Category: Quality - The Institute for Strategic Improvement

The Best Burger?

4/30/2018

So a neighbor and I were on a road trip this past weekend to see the 2018 NFL draft and as we passed several of the southern states. We saw the signs of our favorite burger stops and then argued about which were the best. So what defines the best? Is it quality is it a secret flavor or recipe? It boils down to what the customer values. Sometimes its cost, sometimes its speed, sometimes its another factor. No matter what business you are in something makes your business to be the choice of your customer.

So what sets you apart and how do you design in even more of these characteristics?
We’re interested in hearing more.

Share your thoughts on good characteristics business owners can build in and let us know who really has the best burger. We will let you know our survey results for who has the best burger and for everyone who submits a vote 25% off the course of your choice and 1 free quick reference sheet.

Improvement Culture

2/5/2018

Developing the culture necessitates establishing a team based environment that is rich in communication and where improvement is tied to strategic goals. As an organizational leader behavioral expectations are set for the organization which are guided by policies and standards. The culture is further developed when leadership models the behavior it wants to be seen as the culture of the organization. Some practical tips to improve this are:
1. Communicate openly about the transformation’s progress and success
2. Everyone should clearly see how her their work relates to the organization’s vision
3. Be the change you want to see. Leaders model the behavior changes they ask employees to make
4. All personnel adapt their day-to-day capacity to changes in customer demand
5. Everyone should be actively engaged in identifying errors before they reach customers
6. Best practices should be shared
7. Develop employees so they can exceed performance expectations
8. Be sure roles and responsibilities are clearly defined
9 Focus energy on the early adopters and assign projects to high-potential individuals to
10. Start each day with a huddle about the previous day’s results and current day’s work

Why Is Quality Important?

11/29/2017

Why Is Quality Important?
Business success may simply be the extent to which your organization can produce a higher-quality product or service than your competitors are able to do at a competitive price. When quality is the key to a company’s success, quality management systems allow organizations to keep up with and meet current quality levels, meet the consumer’s demand.

What can I do?

Infusion of Blue Ocean. What companies were around 20 years ago and are there no longer? Compaq, EF Hutton, Eastern Airlines, Woolworth’s, Standard Oil, DeLorean Motor Co. just to name a few. Use Blue Ocean thinking to prevent this from occurring to you.

Selecting projects with the highest ROI and that are found to be feasible in time and budgetary constraints.

Offer your customers training related to your quality initiatives.
Using dynamic tools and new more advanced tools to achieve efficiency.

Deploying dynamic strategies not static. Try DFSS, DMDV, TRIZ and DMADOV

Use lean as a management system through Lean leadership. A great example of this is using GEMBA walks to go out into areas and see the work being done.

Incorporating transformational culture and transformational coaching to pull together your overarching strategy with Six Sigma, lean, project management and overall organizational excellence.

Are you using your True North? “True North" is a key concept in Lean process improvement. It emerged from Toyota twenty years ago and symbolizes the compass needle for Lean transformation. True North works as a compass proving a guide to take an organization from the current condition to where they want to be. For some businesses it is viewed as a mission statement, a reflection of the purpose of the organization, and the foundation of a strategic plan.

Do you recognize your value stream? Use Value Stream Mapping (VSM) with methods to measure the end-to end performance of the process. They can be used to manage and improve the end-to-end value stream on an ongoing basis.
Green Intentions - Developed by a plant manager who experienced first-hand the challenges to going green in a business environment, Green Intentions provides organizations with a simple, straightforward, and practical approach to green - the Green Value Stream (GVS) process - that is as mindful as it is profitable. Based on the highly successful, Lean philosophy, the GVS process shows you how to quickly identify, measure, and minimize the seven green wastes to realize immediate cost savings.

Sustainable Business and Industry: Designing and Operating for Social and Environmental Responsibility is an introduction to developing and implementing a successful program in the domain of sustainability and social responsibility. The reader is exposed to financially, environmentally, and socially responsible objectives that are supported by strategies and achieved by clear tactics that have measurable outcomes. ISO 26000 is given detailed attention, slightly more than ISO 9000 or ISO 14000, because it melds guidance on both environmental and social responsibility into one general concept of social responsibility.
Lean out the office environment. It is one of the most overlooked and often can provide greater efficiency and improvement in projects by performing a few lean projects for the administrative and paperwork side of your business.

The current market evolves so fast you may not have time to react with full deployment cycles and long analysis. Using rapid changes may work for you. PDSA, Rapid Process Improvement, and Kaizen.

