Founded in 1987, Quality Inspection Services Inc. (QISI, Buffalo, NY) is a nondestructive testing firm with 17 locations in the United States. Working with both large and small companies, QISI specializes in nondestructive testing, quality assurance, quality control and civil testing.
Should an organization focus on continual improvement or aim for the home run? As a follower of Dr. Joseph M. Juran, I see the value and power of his philosophies. Juran displayed his concept of continuous improvement gained through hundreds of projects with his spiral of progress in quality.
The manufacturing crisis began in the mid-80s with international competition in the automotive industry. Instead of being recognized as a technical supremacy, experts attributed the competition to cost. In reality, it was the competitor’s superior performance, rather than cost, that challenged the manufacturing capabilities of the 1950s and 1960s.
With so many gage buyers focusing on costs alone rather than what they are actually getting for their dollars, it follows that suppliers will do the same. It often becomes a situation where a gage buyer pretends to want calibration while the supplier pretends to deliver it.
As I write this column, the past week has included two bits of troubling news regarding employment. National unemployment statistics reached 9.7% for August-the highest in 26 years-according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. On the heels of the BLS report, Manpower Inc. released the results of its survey on hiring. Here it reports that Europe and Asia will see increased hiring rates vs. the United States, which will lag behind those regions until at least the first quarter of 2010.
The local news ran a story celebrating Joe Taylor. Taylor, the quality control manager at Peer Bearing in Waukegan, IL, has not called in sick in his 50 years on the job even though he has a two-hour commute each way to work.
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