It is widely known among quality and process improvement practitioners that the lack of a clearly defined scope or charter is perhaps the leading cause for projects not getting started or completed on time and within budget. What are other causes?

In “The Power of Observation—Part 1,” we learned that a good portion of problem solving should be devoted to a thorough understanding of what’s going on before any corrective action steps are

A $1 billion annual budget may sound ample, but a few years ago, the costs of services ranging from law enforcement to cleaning county buildings had squeezed the government of Erie County, New York, to its limit.

The emergence of green technology and increased environmental awareness has prompted a paradigm shift in the way companies think about the design of their products.

When I first got into quality, I really hated verifying the effectiveness of actions taken to correct a problem. After all, I was young and inexperienced. All of the people whose actions I was verifying were older, wiser, and more experienced than I was.

Specific techniques for data collection, fundamental to accurate analysis, are sometimes overlooked in the need to see outcomes or trends in data. The lowly check sheet represents a critical tool in effective data collection if it is used correctly.

With several generations of statistical process control (SPC) technology under our belts, it may be time to rethink how we apply SPC in the 21st century.  Basic techniques have been practiced since the 1930s.  Some companies will soon be able to say, “we’ve been pra

 Don’t miss the author’s follow-up to this article, “Going Low Profile in Afghanistan.”
--Editor