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By Scott Paton

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.

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By Mary F. McDonald

 

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

by Mike Jovanis

 

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By Lisa Renda

"You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.” The sage who authored this axiom must have had call centers in mind.

Clearly, maintaining quality is critical in every aspect of a company’s operation, but in few areas is it more important than in the call center. The reason is simple: It is often the initial customer “touch point”--that is, one of the first areas of a business with which a customer makes contact. Accordingly, the call center carries the burden of providing a company’s first impression. Whether that impression is positive or negative can help advance the relationship with the customer or prospect--or end it before it ever really begins. Consequently, managing quality in the call center has to be considered a top priority.

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By Quality Digest

 

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When it comes to quality software solutions, it often seems as though there’s something for everyone. Standards compliance, process simulation, and flowcharting
are just some of the solutions that exist for the intrepid explorer of higher quality. Software isn’t just being used in the boardroom, either. Increasingly, computerized systems are finding their way down to the shop floor, where real-time software programs can help ensure that processes remain controlled.

This section contains the ISO Standards Software buyers guide and the Flowcharting/Process Simulation buyers guide. These guides offer a plethora of solutions for your organization. Because there is such a wide variety of statistical process control software, we’ve given that subject its own section. Check behind the SPC Software tab for more information on providers of these solutions.

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By S. Bala

Delivering systemic change to a large institution requires more than sound organizational reengineering or optimizing the operating process. Change must be identified, energized, and directed. Potentially sympathetic but undecided hearts and minds must be won, and opposition, whether open or covert, must be understood, met, and overcome. Ultimately, most stakeholders must see change as not just possible, but preferable to the status quo. To paraphrase a slogan from President Obama’s campaign, large coalitions must be given change they can believe in. In that respect, regardless of what you think of his governing agenda—and thoughtful detractors are legion—it’s hard to argue with Obama’s success in campaigning for change he believes in.

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By Eugene M. Barker

Representing the first international effort to formulate a quality management system standard for the aerospace industry, the two-year-old AS9100 is beginning to show its long-term value. The standard supplements ISO 9001 by addressing the additional expectations of the aerospace industry. Already, reports along this complicated manufacturing chain attest to–among other benefits–AS9100's contribution to more consistent verification methods and fewer verification audits.

 Initially released in October 1999 by the Society of Automotive Engineers in the Americas and the European Association of Aerospace Industries in Europe, and shortly thereafter by standards organizations in Japan and Asia, AS9100 was a cooperative effort of the International Aerospace Quality Group. As such, it combines and harmonizes requirements outlined in the SAE's AS9000 and Europe's prEN9000-1 standards. Recently, AS9100 was revised to align with ISO 9001:2000.

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By Thomas Harpointer

Whether you’re a retailer or a supplier to retailers or other businesses, this article is for you. This is the time of year when retailers look at making their web sites more customer-friendly, building traffic and getting them tweaked and tuned for the Christmas season. But the same rules apply to business-to-business operations. We all want our web sites to help us make money, and the methods that work for online retailers will work for nonretailers as well. Consider that according to comScore, $29.2 billion was spent online during the 2007 holiday season, marking a 19-percent gain vs. the same period the year prior. According to a recent National Retail Federation survey, more than 40 percent of shoppers say that they will start the 2008 holiday shopping before Halloween.

Retailers are already deeply involved in the 2008 holiday shopping season. The fourth quarter is vital to a retailer’s overall yearly success, with anywhere from 30 to 40 percent of sales coming during this time frame. Considering that business-to- business sites look for steady income all year long and not just during the holiday season, the following tips are even more relevant.

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By Quality Digest

 

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Of all the quality control methodologies over the years, one practice that has endured is statistical process control. Its staying power has much to do with the fact that SPC is based on the permanence of mathematics. SPC is one of the most logical and practical ways to monitor, control, and improve your processes.

There’s only one directory in this section, but it’s an important one—the SPC Software buyers guide. In this guide, you’ll find a list of companies that provide SPC software to help with data gathering, statistical analysis, problem-solving, design of experiments, real-time charting, root cause analysis, Pareto charts, hypothesis testing, and more. Each company’s offerings differ in functions, ease-of-use, format and add-on applications, so it’s best to contact them directly for more information and demonstrations.

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By Jeffrey T. Luftig and Steven Ouellette

Enron. Worldcom. Tyco. Cendant. Bernie Madoff, once chairman of the NASDAQ, is now cooling his heels in jail. The ex-CEO of Comverse is arrested in Namibia, the CEO at United Healthcare is forced to step down, and Patricia Dunn of Hewlett Packard is charged in an ethics scandal. And, of course, AIG has no problem doling out millions in bonuses to the very people who drove the company and the country into a financial crisis. It seems that no matter where we look today, the erosion of ethics and basic moral principles of right and wrong have taken us to the point where trust in our institutions and the very systems that make our society work are in imminent danger of oblivion. Perhaps at no time during the last two or three decades has business ethics, or the lack thereof, been of such paramount importance to the well-being of our business entities and country.

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By David A. Kenyon

In today’s business environment, any organization that wishes to exceed customer expectations and stay competitive needs a long-range strategic plan. This plan must be forward-looking, visionary, and achievable, while at the same time striving toward continuous improvement of the organization’s key business processes. The organization must, in effect, keep both hands on the wheel to move forward successfully. The hoshin strategic planning process in use at Hewlett-Packard Co. has been highly successful in meeting these requirements.

The hoshin process is, first of all, a systematic planning methodology for defining long-range, key, entity objectives. These are breakthrough objectives that typically extend two to five years with little change. Second, the hoshin process does not lose sight of the day-to-day business fundamental measures required to run the business successfully. This two-pronged approach provides an extended period of time for the organization to focus its breakthrough effort while continuously improving key business processes day to day.