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Steve Moore
The following words of an anonymous poet as he (or she) immortalized the lessons from Deming’s funnel experiment.
“Tamper, tamper is the game, try to make all the same. Squeak and tweak it every day, off we go to the Milky Way.”
—Anonymous
I offer a corollary that may help…
R. Eric Reidenbach Ph.D.
“Our corporate mission is to deliver the ‘Best Value in Energy and Related Services,’” according to a large Midwestern electric and gas utility company. This is a mission statement, which after a minor modification (just change the industry), could be posted on any boardroom wall and inserted into…
Georgia Institute of Technology
The cross-functional team at Piedmont Newnan was made up of employees that deal with the process daily. For this process improvement project, they focused on case carts, which are used for pulling together all supplies needed for surgical procedures.
Pam Murphy, a…
H. James Harrington
With the onset of Six Sigma methodology, many organizations have spent large sums of money to make all of their products and processes as close to six sigma as they can. I agree that the higher the level of sigma value, the better the quality of the output is if it’s not screened. But is that the…
Robert Parsons
The AS9100C standard (also referred to as AS9100:2009 and AS9100 Rev C) has been published since January 2009. You are not alone if you are confused about the delay in being audited to this standard. Like you, most companies seeking registration to AS9100 are in the process of trying to figure out…
Donald J. Wheeler
In the 1940s the War Production Board trained approximately 50,000 individuals in how to use process behavior charts (also known as control charts). At that time the computations were done by hand, and the emphasis was on making things as easy as possible for those doing these computations. As a…
James Wells
How many times has this happened to you? You’re leading a Six Sigma project on a transactional process of some kind, something not directly tied to manufacturing or measurement of product quality. You get to the measure phase of your Six Sigma project and struggle to figure out how to satisfy the…
Knowledge at Wharton
Toyota’s legendary lean processes didn’t come out of nowhere. They were forged by the fire of urgency in post-World War II Japan when resources were scarce. Toyota innovated—and continued to innovate. Today, the Toyota Production System is the most respected manufacturing and inventory control…
Paul Scicchitano
Some experts could barely hide their disappointment when the total number of ISO 9001 certificates recently failed to break the long-awaited million-certificate mark—as if it isn’t enough to have the world’s most widely used voluntary quality standard of all time.
With 982,832 third-party…
R. Eric Reidenbach Ph.D.
One of my clients, a wireless business-to-business (B2B) telecom company, was experiencing a significant problem in their call center. They were absolutely inundated with calls—most of them problems. They were spending a significant amount of money trying to manage the call center—adding new call…
National Standards Authority of Ireland NSAI
(NSAI: Nashua, New Hampshire) — Even though no firm action was taken during the 2009 Climate Conference in Copenhagen, the U.S. administration has still pledged that the country will tighten carbon emission regulations. The most plausible possibility is what is referred to as a “cap and trade”…
Knowledge at Wharton
In 2008, the University of North Carolina (UNC) Health Care System faced a challenge: Length of stay per patient at this major nonprofit health system and academic medical center was longer than it needed to be. If administrators could figure out how to cut the length of stay by an average of just…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
On a summer weekend in 1977, my friend Tony and I made plans to go water-skiing. When he picked me up there were two people in the car that I did not know. He introduced his new girlfriend, Sue, and her brother, Bubba.
Bubba was the quintessential redneck. Within minutes of getting on the boat…
Steven Ouellette
In the past couple of articles, we have been having fun together testing whether a measurement device is usable for the crazy purpose of determining if we are actually making product in or out of specification. Last month, we performed a measurement systems analysis (MSA) “potential study” using a…
Barbara A. Cleary
What is known as “point mentality” is a knee-jerk response to what appears to be a problem. We may learn this when we take our child’s temperature and find that it’s high; we are inclined to do something right away—give ibuprofen, orange juice, and bed rest—rather than waiting to see if this is a…
Miriam Boudreaux
When a quality management system (QMS) is implemented, results are evident immediately: reduction in warranty cost, reduction in rework, reduction in scrap, higher profit margins, etc. Would you agree that ISO 9001 and other quality initiatives such as lean, Six Sigma, and 5S can significantly…
Jennifer Simcox
One of the key additions to the R5 version of the telecommunications quality management system standard, TL 9000, is the addition of a risk management requirement. While the requirement is only a single sentence, it is followed by a bulleted note that adds guidance as to the intent. Managing risks…
Jon Miller
Editor's note: At the time this interview was published by Gemba Research LLC, Toyota hadn't announced a fix to the sticky accelerator issue that caused the company to recall approximately 2.3 million select vehicles. On Feb. 1, the company announced that its engineers have developed a solution…
Denise Robitaille
The new revision to ISO 9004 came off the press in the last quarter of 2009. It is significantly different from its predecessor. ISO 9004:2009 embodies the quality management principle relating to continual improvement. The technical experts made bold strides in their quest to address market…
Stephen J. Marshall
Printed circuite board (PCB) manufacturing is moving rapidly up the technology ladder. Keeping internal processes current (and compliant) with new requirements, without disrupting existing customer demands, presents ongoing risks. To minimize potential failures, it is necessary to identify and…
Donald J. Wheeler
In my column of Jan. 7, “The Right and Wrong Ways of Computing Limits,” I looked at the problems in computing limits for average charts. This column will consider the right and wrong ways of computing limits for charts for individual values. As before, a data set will be given that you can use to…
Tom Pyzdek
While we work to improve quality and efficiency, our leaders manage our organizations into oblivion. Literally. Something is terribly wrong. Leaders of major corporations in virtually all industries do things that cause them to, either accidentally or deliberately, destroy billions of dollars in…
Steve Moore
The purpose of this article is to give you an appreciation of the Quincunx as an educational tool for teaching some of the theory behind the tools and concepts of so-called modern quality management. The Quincunx is often seen in the possession of organizations practicing in-house education of…
Miriam Boudreaux
The first thing you need to do when you are evaluating a potential supplier based on their ISO 9001 certificate is request that they provide you with a copy of the certificate itself. If the company is indeed certified, they shouldn't have a problem providing you with a copy of their certificate. …
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
In the early 1970s I was a young teenager who was completely caught up in the Zeitgeist. I admired the long-haired rebels and radicals who were engaged in protesting the establishment and developing the counter-culture. I didn’t really know what any of that meant, but to me it was all about…