Quality Tools

The Quality Tools can be used to improve any kind of process, including manufacturing processes, business processes, and educational processes. Learning to use the Quality Tools is not difficult. For example the Cookbookis a step-by-step guide for Quality Tools to using each tool, examples, and when appropriate, Excel templates.

The material for each Quality Tools can be accessed from them easily. The Quality Tools are classified into three major categories, the traditional tools, the management/planning tools, and the 1995 tools. Since this is a continuing work, additions, improvements and changes may occur at any time.

The aim of the Quality Tools Cookbook is to provide a free, comprehensive, reference to the Quality Tools for students, faculty, or anyone on the Internet who may find it useful. Should you choose to use any of the materials, they'd like to hear from you like how you are using them. If you have suggestions for improvement, or discover errors, please send them an e-mail message with your comments at: sytsmas@netonecom.net or manleyk@netonecom.net

Traditional Quality Tools

Histograms Quality Tools: A Histogram is used to display in bar graph format measurement data distributed by categories. A histogram is used for: Making decisions about a process, product, or procedure that could be improved after examining the variation (example: Should the school invest in a computer-based tutoring program for low achieving students in Algebra I after examining the grade distribution?; are more shafts being produced out of specification that are too big rather than too small?). Displaying easily the variation in the process (example: Which units are causing the most difficulty for students? Is the variation in a process due to parts that are too long or parts that are too short?)

Cause and Effect Diagrams Quality Tools (Fishbone Diagram): A Cause and Effect Diagram is an analysis tool to display possible causes of a specific problem or condition. A cause and effect diagram is used for: Identifying potential causes of a problem or issue in an orderly way (example: Why has membership in the band decreased? Why isn't the phone being answered on time? Why is the production process suddenly producing so many defects?) Summarizing major causes fewer than four categories (e.g., People, Machines, Methods, and Materials or Policies, Procedures, People, and Plant)

Check Sheets Quality Tools: The Check Sheet is a data-gathering and interpretation tool. A Check Sheet is used for: distinguishing between fact and opinion (example: how does the community perceive the effectiveness of the school in preparing students for the world of work?) gathering data about how often a problem is occurring (example: how often are students missing classes?) gathering data about the type of problem occurring (example: What is the most common type of word processing error created by the students-grammar, punctuation, transposing letters, etc.?)

Pareto Diagrams Quality Tools: A Pareto Chart is a special form of a bar graph and is used to display the relative importance of problems or conditions. A Pareto chart is used for: Focusing on critical issues by ranking them in terms of importance and frequency (example: Which course causes the most difficulty for students? Which problem with Product X is most significant to our customers?) Prioritizing problems or causes to efficiently initiate problem solving (example: Which discipline problems should be tackled first? or, what is the most frequent complaint by parents regarding the school? Solution of what production problem will improve quality most?) Analyzing problems or causes by different groupings of data (e.g., by program, by teacher, by school building; by machine, by team) Analyzing the before and after impact of changes made in a process (example: What is the most common complaint of parents before and after the new principal was hired?; has the initiation of a quality improvement program reduced the number of defectives?)

The other traditional Quality Tools are:

·         Control Charts Quality Tools

·        Scatter Diagrams Quality Tools

Management and Planning Quality Tools