Managing, controlling and improving quality is a critical activity in
modern business organizations. Quality is directly linked to
productivity, competitiveness, customer satisfaction, business growth,
elimination of waste and other non-value added activities, and overall
business success. Cycle time and throughput is just as important in a
hospital emergency room as it is in a semiconductor factory. Defects and
errors don't occur just in factories, they occur in transactional and
service business such as banks, insurance companies, and hospitals. Even
your local and state governments have a keen interest in improving
service quality in operations such as issuing drivers licenses and motor
vehicle registration. The U.S. Navy has had an intensive quality
improvement program for many years.
This book presents an organized approach to quality management, control,
and improvement. Quality problems usually are the outcome of
uncontrolled or excessive variability in product or service
characteristics that are critical to the customer and statistical tools
and other analytical methods play an important role in solving these
problems. However, these techniques need to be implemented within a
management structure that will ensure success. We focus on both the
management structure and the statistical and analytical tools. Our
approach to organizing and presenting this material is based on many
years of teaching, research, and professional practice across a wide
range of business and industrial settings.
