Resources

Find concepts, tools, organization-wide approaches and learn how to create quality in your social responsibility efforts.

Concepts

A Short History of Quality: Overview of how quality concepts and processes have evolved from the craft guilds of medieval Europe to the workplaces of today.

Continuous Improvement: How to take your products, services and processes to the next level.

Cost of Quality: Quality doesn’t cost money. It’s poor-quality products and services that pile up extra costs for your organization. Here’s how to get started eliminating these expensive shortcomings.

Customer Satisfaction: Tips and resources for helping you identify your customers and what it will take to satisfy them.

Problem Solving: Using four basic steps to implement solutions by accurately defining problems and identifying alternatives.

Process View of Work: Analyze how work gets done so that you can increase efficiency, effectiveness and adaptability.

Supplier Quality: The quality of what goes into a product or service determines the quality of what comes out. Here’s how to keep costs low and quality high.

Variation: Variation represents the difference between an ideal and an actual situation.

Tools

Cause Analysis Tools: Tips and tools for the first step to improvement: identifying the cause of a problem or situation.

Evaluation and Decision-Making Tools: Making informed decisions and choosing the best options with a simple, objective rating system, and determining the success of a project.

Process Analysis Tools: How to identify and eliminate unnecessary process steps to increase efficiency, reduce timelines and cut costs.

Seven Basic Quality Tools: These seven tools get to the heart of implementing quality principles.

Data Collection and Analysis Tools: How can you collect the data you need, and what should you do with them once they’re collected?

Idea Creation Tools: Ways to stimulate group creativity and organize the ideas that come from it.

Project Planning and Implementing Tools: How to track a project’s status and look for improvement opportunities.

Seven New Management and Planning Tools: Ways to promote innovation, communicate information and successfully plan major projects.

Approaches

Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award: Here’s how you can apply the seven criteria for the Baldrige Award to your organization’s daily operations.

ISO 9000 and Other Standards: Ways to harness ISO 9000 to achieve the base level of quality management or a quality system, and how other standards address the needs of specific industries.

Six Sigma: Use the Six Sigma philosophy to drive customer satisfaction and bottom-line results by reducing variation and waste.

Balanced Scorecard: View your organization from four different perspectives – financial, customer, business process and learning and growth.

Lean: The fine art of eliminating non-value adding activities and waste from your processes and products.

Benchmarking: How to harness the process of searching for industry leaders and their best practices: Find out what makes them work and implement those practices to make your organization an industry leader.

Total Quality Management: How all members of an organization can participate in improving processes, products, services and the culture in which your people work.

People Create Quality

Change Management: Change is a fact of life. Here are ways to make sure that changes can take root and lead to increased success.

Leadership: Practical advice on approaching leadership from both strategic and operational points of view.

Quality Professionals : Explore the many roles that quality professionals can play in their organizations.

Teams: How you can use teams to capitalize on individuals’ strengths and minimize their weaknesses.

Employee Empowerment and Involvement: Employees can usually take on more responsibility and authority than they’ve traditionally been given. Here’s some guidance on how to avoid overlooking your most valuable resource.