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(San Jose Unified School District: San Jose, California) -- San Jose Unified School District has entered into a unique partnership with Chevron Energy Solutions and Bank of America to establish what is believed to be the largest solar power and energy-efficient facilities program in K-12…
Six Sigma was Bill Smith’s vision for excellence in everything. Prior to Six Sigma, companies were implementing total quality management, statistical process control, pre-control, cost of poor quality, and other techniques with minimal effect. Quality became a promise of “motherhood and apple pie…
(LEI: Cambridge, Massachusetts) -- Middle management resistance to change is now the No. 1 obstacle to implementing lean production, according to a survey conducted by the Lean Enterprise Institute, a nonprofit management research center. Respondents were asked to select all applicable obstacles…
(Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, New Jersey) -- Treasure Chest of Six Sigma Growth Methods, Tools, and Best Practices is a comprehensive how-to collection of Six Sigma tools, methodologies, and best practices. Lynne Hambleton covers the entire Six Sigma toolset, including more than 70…
Twenty-three soldiers, airmen, and civilian employees of the Georgia department of defense have graduated from the inaugural course of a hands-on, continuous process improvement program called lean Six Sigma (LSS). The graduates all earned their Green Belt certification after completing four…
“I’m starting with the man in the mirror, I’m asking him to change his ways.”by Michael Jackson
Question: What did the registrar auditor do after informing his client that he wasn’t allowed to give advice?
Answer: He gave them advice.
I like to listen to Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror.”…
(ISO: Geneva) -- Using computers and the Internet can be a challenge for anyone, let alone the elderly or people with disabilities. The International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission are contributing to a technical report on accessibility icons…
(IAIDQ: Lutz, Florida) -- The International Association for Information and Data Quality recently announced its 2007 Information & Data Quality Conference to be held Sept. 24–27, 2007, at The Palms Resort in Las Vegas. Registration is now open, and all interested in the state-of-the art in…
(NCQA: Washington) -- Five new measures of health care effectiveness were recently added to HEDIS, the most definitive set of health care quality measures in the United States.Among the additions unveiled today by the National Committee for Quality Assurance is a set of measures that will allow…
(ANSI: New York) -- The increasing number of liquid biofuels standards initiatives and the growing market demand for alternative energy sources are fueling the need for the harmonization of standards and test methods to support the commoditization of liquid biofuels throughout the supply chain.To…
Numerous news stories this past month have focused on concerns about the quality and safety of certain Chinese exports. In this opinion piece, Paul Midler discusses “quality fade” in China, which he defines as “the deliberate and secretive habit of widening profit margins through a reduction in…
(Systech: Cranbury, New Jersey) -- Systech International Inc., a provider of packaging execution systems (PES) to the pharmaceutical industry, has introduced enhanced features to its plant-level server application, Systech Guardian. In addition to serialized product tracking (SPT)…
CardioMEMS engineer Michael Fonseca uses a laser to separate pressure sensors in the company’s clean room facility in the ATDC Biosciences Center located at Georgia Tech’s Environmental Science and Technology Building. Photo by Gary Meek After…
(Productivity Press: New York) -- Why does the United States rank 36th of all industrialized nations in health care? Perhaps the rampant inefficiencies of the system can help explain this dismal placement. There are bright spots, however. Innovative health care organizations, having recognized…
(NCQA: Washington) -- The National Committee for Quality Assurance, in collaboration with Pfizer Inc., recently released a new publication profiling strategies and recommendations for improving the quality of care through wellness and prevention initiatives.Quality Profiles: The Leadership Series—…
(University of Virginia: Charlottesville, Virginia) -- University of Virginia Engineering School Associate Professor William F. Walker and Research Associate Francesco Viola have developed a new tool—an advanced imaging algorithm—that is transforming the way we see things. Together with graduate…
The National Quality Forum is seeking nominations for members of a steering committee for the initial phase of a project to endorse voluntary consensus standards on the quality of emergency care. All nominations must be submitted by 6:00 p.m. ET, Aug. 10, 2007.Emergency care is an integral part…
Story update 11/1/2010: We had the incorrect author shown for this story. The author is Bipin Roy.
Welcome to the information technology world of governance boards, compliance councils, Sarbanes Oxley, and audit committees that continually invent stringent rules and regulations to make the…
(ASQ: Milwaukee) -- Public attention has been focused as perhaps never before on the safety of the food supply as a result of recent high-profile outbreaks of illness linked to various foods.According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a rare strain of Salmonella in…
(ASQ: Milwaukee) -- The American Society for Quality recently awarded its 2007 Richard A. Freund International Scholarship to Denisa Olteanu of Blacksburg, Virginia.Named after Richard A. Freund, a past president of the American Society for Quality, this $5,000 scholarship has been awarded for…
(ISO: Geneva) -- The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) recently took another step toward ensuring the safety of food products for consumers with its ISO 22005 standard on traceability in the feed and food chain, the latest addition to the ISO 22000 series on food-management…
Wireless customers who called too often to complain, fish for information about other customers, or otherwise take up the time of customer-care representatives at Sprint are finding themselves with a cancellation-of-services notice.Sprint, the third-largest wireless services provider in the…
Last month I talked about the “sigma” index and how it can be used. So what could be bad about the “sigma” index?Never forget that metrics drive behavior and that people are very, very good at finding a way to succeed when given a goal. It just may not be the thing you wanted them to do. If “sigma…
(SME: Dearborn, Michigan) -- The Society of Manufacturing Engineers, the Association for Manufacturing Excellence, and the Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing have conferred upon Jeff Lytle, lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt at OMNOVA Solutions Inc., the first-ever lean Gold…
(WCBF: New York) -- Worldwide Conventions and Business Forums’s 5th Conference on Successfully Implementing Six Sigma in Financial Services, taking place Sept. 25–27, 2007 in New York, will enable participants to benchmark and network with peers, listen to business leaders, and hear practical…