The Institute for Strategic Improvement offers training in Quality Management Systems.

November 15th, 2017

11/15/2017

Multi-part Quality Series

Benefits of Standards

Standards ensure that products and services are safe, reliable and of good quality. For business, they are strategic tools that reduce costs by minimizing waste and errors, and increasing productivity.

ISO has over 21000 International Standards covering almost all aspects of technology and business.

These are some of the most common/popular in use:
ISO 9000 - Quality management - ensures products and services meet customers' needs
ISO 14000 - Environmental management - improves environmental performance
ISO 45001 - Occupational Health and Safety - reduces workplace risks and creates safer working environments
ISO 27001 - Information security - ensures an organization's information is secure
ISO 26000 - Social responsibility - helps organizations to operate in a socially responsible way
ISO 50001 - Energy management – helps with energy savings and makes organizations more efficient
ISO 22000 - Food safety management – provides confidence in food products
ISO 13485 - Medical devices – helps manage quality throughout the life cycle of a medical device. These are some of the most common/popular in use:
ISO 31000 - Risk management – helps manage risks that could be negative for your company’s performance
ISO 37001 - Anti-bribery management systems - prevents, detects and addresses bribery.
ISO 8601 - Date and time format - Uses an internationally accepted way to represent dates and times.

These are the most common groupings
for the ISP standards

Multi-part Quality Series

10/30/2017

Multi-part Quality Series

What is your definition Quality? There are a number of quality definitions what is your definition?

Common “Quality” Definitions:
Quality: “The totality of characteristics of an entity that bear on its ability to satisfy stated and implied needs.”
Quality: “An inherent or distinguishing characteristic, a degree or grade of excellence.”
Quality: Do the right thing and do things right all the time.”
Quality: The ratio of performance to expectation.
Each customer has their definition of quality. One way to meet their definition is by developing a quality management system. Quality management systems serve a number of purposes.

Establish a vision for employees
Set standards of operation
Sets goals for employees
Motivates employees
Develops the organizational culture
Fights the resistance to change

Interested in finding out more? Email us at info@instituteforstrategicimprovement.com for a coupon code to receive the Quality Management Systems Course for only $20.00

Multi-Part Quality Series

10/22/2017

Multi-Part Quality Series

Emerging Trends in Quality for 2017 and 2018

2017 what's different from last year and what are we looking at for 2018?

Companies are continually facing industry changes and market forces. Take a look at your smart phone for example. What version are you using, or what operating system did you just load? Six Sigma can be considered the same. It grows over time and can be used to complement any improvement activities. Six Sigma complements project management framework and business analysis framework. Newer, easier, and more robust improvements are developed every day just in the way many software companies use agile development and lean. Agile software development is a set of principles for software development in which requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. Lean startups are using the “lean” terms to help startups shorten their product development cycles by adopting a combination of business-hypothesis-driven experimentation, iterative product releases, and validated learning. Iterations are no different than PDSA.

Some companies are infusing a number of “customer driven” initiatives in tandem with Six Sigma. In effect using Six Sigma for the larger projects and lean for the smaller waste driven.

Take global corporate initiatives, Companies are rapidly learning there is value added to their businesses using lean processes that have built in processes to help the environment and develop consumer “good will”. The Global Business Initiative on Human Rights’ (GBI) vision is that all corporations in all parts of the world respect the dignity and rights of the people they impact and interact with. The goal is to advance human rights in a business context through cross-industry peer learning, outreach and capacity building, and by informing policy.

Global corporate initiatives show sustainability for the future and socially responsible companies who understand the investment is necessary to lead the market in the future.

Many companies are striving for operational excellence designation, certification, or recognition. The Shingo prize is an example. The Shingo Prize is the world’s highest standard for operational excellence.
The Shingo Prize is based on a complete assessment of an organization’s culture and how well it drives world-class results. Shingo examiners focus on the degree to which the Shingo Guiding Principles of the Shingo Model™ are evident in the behavior of every employee. The examiners observe behavior and determine the frequency, duration, intensity and scope of the desired principle-based behavior. They also observe the degree to which leaders focus on principles and culture, and managers focus on aligning systems to drive ideal behaviors at all levels.

This focus is unique in the world and is the most rigorous way to determine whether an organization is fundamentally improving for the long-term, or just going through the motions of another flavor-of-the-month initiative.

