Anthony Chirico
Perhaps the reader recognizes d2 as slang for “designated driver,” but quality professionals will recognize it as a control chart constant used to estimate short-term variation of a process. The...
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
In this episode we look at a history of quality, how you serve your customer in the housing industry, and what makes a good review.
“Young couples ‘trapped in car dependency’”
Building entry-level...
Harish Jose
I am writing today about “bootstrap kaizen.” This is something I have been thinking about for a while. Wikipedia describes bootstrapping as “a self-starting process that is supposed to proceed...
Gary Bell
It is all too common in the industry: A part design is created and sent out for production only to hit repeated snags as questions arise about datums, locators, symbols, and values. Even simple...
Anthony Chirico
In my first article, the merits and cautions of AS9138 c=0 sampling plans were discussed and a simple formula was provided to determine the required sample size to detect nonconforming units. In the...
Anthony Chirico
In my previous article, I discussed the merits and cautions of the “acceptance number” equal zero (c=0) sampling plans contained within AS9138. A simple formula was provided to determine appropriate...
Anthony Chirico
Aerospace standard AS9138—“Quality management systems statistical product acceptance requirements” was issued this year (2018), a few years after its accompanying guidance materials in section 3.7 of...
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
In this all-manufacturing episode, we look at the STEM pipeline into manufacturing, supplier development, how to make sense of manufacturing data and, no, manufacturing is not dead.
“Strengthening...
Donald J. Wheeler
Parts One and Two of this series illustrated four problems with using a model-building approach when data snooping. This column will present an alternative approach for data snooping that is of...
Rip Stauffer
I must admit, right up front, that this is not a totally unbiased review. I first became aware of Davis Balestracci in 1998, when I received the American Society for Quality (ASQ) Statistics Division...
Ryan E. Day
‘In God we trust; all others bring data.” “Follow the data.” “Let the data talk.” Nice clichés, but there’s one problem... data can’t talk. In fact, data don’t say a darn thing. Data are bits of raw...
Glenn S. Wolfgang
Flow quality management (Flow QM) is a logistical alternative to handling product in lots for the purpose of assessing and mitigating defects. It features a streamlined, automated acceptance sampling...
Stephen Salata
It’s an open secret that many automotive and aerospace manufacturers have unacceptably high defects and costs. And where defects are on the rise, quality costs aren’t far behind.
Even one defect...
Scott A. Hindle
I recently got hold of the set of data shown in figure 1. What can be done to analyze and make sense of these 65 data values is the theme of this article. Read on to see what is exceptional about...
Anthony D. Burns
Quality is related to processes. A process is “a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.” It doesn’t matter whether the process is the handling of invoices, customers...
Cheryl Pammer
Confidence intervals show the range of values we can be fairly, well, confident, that our true value lies in, and they are very important to any quality practitioner. I could be 95-percent confident...
Rip Stauffer
A lot of people in my classes struggle with conditional probability. Don’t feel alone, though. A lot of people get this (and simple probability, for that matter) wrong. If you read Innumeracy by John...
Mike Richman
There are many subjects that we cover regularly here at Quality Digest. Chief among these are standards (ISO 9001 or IATF 16949, for example) methodologies (such as lean, Baldrige, or Six Sigma), and...
Matthew E. May
Process improvers the world over rally around root cause analysis as if it were the holy grail of all things organizational. But is it?
Understanding the root cause of a problem certainly makes...
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
In our May 11, 2018, episode of QDL, we looked at overproducing ideas, bad quotas (aren’t they all), and how anger can help identify core values.
“Questioning Quotas”
When are quotas bad? Most of...
