Cost to research and write one article in Quaity Digest: $500. Cost to read that article in Quality Digest: $0
Cost for QD employees to rent an apartment in Chico, CA. $1,200/month. Please turn off your ad blocker in Quality Digest
Our landlords thank you.
Manufacturers of all kinds depend on the accurate measurement of products and parts to ensure that they conform to the needs of their customers. Whether for size, shape, weight, length, or depth, proper dimensional measurement can mean the difference between a happy customer and a lost contract.
The three guides in this section will help you ensure proper dimensional measurement. The 3-D Measurement buyers guide provides a listing of major companies offering high-tech coordinate measurement machines and other 3-D measurement equipment. Companies listed in the Optical Dimensional Measurement Systems buyers guide and/or the Vision Systems buyers guide amplify the power of sight for product inspection and approval.
On-machine verification (OMV) is a recent innovation that combines existing technologies to solve more complex measurement problems on machine tools. Many machine tools are equipped with probing systems, and using the probe for simple part setting is an established process. Simple macro-based probing cycles allow the user to measure basic features such as faces, corners, and bosses, and these can be combined to create rudimentary inspection reports. These basic solutions are restricted to simple 2-D measurement because 3-D measurement is just not practical. Although skilled operators can sometimes adapt probing macros to measure along compound angles, this becomes too difficult and too time-consuming for complex, curved surfaces.
OMV solves these problems using graphical 3-D software methods to program the measuring sequences. The programming and reporting tools from inspection software are combined with machine tool post-processor expertise to create a measuring solution for machine tools.
One day, early in my quality career, I was approached by my friend Wayne, the manager of our galvanizing plant.
"Tom," he began, "I've really been pushing quality in my area lately, and everyone's involved. We're currently working on a problem with plating thickness. Your reports always show a 3-percent to 7-percent reject rate, and we want to drive that number down to zero."
I, of course, was pleased. The galvanizing area had been the company's perennial problem child. "How can I help?" I asked.
"We've been trying to discover the cause of the low thicknesses, but we're stumped. I want to show copies of the quality reports to the team so they can see what was happening with the process when the low thicknesses were produced."
"No problem," I said, "I'll have them for you this afternoon."
Real-time X-ray inspection systems have been used in quality assurance applications for more than 25 years. In electronics manufacturing, for example, X-ray inspection ensures the registration of drilled holes to internal pads of multilayer printed circuit boards. In electronic assembly applications, X-ray inspection ensures the quality of hidden solder bonds of surface-mounted components such as ball-grid arrays, as seen in figure 1 below.
Now real-time X-ray inspection is becoming an important tool for ensuring the quality of many medical devices. These devices incorporate a diversity of materials, including polymers, rubbers, steel, titanium, ceramics, and glass. Real-time systems employ fluoroscopic imaging devices to display the device’s X-ray image in a video format.
Welcome to Quality Digest’s 2008 State Quality Awards directory. On the following pages you’ll find a state-by-state summary of available awards, contact information and award summaries, including who may apply and deadline dates. We’ve done our best to include only the information that we’ve personally confirmed, but we nevertheless recommend that you contact award administrators directly to verify important dates, requirements and other critical data.
We wish you the best of luck on your journey to quality award recognition.
The challenge to increase productivity with fewer resources has lead to dozens of methodologies and toolkits to help organizations meet their objectives and become more profitable and effective.
One principle consistent with all those methodologies, and that makes enormous practical sense, is to leverage what you already know. This means harnessing the single greatest resource in any organization--the knowledge of its own people.
Incredible as it seems, Six Sigma is now more than 20 years old and still going strong. The methodology saves companies huge sums of money by redefining processes and reducing defects. Long a staple of quality improvement at manufacturing plants, Six Sigma is now penetrating into sectors such as health care, government agencies, service organizations, and many more. Increasingly, lean precepts such as eliminating waste and more efficiently organizing workspaces have become integrated with Six Sigma project. The result, lean Six Sigma, has become prevalent across industry.
This section contains the Six Sigma Services and Software buyers guide. This directory can help you implement, maintain, and improve your organization’s Six Sigma efforts. Embracing the Six Sigma path often leads to stunning improvement in a very short period of time—the companies found in the following pages can help you get there. Those with the acronym “SVC” following their listing offer Six Sigma services; those with a “SW” offer Six Sigma software. Many, you’ll note, offer both.
There is no single more important job or initiative in this company than performance excellence.”
These are the words that Ronald L. Nelson, CEO of Avis Budget Group Inc. (ABG), chose when he addressed an assembly of ABG’s top 70 senior executives, asking them to join him in leading every location, operation, and department down the road to performance excellence.
Nearly one year later, ABG is on track to exceed its financial savings goals by more than $10 million. More important, perform-ance excellence has become the way ABG does business, and has positioned the company to meet business challenges more effectively than ever before.
Background
Avis Budget Group’s operating divisions include the vehicle rental operations of Avis Rent A Car System LLC, Budget Rent A Car System Inc., and Budget Truck Rental LLC. ABG operates these brands in the Americas, the Caribbean, Australia, and New Zealand.
It's hard to imagine a place more magical than Walt Disney World. The central Florida theme park continues to thrill, delight and exceed its guests' expectations more than 25 years after its opening.
Walt Disney World's recent 25th anniversary celebration provided Quality Digest with a sneak peek behind the scenes. A peek that provided the answer to the secret of Disney's success--one that Disney is now willing to share with outsiders through its new Disney Institute.
The secret to Disney's success isn't magic pixie dust; it's much easier to replicate. It's a well-trained, enthusiastic and motivated work force. It's a secret that Walt Disney himself realized years ago. "You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world--but it requires people to make the dream a reality," he said.
Let's take a ride through the inner workings of Walt Disney World to see how the company creates service quality, Disney style. We'll start with how Disney selects, trains and motivates its people, and conclude with how Disney is sharing its secrets with the rest of the business world.
Our process improvement consulting company was contacted by a new design client requesting assistance in improving its quality management system (QMS). The company had used an existing system for several years, but it was still experiencing difficulties in making on-time delivery of designs; it had a higher-than-industry average, and missed customer requested dates in some cases. The designs themselves were sometimes nonconforming, having a higher-than-industry average for errors or missing a promised function. We agreed to work with the designers to identify areas of their QMS that could be strengthened, and to develop and implement a comprehensive quality plan to address these concerns.
Closing the Loop on CAPAs with Quality Management Software
