All Features
Harry Hertz
Business schools today have a renewed emphasis on teaching leadership. Dawn Bailey explored this topic in a recent Blogrige post. One of the principles behind this shift, she explained, is intended to cause a deep dive into values. And values-centered leadership is, in my opinion, a critical…
Randall D’Amico
Sponsored Content
Relationships between an organization and its suppliers have traditionally been characterized by adversarial activities and posturing in which at least one, and often both, parties lose. Rather than working together to find ways to create a win-win outcome, buyers use their…
Donald J. Wheeler, Henry R. Neave
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. During the past three months we have looked at three families of probability models and found that they share some remarkable properties. These properties provide a theoretical explanation of how and why process…
Christine Schaefer
In early 1989, Michael Whisman, MBA, MBB, was trained by his then-employer, Baxter Healthcare, to be an examiner within the company’s newly announced Baxter Quality Award. To determine award winners for the performance recognition program, the company was using the first edition of the Criteria…
Mike Micklewright
Finally... the new version of ISO 9001:2015 has been released. I can hear many of you screaming, “Hurray!” Or not. More realistically, I’m sure many of you living in the kaizen world are thinking, “Yeah, so what? This stuff has nothing to do with real kaizen, and in fact, it often creates…
Chad Kymal
The outward focus of an organization comes from defining the context, mission, vision, policies, and interested-party expectations. A company’s goals and objectives provide the lens through which this outward focus can be seen (figure 1).
Setting the strategic direction
An organization uses its…
Arun Hariharan
In my previous article, “Is Poor Quality ISO 9001’s Fault?” I shared the example of the chairman of a large company who ridiculed ISO 9001, saying, “Even the municipal office of this city is ISO 9001-certified. And we all know how bad the municipality is. I don’t believe ISO 9001 can do my…
Arun Hariharan
The chairman of a large company once ridiculed ISO 9001, saying, “Even the municipal office of this city is ISO 9001-certified, and we all know how bad the municipality is. I don’t believe ISO 9001 can do my business any good.”
The chairman had similar uncharitable things to say about other…
Tim Lozier
Sponsored Content
We’ve all heard it before: Change is the only constant. This isn’t just cliché but a truth that all companies will come to recognize. Change is the driving force behind improvement. And all of the changes that take place within an organization, whether to products, processes, or…
Gurdeep Mahal
Sponsored Content
One of the most common misconceptions about ISO 9001 certification is that it’s only for big businesses. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The standards set forth by ISO are generic by design so that they may be applied to businesses of any size, type, and product line. As…
Dawn Bailey
As a writer for the Baldrige Program, I have a lot of fun learning about how various people and organizations use the Baldrige Excellence Framework to guide, focus, and improve their operations.
I recently had the pleasure of conversing with Shannon Block, the president and CEO of the Denver Zoo…
Mika Javanainen
The recently released final draft of the ISO 9001:2015 standard for quality management systems has now been voted on by members of both the ISO and CEN standards bodies. The latest version still targets the same goal—to help organizations improve overall performance—while addressing the profound…
Grant Ramaley
The European Cooperation for Accreditation (EA), an association of national accreditation bodies in Europe, has implemented the accreditation requirements of the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) and has signed up for the IAF Multilateral Recognition Arrangement (MLA) extension to cover ISO…
Denise Robitaille
OK, so “cool” probably isn't the precise term—unless you happen to be a standards uber-geek. But there are definitely some enhancements to the 2015 revision of ISO 9001 that are worth getting a little excited about.
The final draft international standard (FDIS) is finally out for ballot, so most…
Ryan E. Day
Sponsored Content
With the ISO 9001:2015 revision currently dominating standards conversations, it's easy to pass over the humble energy standard from Geneva—ISO 50001. You might not even know what it is, let alone the benefits of implementing it. On the other hand, the rising price of energy and…
Chad Kymal, R. Dan Reid
Sponsored Content
Risk is not a straightforward concept. Definitions of risk vary, even within documents published by the International Organizations for Standardization (ISO). One ISO definition indicates that risk is the “effect of uncertainty on an expected result.” Risk is now addressed by…
Arun Hariharan
Peter Drucker once said, "The most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution of management in the 20th century was the fifty-fold increase in the productivity of the manual worker in manufacturing. The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is similarly…
Randall D’Amico
Story update 8/6/2015: Paragraph 14 of this article stated "many organizations are ill-equipped to develop an effective risk management assessment process," implying, to some, that a risk management system is required, which as stated in paragraph 8 of this article, it is not (nor was that the…
Mary McAtee
Everyone is gearing up for the challenge of updating their compliance to the requirements of the 2015 version of ISO 9001. Most quality professionals I speak with seem to have digested the new requirements as something very different than past versions. Personally, I don’t see it in quite the same…
Ulrich Wegner
The new ISO 9001, scheduled for publication in late 2015, introduces the term “knowledge.” As knowledge was not addressed by the previous version of ISO 9001, the depth of this topic and the approach to it are new.
The international standard ISO/DIS 9001:2015—“Quality management systems—…
Harry Hertz
Every year, I return from the Baldrige Program’s Quest for Excellence Conference energized and full of pride in the success that can be achieved by people working together. And every year, I try to synthesize what I’ve heard into some key themes that reflect the best practices of the United States…
Donald J. Wheeler
While the computations for a process behavior chart are completely general and very robust, the secret to using a process behavior chart effectively lies in the art of rational sampling and rational subgrouping. Rational subgrouping has to do with organizing your data so that the chart will answer…
Chad Kymal
The final draft international standard (FDIS) of ISO 9001:2015 will be released in July, and the revised standard is slated for publication in September. Per Annex SL of the “Consolidated ISO Supplement,” some elements of the standard will be restructured to allow for easier integration of…
Richard DeRisio
Editor’s note: Quality Digest will present Richard DeRisio’s webinar, “Effective Strategies for Complaint Handling” on May 19, 2015, at 2 p.m. Eastern, 11 a.m. Pacific. DeRisio will be a guest on Quality Digest Live on Friday, May 15, also at 2 p.m. Eastern, 11 a.m. Pacific, to preview the webinar…
Bud Weightman
The fifth edition of ISO 9001, which is slated for publication in late 2015, has some good ideas regarding improvement and harmonization with other management system standards such as ISO 14001. However, ISO/Draft International Standard (DIS) 9001:2015 has taken away prescriptive language for a…
