Cosby pulls some milk out of the fridge. He sniffs it. It’s…
Dan Nelson
On June 23, 2013, Simon Feary, executive director of the Chartered Quality Institute, delivered the welcome speech at the International Register of Certificated Auditors’ (IRCA) 12th annual forum held in Japan. Feary made several bold statements, including, “Something isn’t working when auditors…
David Muil
The Boy Scouts of America have a timeless motto: “Be prepared.” These are words to live by. In the wilderness, if an individual has a pocket knife, a length of string, and some matches, he can deal with most emergencies that may arise. In business, however, a Swiss Army knife is going to do little…
Mike Figliuolo
PowerPoint is the devil’s instrument, and when you use it, you risk becoming a musician in his demonic orchestra. All of us are required to give presentations in some form or fashion at various points in our careers. If you’d like to succeed in those efforts, there are three things you should never…
Rob Fenn
O ne reason why ISO’s management standards are so highly regarded is that in order to claim ongoing certification, organizations must be audited continually to ensure they still meet the requirements of their chosen standard. This independent verification gives clients and other stakeholders the…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
This past November, three winners of the 2013 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality awards were announced, one in education and two in healthcare. Quality Digest Daily is fortunate that one of the winners, Sutter Davis Hospital (SDH) is practically in our back yard. This gave us an opportunity to meet…
Harry Hertz
The results are in for the annual Best Places to Work in the Federal Government. The overall survey results are not surprising based on history, the current environment, and where many organizations—both government and business—have been challenged during recent years in the area of workforce…
Cognex Corp.
The produce industry is moving to implement a systematic, industrywide approach to closely track where fresh produce comes from and where it goes. One of the great challenges in this effort is the automatic recognition of a wide range of different package designs and hand stamps currently used to…
Christine Schaefer
Last month in Missouri, the Governor’s Conference on Baldrige in Education kicked off a large-scale improvement initiative that has the backing of key education groups in the state. With a mission to “facilitate school districts’ deployment of the leadership and management principles that have…
Dan Nelson
Paul Batalden, M.D., professor at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, once said, “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” This idea seems applicable to any system of human design. Phrased slightly differently using ISO 9001 parlance, “Every…
