All Features
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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…
Praveen Gupta
Six Sigma has been well applied in manufacturing through improving processes that use the DMAIC methodology. Some larger corporations have integrated Six Sigma so well into the corporate culture that it can be considered the DNA of the company. However, even in such companies, the human resources…
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 the total cost of repair, rework, scrap, service calls, warranty claims and write-offs from obsolete…
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 class described it using the medical term, “Eeewwwww!” Years later, in the business world, I find top…
Chuck Doyle
Many organizations need answers to some key questions about lean and quality management: Is there a difference between quality and value? Should we have two teams, one for continuous improvement and one for lean? What roles would each have? What are the differences? The source for this…
Jeffrey S. Goss
Six Sigma, the statistical approach focused on increasing profitability by improving efficiency, has been part of the engineering world since the 1980s. Now, new innovative online and on-campus programs at Arizona State University are shaking up the way people all over the globe are…
Michael Stanleigh
ISO 10006:2003, guidelines for quality management projects, was released in the fall of 2003. This standard is creating the next wave in our understanding of project managing processes. But how does ISO 10006 compare to the Project Management Institute’s Project Management Body of…
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 that question at $1 billion South Carolina Federal Credit Union, North Charleston, South Carolina, and prepare to hand…
Denise Robitaille
There’s a marauding infestation of adverbs and adjectives that infiltrate the text of quality documents and operating procedures, wreaking havoc wherever they are found. The leader of this menacing bunch is called “All.” Among his compatriots you’ll find “Never,” “Always,” “Every” and “None.”
When…
Mike Micklewright
I’m a huge proponent of both Six Sigma and lean manufacturing. I’ve been teaching the tools used in Six Sigma for more than 15 years, and I make a portion of my living from consulting and training in these areas.
However, Six Sigma and lean manufacturing are business improvement processes that…
Praveen Gupta
Launching a Six Sigma initiative starts with a lot of enthusiasm from the “champion” who’s found courage and conviction to persuade management to commit to it. With enough resources, interest, excitement and the help of some consultants, the Six Sigma initiative gets off the ground. After initial…
Derrell S. James
Six Sigma. Lean. What do these initiatives have to do with the supply chain? The short answer is everything. The origins of these approaches are based, in Six Sigma’s case, on continuous improvements in quality and variation control, and in lean’s case, on production velocity and…
Praveen Gupta
Six Sigma is an expensive initiative with a huge potential for return on investment. However, there are risks associated with it. False starts, lack of commitment or lack of planning may lead to unsatisfactory results. Considering the complexity of the Six Sigma process, one must minimize the risks…
Craig Cochran
Lean means doing the most with what you have. It’s efficiency and intelligence. In the modern economy, lean is a fact of life. Management systems must absolutely be lean, or they will be abandoned as impractical dinosaurs. In the October 2003 issue of Quality Digest, we began exploring…
Denise Robitaille
We all love exceptions. They afford us unfettered permission to break the rules. They are the vehicles we use to get around “things”—whatever those things happen to be.
For those of us who attended elementary school in the sixties, the tradition of exceptions reaches deep down to our grammatical…
Arthur G. Davis
Falling revenues and changing customer requirements have forced many companies to look for ways to reduce the workload on current staff while developing long-term solutions. When companies are forced to downsize, the increased workload on remaining employees frequently results in stress…
Using Six Sigma initiatives to focus on improving the performance of business and manufacturing processes isn’t a new concept. But a growing number of manufacturers seeking to stay competitive and improve profitability are, instead, turning to Six Sigma to provide stronger value to…
Ronald J. Bowen
After undergoing an often costly and usually painful process to achieve ISO 9001:2000 registration, organizations invariably ask, "What do we do now to ensure that we maintain our registration and gain maximum benefit?" Under ISO 9001:1994, the old answer was fairly straightforward: Continue doing…
Denise Robitaille
Do not ever, ever, do anything just to please an auditor. This is quickly becoming one of my new favorite mantras. For many individuals, this statement would seem to be self-evident, and yet there are instances when an organization has felt compelled to change a process or implement a new practice…
Craig Cochran
Supplier management is one of the most troublesome disciplines within a management system. There’s nothing inherently difficult about it, though. Companies make it difficult by instilling the process with lots of unwieldy bureaucracy. The trick is to strip the process down to its essential elements…
Dave Wojczynski
The first article in this series, "What the Doctor Didn’t Order But Should Have," established a case for business improvement in the outpatient health care sector. More important, it provided real-life examples of how a Six Sigma framework can help outpatient facilities overcome…
Denise Robitaille
When is faster not better? In our warp-speed, 21st-century lives, getting the task completed on time--or ahead of time or before the competition--has become a goal in itself. We want this project done so we can move on to the next big thing. We tick things off our to-do list and gauge each day’s…
Greg Brue
From its inception, Six Sigma was considered revolutionary. The six original pioneers who implemented the methodology at Allied Signal--the only true Senior Master Black Belts--vowed that the system would unearth inefficiencies in business operations that lead to outrageous levels of…
Dave Wojczynski
The following article, the first of a two-part series, outlines the growing need for Six Sigma initiatives in the outpatient health care market. In part one, we’ll compare a series of health care-specific businesses with parallel enterprises from other industries in order to categorize…
Under QS-9000, suppliers relied on the Supplier Quality Requirements Task Force for guidance and direction in dealing with questions related to the standard’s requirements. With the global application of ISO/TS 16949:2002, a globalized group was needed to offer the same direction that was given…