Articles Tagged with ''American Society for Quality (ASQ)''

Whether your business has a 50-year history or just opened last year, you need to make sure you have a system of sustained success. ISO Q9004: Quality Management Systems–Managing for the Sustained Success of an Organization “provides guidance to management for achieving sustained success of any organization in a complex, demanding, and ever-changing environment.” 

Despite best efforts, auditors find things. It is their job. Why wait until audit day to uncover problems? In the words of Walt Disney, “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” 

In 2011, Sipho Tjabadi, general manager, Eskom Quality Management, South Africa, spoke at the ASQ Audit Division Conference. To punctuate his keynote address’s points, Tjabadi brought a video titled “The Cost of Quality.”

Today it is a vacant plot. Back in the early 1990s, a stamping plant was there, with three main buildings supplying North American automotive final assembly operations. I was an inspector working the second shift, assigned to a stamping line producing outer panels for an automotive door. 

Cost of quality. Three small words; one big phrase. It appears like a straightforward expression, but there is enough misinformation floating around that quality professionals are compelled to take to their blogs and write about what cost of quality is and—just as importantly—what it is not. 

It is October, the first full month of autumn. You notice the changing colors, dropping temperatures, and other signs of winter. October is a time of pretty yards and dreary skies. 

During a recent ASQ Inspection Division meeting, I had the opportunity to sit down over lunch with some of the very best minds in the quality field.