As Dennis Arter (ASQ Fellow member and 2014 Distinguished Service Medalist) stated in a 2014 interview, “Many organizations make the mistake of lumping policies and procedures together as ‘policiesandprocedures.’” The five years since Arter’s proclamation haven’t changed organizations’ view of the two terms.

I learned a long time ago that quality standards, issues and performance are goals people can rally around, unlike other goals like cost reduction or productivity improvement.

Changeovers in manufacturing can be tricky…and they can cost your company a lot when they don’t go right. Manufacturing Quality Intelligence software can help your shop floor personnel manage the process more smoothly.

Manufacturers focus on reducing their operating costs, but cannot afford buying more productive machinery.

Team is defined in Webster’s New World Dictionary as “joint action by a group of people in which individual interests are subordinated to group unity and efficiency.” When reading this, I am reminded of the comments from a member of one of our early teams about the challenges the team has experienced.

Flexible Concepts Inc. is a large automotive supplier based in Elkhart, Indiana, USA. It set itself the challenge of being able to offer customers guaranteed machining capability, as part of a strategic decision to use innovative engineering to progressively increase the size of its business.

For a robust quality environment to exist and prosper there has to be teamwork. However, there are misunderstandings about the team of teamwork. For many organizations, it means launching and maintaining teams for isolated projects to improve various outputs.

Over the last 10 to 15 years, NDT methods have grown smarter and smarter. New methods have been developed and old methods have been improved. Some of today’s NDT is leaps and bounds ahead of where it used to be. 

For anyone who’s worked in product or service industries, it’s a safe bet that you’ve encountered situations in which problems, once thought to be resolved, resurfaced later.

Demonstrated by Dr. Joseph M. Juran’s Spiral of Progress, implementing quality is an evolutionary process. This point is so important that countless books and articles have been written on this subject.