Quality Improvement Tools

Quality Improvement Tools

1. ISO 9001 - Chen & Cheng, 2012)

   • Quality Management system design influences
     • Environment
     • Size & Structure
     • Product or service
     • Quality objectives
     • Abilities of employees
     • Changes in environment
     • Risks in environment
   • Strategic decision of the organization
   • Assess ability to meet requirements
     • Customer
     • Regulatory
     • Organization
   • Internal & External parties
   • Quality management principles
     • Customer Focus
     • Leadership
     • Involvement of people
     • Process approach
     • System approach to management
     • Continual improvement
     • Factual approach to decision making
     • Mutually beneficial supplier relationships

2. Lean/Six Sigma - Schweikhart, S. A., Ph. D., & Dembe, A. E., Sc. D. (2009, October)

   • Lean
     • Designing, improving, and managing processes
     • Improve effieciency and eliminate waste
       • Resources that do not add value
         • Mistakes needing rectification
         • Unneeded process steps
         • Movement of materials or people without a purpose
         • Unnecessary waiting
         • Creation of goods not needed by end users
     • Application
   • Six sigma
     • Improve quality and efficiency of processes
     • Makes processes more uniform and precise
     • DMAIC
       • Define
       • Measure
       • Analyze
       • Improve
       • Control
     • Application
       • Healthcare
         • Making deliverables more discrete and measurable
         • Retaining strong customer focus
         • Quantifying results
         • Deliver quality improvements in a designated timeframe
       • Lab Sciences
         • Reduce auto-verification errors
         • Ensure sufficient volume of samples
         • Assure repeatability and reproducibility or tests
         • Establish continuous and efficient workflow

3. Plan Do Study Act - (Setting a Course for Change - Part 3 of 3, 2015)

   • Study
     • Did the results match predictions
     • Compare results to previous performance
     • What did you learn
   • Plan
     • Describe test
     • How to know it is improvement
     • What does change impact
     • Predict what will happen
   • Do
     • Carried out as planned
     • Record data and observations
     • Observations not part of plan
   • Act
     • Adopt? - Select changes to implement
     • Adapt? - Improve change / Continue testing
     • Abandon? - Discard change and try different plan