Synopses & Reviews
So you’ve been asked to lead a quality control initiative? Or maybe you’ve been assigned to a quality team. Perhaps you’re a CEO whose main concern is to make your company faster, more efficient, and less expensive. Whatever your role is, quality control is a critical concept in every industry and profession.
Quality Control For Dummies is the straightforward, easy guide to improving your company’s quality. It covers all of today’s available options and provides expert techniques for introducing quality methods to your company, collecting data, designing quality processes, and more. This hands-on guide gives you all the tools you’ll ever need to enhance your company’s quality, including:
- Understanding the importance of quality standards
- Putting fundamental quality control methods to use
- Listening to your customer about quality issues
- Whipping quality control into shape with Lean
- Working with value stream mapping
- Focusing on the 5S method
- Supplement a process with Kanban
- Fixing tough problems with Six Sigma
- Using QFD to win customers over
- Improving you company with TOC
This invaluable reference is written from an unbiased viewpoint, giving you all the facts about each theory with no fuzzy coverings. It also includes steps for incorporating quality into a new product and Web sites packed with quality control tips and techniques. With Quality Control For Dummies, you’ll be able to speed up production, eliminate waste, and save money!
Review
"Highly Amusing" (Financial Times, Saturday 25th August 2007)
Synopsis
Make quality a priority throughout your organizationSpeed up production, eliminate waste, and save money
Need to improve quality in your organization? This practical guide covers quality control options available today, from 5S to Six Sigma to TQM. You'll find expert techniques for introducing quality methods to your company, collecting data, designing quality processes, and more.
Discover how to
- Set quality standards
- Use quality assurance
- Detect the voice of the customer
- Assess your quality process
- Choose the right approach for your company
- Obtain outside help
Synopsis
As the world becomes smaller, the survival of your job as well as the survival of your company is dependent upon your ability to produce a quality product or service. The concept of Quality Control has been around for a long time— and it's still the best way to do things faster, for less cost and with a more desirable result.
Quality Control for Dummies explains the basics of quality control, shows you how to put fundamental quality control methods to use, and reviews the full spectrum of quality control techniques currently in vogue. If you've been assigned to a quality team or asked to lead a quality initiative, this book is certain make your life easier. In it, you'll find out: What quality really means and why it's important in the modern world How the concept of “ quality” fits into an organization’ s products and strategies The important of defining quality standards How to measure your current quality process Ways to detect the voice of the customer in quality issues The role of inspection in quality control How to use Quality Assurance for the best results The steps required to introduce change in your company How to let workers make changes with Rapid Improvement
Quality Control for Dummies also provides a list of web sites offering quality control tips and techniques, steps for approaching a process quality issue, and other key resources that will help anyone unfamiliar with Quality Control to easily find their way around any quality program.
Synopsis
Rare is the opportunity to chat with a legendary financial figure and hear the unvarnished truth about what really goes on behind the scenes. Hedgehogging represents just such an opportunity, allowing you to step inside the world of Wall Street with Barton Biggs as he discusses investing in general, hedge funds in particular, and how he has learned to find and profit from the best moneymaking opportunities in an eat-what-you-kill, cutthroat investment world.
Synopsis
PRAISE FOR HEDGEHOGGING"Barton Biggs writes about markets with grater style, clarity, and insight than any other observer of the Wall Street scene. his new book, Hedgehogging, entertains immensely even as it provides countless valuable lessons regarding hedge funds and the investment world they inhabit." - David F. Swensen, Chief Investment Officer, Yale University
"Since the glory days of the tech bubble, investing has become a perilous enterprise. Not the least for those running money in the proliferating hedge fund business. In hedgehogging, Biggs offers a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes at the personalities and egos making decisions about the enormous sums being dumped en masse into these funds. This book is great, It's full of personal anecdotes and critical insights from an insider's insider. You should not even consider giving money to anyone on Wall Street ever again until you've read this book." - Addison Wiggin, Agora Financial LLC, author of the New York Times bestseller The Demise of the Dollar, and coauthor of Empire of Debt
Rare is the Opportunity to chat with a legendary figure and hear the unvarnished truth about what really goes on behind the scenes. Hedgehogging represents just such an opportunity, allowing you to step inside the world of Wall Street with Barton Biggs as he discusses investing in general, hedge funds in particular, and how he has learned to find and profit from the best moneymaking opportunities in an eat-what-you-kill, cutthroat investment world.
About the Author
Larry Webber is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt and holds a Masters of Project Management degree from West Carolina University. He has supported quality initiatives at multiple major manufacturers and in software development companies. He’s currently a Project Manager and Six Sigma Black Belt working for Computer Science Corporation. Larry is also retired from the Army Reserve as an infantry First Sergeant, is a certified Master Business Continuity Planner and a certified Project Manager, and holds an MBA and BSBA from Rockhurst College. He can be reached at
[email protected].
Michael Wallace has more than 25 years of experience in the information systems field. He graduated magna cum laude from Wright State University with a bachelor of science degree in Management Science. Michael has worked as an application developer, a systems analyst, and a technical and business consultant and has assisted the state of Ohio in developing statewide IT policies. He’s active in the local technical community, is President of the Columbus International Association of Microsoft Certified Partners (IAMCP), is a Competent Toastmaster with Toastmasters International, and graduated from the Executive MBA program at the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University. Michael is now the Vice President of Application Engineering at Result Data, which provides its clients with guidance on IT strategy, application development, business intelligence, disaster-recovery planning, and policies and procedures. He’s also an adjunct faculty member at The Ohio State University and at DeVry University’s Keller Graduate School of Management, and he has published several articles and books on business and technology topics. He can be reached at [email protected].
Table of Contents
Introduction.
Part I: Understanding the Basics of Quality Control.
Chapter 1: Defining and Explaining Quality Control.
Chapter 2: Understanding the Importance of Quality Standards.
Chapter 3: Using Quality Assurance for the Best Results.
Chapter 4: The Role of Inspection in Quality Control.
Part II: Putting Fundamental Quality Control Methods to Use.
Chapter 5: Starting Down the Road to Quality.
Chapter 6: Detecting the Voice of the Customer in Quality Issues.
Chapter 7: Preparing to Measure Your Current Quality Process.
Chapter 8: Collecting Your Quality Data.
Chapter 9: Evaluating Quality with Statistics.
Chapter 10: Assessing Quality with Statistical Process Control.
Part III: Whipping Quality Control into Shape with Lean Processes.
Chapter 11: Gathering the Nuts and Bolts of Lean Processes.
Chapter 12: Keeping Your Eyes on the Process: Value Stream Mapping.
Chapter 13: Focusing on the 5S Method.
Chapter 14: Empowering Workers to Make Changes with Rapid Improvement.
Chapter 15: Looking at Lean Materials and Kanban.
Part IV: Surveying Other Quality Control Techniques.
Chapter 16: Combining the Best of All Worlds in Total Quality Management.
Chapter 17: Fixing Tough Problems with Six Sigma.
Chapter 18: Delving into Quality Function Deployment.
Chapter 19: Considering the Theory of Constraints.
Part V: The Part of Tens.
Chapter 20: Ten Steps for Incorporating Quality into a New Product and/or Process.
Chapter 21: Ten (Or So) Web Sites with Quality Control Tips and Techniques.
Index.