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The upcoming Big Three automaker quality standard aimed at tooling and equipment vendors is due to hit the streets in January. But don't look for a document called TE-9000. It won't exist, says Steve Walsh, a QS-9000 task force member. The standard, which affects Big Three nonproduction parts suppliers, will become the "TE supplement" to QS-9000, the automakers' ISO 9000 derivative. "QS-9000 will be the core document," says Walsh, Ford's supplier quality requirements manager. "The tooling and equipment supplement will only address those requirements that are unique or incremental as they pertain to the tooling, equipment and facilities industry." Since there will not be a TE stand-alone standard, how tooling and equipment vendors will be certified is still up in the air, says Walsh. "We haven't really qualified with the accreditation and certification bodies as to how we should differentiate that a supplier meets the TE supplement as opposed to QS-9000," he explains. "It could end up being a special notation or stamp." It could also end up being an outstanding headache for tooling and equipment vendors. Walsh admits that ever since rumors of a TE quality standard hit the streets, the task force has received calls from Big Three tooling and equipment vendors. They are "anxious," says Walsh, and for good reason. The TE supplement affects non production parts vendors such as those supplying tools, production equipment, dies, molds and even some production items like coolants. But unlike production parts suppliers, who have long had to comply with Big Three quality standards, many mom-and-pop tooling and equipment vendors may not have a quality system in place. For those companies, the TE requirements may come as quite a shock. "I've heard arguments both ways," says Walsh. "But I would submit that you really need to have this type of a focused discipline. You can call it QS-9000 or TE supplement, but you need some way to gauge that what you are doing is done consistently and with a minimum of variation, day in and day out. How does a company know they are doing that?" Fortunately, affected vendors will receive plenty of assistance to help them comply. Within a couple of months of the roll-out, training will be available as well as a quality system assessment checklist, says Walsh. Training materials, instructor certification and pilot materials should be released concurrent with the supplement. The only question left hanging is how much time tooling and equipment vendors will have to comply. Implementation due dates have not yet been set.
In the ongoing work to standardize ISO 9000 auditor certification worldwide, 13 certification/accreditation bodies have signed an agreement calling for a new international quality systems auditor certification and training course program. Under this program, auditors will receive certification from a new organization to be known as the International Auditor and Training Certification Association, as well as from their country's accreditation body, such as the United States' Registrar Accreditation Board. After that, an auditor can perform audits in any country that is a signatory to the ITC program, says RAB spokesperson Janet Jacobsen. "Everyone will be using the same set of criteria for evaluating the auditor or the training courses," says Jacobsen. "If you meet our [RAB] requirements, for example, you therefore meet the requirements over in the United Kingdom or Australia." The results are two-fold, notes Jacobsen. First, and most important, because all auditors will be taught and certified to universally accepted criteria, ISO 9000 audit results should be more consistent from country to country. Second, a universally accepted certification will make life easier for auditors by eliminating the need for multiple certification, she says. Organizations from the following regions have signed the agreement regarding the IATCA: Australia/New Zealand, Brazil, China, Chinese Taipei (Taiwan), France, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Southern Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. According to Jacobsen, the IATCA has the following objectives: You can teach an old dog new tricks. Three years ago, following a split from B.F. Goodrich, The Geon Co. empowered its employees to change how the 50-year-old PVC manufacturer operates. The move increased productivity and improved profitability -- with half the number of employees. "Back in 1992 [after the split], it was clear that the organization would have to go through a profound change from being a highly bureaucratic commodity chemical maker to reigniting the entrepreneurial spirit of the people who work here," recalls Ed Wiseman, director of management and organizational behavior at the Cleveland, Ohio-based company. The solution was to involve all employees in changing the company, not just management. To that end, Geon involved 500 employees from all levels of the company in a year-long change leadership course. The objective, says Wiseman, was to get employees to be "champions of change rather than resistors of change." During the course, employees learned leadership training, work environment analysis, interpersonal and group skills, and developed action plans. Following training, Geon presented each class with a budget and required trainees to develop a graduation project. To date, these projects have yielded more than $40 million in improvements. The impact of change leadership being put into the hands of employees can be seen in the results achieved over the past three years. Although some are the result of work force reduction, much can be attributed to change leadership projects instigated by employees, according to Geon.
