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.

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.

Quality engineers use statistical process control (SPC) to eliminate process variation and ensure that final products meet customer expectations. Their job includes rooting out problems during production and ideally preventing issues before products become rejects.   

Automate Your Quality Processes in 2019!

"Quality improvement will result from people improving their processes and from management improving the system," says Thomas Pyzdek, ASQ Fellow.

The first step to process improvement is machine performance measurement and diagnosis. However, it’s a step that many OEMs and service providers—even quality professionals—fail to approach with as much rigor as other steps, like process setting and in-process control. 

Real-life quality problems are conundrums. Dorian Shainin realized that recognizing the distinctive characteristics of a problem was critical. He also knew that applying the right tactics was the key to the solution; however, many of the analysis tools of his time were not effective.

I recently attended a lecture by an industrial statistician. Part of the lecture included a summary of Dorian Shainin’s body of work. I had to smile as the lecturer spoke about Shainin’s “exaggerated claims” of the results attributed to his methods and his infamous “pre-control.” 

Don’t bite off more than you can chew, and really understand the methodology before attempting a large Six Sigma project. Those are the first words of advice for a Six Sigma novice from Six Sigma Master Black Belt John Vandenbemden.

Throughout years of mentoring and teaching aspiring quality professionals, I still review the Shainin techniques.