Quite often in manufacturing, an inspection department is treated primarily as a necessary overhead expense required to assure compliance to customer specifications. Sometimes an inspection department may also be treated as a profit center for compliance to a variety of test protocols dictated by external agencies, or perhaps internal procedures to demonstrate traceability to certain quality standards. 

Almost 30 years ago the Construction Industry Institute (CII) researched the “Costs of Quality Deviations in Design and Construction,” and concluded that, “The average cost of rework on industrial projects exceeds 12%.” Design deviations accounted for about 80% of the increased cost and construction deviations only 20%.

The report assesses the strengths and weaknesses of each vendor and charts the future course of the ORM market.

What are the characteristics of a quality leader? For many, leadership comes down to each of us identifying and searching for the characteristics that are most appealing to us. For instance, I spent a career with a company that was mostly Juran-centered but also had a significant Deming slant.

Quality and job satisfaction seem to go hand in hand. Only 7% of respondents were not at all satisfied with their job, according to our 18th Annual State of the Profession Survey. 

Garbage in, garbage out. It’s a term born in the early days of the computer and computer programming. The phrase, and its popular acronym, GIGO, are said to have been taken from the business strategies of LIFO and FIFO—last in, first out and first in, first out—as it pertains to inventory management.

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

Leboucher is based in the Livonia, MI office and is responsible for overseeing sales, marketing and operations for all three ATEQ divisions: leak testing, TPMS, and aviation. He will work with managers from all ATEQ North America locations (U.S., Canada and Mexico).

The fee-based program will certify an applying organization’s occupational safety and health products and services based on recognized voluntary national and international consensus standards.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) introduced the Better Practice and Better Project awards to honor exceptional energy-efficiency solutions.