A growing number of U.S. companies are attempting to boost employee performance using personal improvement tools first pioneered by West Point cadets, according to a recent Conference Board report. Top performing companies use at least four of the seven components developed by Louis Czoka and currently used to train more than 1,200 West Point cadets a year, reports the survey of 49 top U.S. companies. The study also shows a link between performance enhancement and profitability. About 62 percent of the companies offering four or more performance-enhancement components appear in Forbes' list of top 25 companies, while only 18 percent of the companies offering three or less are listed. These are Czoka's seven performance-enhancement components and the percentage of survey respondents who use them:
Quality techniques have long been used by industry for problem solving. But over the past decade, these same tools have made their way into elementary schools, where students and teachers use the techniques to improve the quality of education. At the Enterprise School District in Redding, California, elementary school teachers use statistical sampling techniques to greatly improve student learning in reading, writing and geography. The new techniques were implemented three years ago, after Enterprise School District Superintendent Lee Jenkins attended a conference in which W. Edwards Deming spoke. "Deming suggested that we make a list of the total material students needed to learn in a course and quiz them on the square root of that amount every week from items randomly selected from the total list," explains Jenkins. Since students must study the entire list, odds are good they will learn all the items by the end of the year, he notes. In 5th-grade geography, for instance, a teacher determined that he wanted each student to learn 100 locations by the end of the year. Each week he quizzed students on 10 locations by rolling a 100-sided die and selecting the corresponding locations from his total list. The first week, his 32 students scored a total of 100 correct answers out of 320 (32 students x 10 locations). By the end of the year, the students got a total of 300 questions correct, almost a perfect score for the class. Run charts kept on the class's progress showed that variation decreased from a spread of one to eight correct to seven to 10 correct. Jenkins compares these results to traditional teaching methods used by the same teacher three years ago. Then, 20 students might have known all the locations at the end of the year, seven would have known half, and three wouldn't have known any, he says. At Prairie View Elementary in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, students use affinity diagrams and force-field analysis for problem solving. Quality tools not only help students to address problems and develop solutions, but also helps them realize the possible limits to problem solving, notes teacher Kathie Cink. "Some things are outside their control," says Cink. "So we talk about why they are outside of their control." Teaching quality tools has led students to become more self-directed and cooperate better, according to Cink. But she stops short of saying they will impact grades. "I would hope that would be the outcome" says Cink. "Down the road, you would hope that all this would not only improve their self-esteem but also make them better students." Ronald Fitzgerald, superintendent-director of Minuteman Science Technology High School in Lexington, Massachusetts, suggests these basic elements important to any instructional activity. Although aimed at schools, they are valuable in any instructional setting.
Source: Ronald J. Fitzgerald, "Critical Linkages II Newsletter," Sept. 1995, Sager Educational Enterprises, 21 Wallis Road, Chestnut Hill, MA 02167, (617) 469-9644.
How businesses treat customers on the telephone significantly influences sales success, according to a national survey sponsored by the Telephone "Doctor," a St. Louis-based training company on customer service and telephone skills.
Information dissemination can be a major player in improving the quality of hospital care. A recent study has led researchers to identify information dissemination as a key contributor to medication errors, according to Dr. Lucian Leape, adjunct professor of health policy with Harvard School of Public Health. Two out of every 100 patients admitted into two teaching hospitals in the study experienced complications or injuries related to medication errors, notes Leape. The study revealed that 39 percent of medication errors originated during prescribing, followed by 38 percent when medications were administered to the patient, says Leape. "Failures in the system of disseminating drug information were the No. 1 cause of errors," he observes. "Doctors wrote incorrect orders. Pharmacists incorrectly filled prescriptions, or nurses incorrectly administered medications because of the lack of adequate knowledge of the drug." This isn't too surprising. With more than 8,000 drugs currently in use, it would be impossible for hospital staff to memorize or even look up all drug interactions and dosage limits for all patients, say health professionals. To deal with this problem, Harvard is conducting an experiment at Brigham and Women's Hospital, where all medication orders are handled via computer. As the physician enters a medication order, the computer checks for dose limits, bad medication combinations and patient records of drug allergies. The computer immediately alerts the physician of a possible medication error so it can be corrected before the order is sent to the pharmacy. President Clinton and Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown announced the winners of the 1995 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The winners are Armstrong World Industries' Building Products Operation -- the world's largest manufacturer and marketer of acoustical ceiling systems, and Corning Telecommunications Products Division -- the largest optical fiber manufacturer in the world. Both winners were in the manufacturing category. Get the entire story next month in "News Digest." Americans work hard, but how many of us put our hearts into our work? Not enough, according to management consultant and author Dean Spitzer. He cites surveys conducted by Louis Harris Associates and Daniel Yankelovitch Organization, in which 84 percent of workers say they're not performing to their full ability, and 50 percent admit to doing just enough to hang onto their jobs. The problem, says Spitzer, is that most organizations are still using carrot-and-stick techniques to motivate employees, which produce only short-term effects. "If you give people a salary increase, for instance, the research shows that will only motivate an employee for about two weeks," says Spitzer. "After that it becomes part of what the employee feels entitled to and loses its motivational value." Spitzer lists what he believes are the 10 most powerful motivators to ensure long-term employee motivation in his book SuperMotivation: A Blueprint for Energizing Your Organization from Top to Bottom (1995, Amacom). The list is based on studies of hundreds of organizations and interviews with thousands of employees, says Spitzer.
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Support the widest possible acceptance of a supplier's quality system registration certificate, leading to a single registration being recognized worldwide.