Spirit Airlines recently flew into a big public relations disaster. Sticking to a no-refunds policy, the airline refused to refund the airfare of a passenger who had to cancel his trip after finding out he has terminal cancer.

Any company that truly lives its quality management system will tell you that you must innovate to get ahead.

The ISO 14001 environmental management systems (EMS) standard and the new ISO 50001 energy management systems (EnMS) standard are complementary, synergistic, and mutually supporting systems for improving stakeholder value.

Last night on the Italian National Geographic channel, I watched a reconstruction of the November 2011 American Airlines flight No. 587, in which 265 people lost their lives.

Yogi Berra once said, “If people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them?” I have found the same is true of statistical process control (SPC).

Having been involved in quality and process control for quite a few years now, I tend to read any article regarding a quality issue or new ideas for quality or process improvement.

I’m wondering when we humans started assuming that commerce must be perfect? After all, the adage “let the buyer beware” has been in circulation since folks ran around saying it in Latin. A kind of passivity seems to have crept into transactions.

Quality management, if we’ve learned anything, is a central factor in any manufacturing organization. What’s most compelling is the evolution during the past decade of our perception of quality management.

“E
veryone, take your order slips and move the shipment to the left,” says Nelson Repenning, a professor of systems dynamics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. “Factories, brew beer.”

It stands to reason that pharmaceutical companies in compliance trouble also have problems with their deviation management and corrective and preventive action (CAPA) systems.