Organizations that receive Shingo recognition fall into three categories:

Shingo Prize - a worldwide recognized symbol of an organization’s successful establishment of a culture anchored on principles of enterprise excellence

Shingo Silver Medallion - organizations maturing on the journey with primary focus on tools and systems for improvement

Shingo Bronze Medallion – organizations in the earlier stages of cultural transformation with primary focus on tools for improvement
Most organizations do not wait to challenge for the Shingo Prize until they are likely to win it.

Interested in finding out more? Email us at info@instituteforstrategicimprovement.com for a coupon code to receive the Quality Management Systems Course for only $20.00

Quick Reference Sheet Collection

3/1/2017

Quick Reference Sheet Collection only $24.99

The Institute for Strategic Improvement is offering an introductory price for our 1 page Quick Reference Sheet Collection. When you make this purchase for only $24.99 you receive a new Quick Reference Sheet each week via email for 1 full year as a subscription service. Each week we email you a new one. These are process improvement, project management, Lean, Six Sigma, Quality Management, Personal efficiency and other Business Improvement Topics.
Order here: https://www.instituteforstrategicimprovement.com/store/p34/Quick_Reference_Sheet_Collection.html
You can suggest a quick reference sheet you need at this link FREE and we'll send you a copy just for your suggestion and include it in our future collection.
https://www.instituteforstrategicimprovement.com/contact-us.html

Quality Management

2/28/2017

Quality Management Systems

Always wanted to know about Quality Management and Quality Certification pursuit? Here's your opportunity to learn the fundamentals on really running a quality business.

You receive two training PowerPoints over 170 slides on quality management history, PDSA, and Quality Management Systems including ISO certification. The course includes a sample ISO certification checklist and Certificate of Educational Experience.

Provides the necessary understanding of Quality Management Systems for industry certifications including International Standards (ISO) certification pursuit. ISO 9001

Course Requirements:
25 question test passing score of 70.
3 to 5 page whitepaper of the use of Quality Management Systems and how you may use them in your organization or your industry focus to improve specific quality concerns.
Cost: $38.00

Contact us here https://www.instituteforstrategicimprovement.com/contact-us.html before March 4th and request a half price cost of only $19.00

Improving Quality

10/24/2016

Quality is achieved through assessment and development of the company’s quality culture. This assessment and development occurs by facilitating cultural awareness, adopting quality goals, requesting stakeholder input, developing performance measurements, rewarding performance towards quality, and creating teams to pursue continuous improvement.
Achieving a quality culture includes:

Having a clear understanding of what quality looks like.
Having a clear understanding of Quality Improvement and why it is necessary
Having the employees connect with the benefits of quality.
Maintaining a clear structure and framework for quality management.
Buy-in and support at all levels in the company.
Communicating the quality improvement plan and progress throughout the organization.

• Develop the Strategic Perspective - Leaders provide their teams with a sense of purpose and direction.
• Instill Trust - Leaders should be in touch with issues and concerns of individual employees and should provide an environment for building relationships.
• Inspiration and Motivation - leaders focus a level of additional effort and energy that can make the difference between organizational success and failure. Every leader is charged with developing ways to inspire their employees to function at a higher level of performance.
• Drive for Results - Leaders that do this well are not afraid to ask their employees for a higher level of performance and continually remind them of their progress relative to the goal. This behavior includes two actions pushing where they “drive for results” and pulling where they “provide inspiration”.
• Collaboration - leaders should promote a high level of cooperation between their work groups and create a positive and productive atmosphere. Objectives are created in a higher level with a high level of inter-group cooperation. When this occurs energy is created and every employee enjoys the work experience.

Quality in your life

10/5/2016

We try to differentiate and separate our blogs into categories that can help in your personal life and those that help at work or in your business to promote making life easier through quality, productivity improvements, or efficiency.

Quality is relevant in both aspects home and work and we strive for the best in both worlds. In businesses we find quality is many times used as a key differentiator in competition. Businesses invest in quality and continuous improvement because they have a direct impact on effectiveness and profitability. They also find that quality helps serve as the catalyst for risk management and innovation.

Where do you stand on the continuum of quality infusion?
Do you have a commitment to excellence as a leader?
Do you routinely invest in performance improvement? How?
Do you intricately understand your customers needs?
What type of performance metrics do you have in place and how often do you revise them?
Do you take risks but also manage risks?
How do you engage customers and employees? How do you keep yourself engaged?

It's important to understand how your performance contributes to your goals and success. Set goals that consistently raise the bar in terms of quality.

Remember if you make a product or provide a service your customers needs drive your competitive focus. Engage in consistent action increasing your level of performance and articulate this through your business vision.