Ceptara

Summary

• Quality Systems of the past are not keeping up with today's information paradigms
• Wikis have solved some issues with flexibility but can still suffer from aging information
• Internet knowledge is vast and accessible, but the quality of the information can be questionable
• Most of our information is static
• Our systems need to evolve and include considerations for personalization, predictability, federation, and controlability.

SUMMARY

• Businesses are required to be as efficient as they can be.
• People are an integral part of any needed improvements.
• Process improvement is a systematic and deliberate process focused on doing the work in the most effective and efficient way.
• Business value is achieved by focusing on the production system and the results

In support of the need to develop high performing folks - we've released our Personal Excellence workshop.

Our test classes have been very well received. Some comments:

"I really enjoyed how you condensed the two books down into a workable system." "I was impressed by the diagrams you used to connect goals, projects, and tasks and their relationships"

"The methods discussed can double my productivity, I'm not one to pass that up."

Article Summary

• Any successful team effort requires the individuals to be highly motivated and self managing.
• People can develop their motivation and self-management skills if they focus on their foundation, work organization, and action execution.
• The Be More Effective workshop can be deployed to help people develop those skills.

I will be delivering a talk at the next AmCon show in Bellevue Washington on February 19 or 20, 2008. I've given this talk a number of times, so please stop by and say hello if you've found the topics interesting and/or useful.

During a recent NWQF (Northwest Quality Forum) meeting, the team members discussed how to market quality. There were some very interesting discussions. The list below attempts to capture some of the key ideas. In no particular order -

Recently I attended a training session on "Running Effective Meetings". It was a nice refresher course and summarized a number of practices quite well. Below I've included some notes on creating an agenda that was included in the course. Running Effective Meetings Recipe for Creating an Agenda

Just finished "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable" by Patrick M. Lencioni [Book Link]. It's written in the same style as "The Goal" (Goldratt, Cox) [Book Link], i.e. a method taught in the form of a story.

Often we focus on quality when our impact is greatly diminished.  Trying to improve the quality of widget at the manufacturing phase is only marginally effective considering a large portion of defects are designed in.  This is also true for software and services,  If we were to consider quality in the upfront design or creation process our decisions would have a greater impact and cost a great deal less than discovering them further down the chain.  In this article, I describe the DFQ/QA/QC/CE model (Engineering Quality Cycle) which is used to build quality into the engineering process.

Just wanted to remind everyone that I have a talk coming up next week, February 19th, at the AmCon conference in Bellevue Washington - it's FREE, so don't pass up this opportunity to learn more about "Six Sigma in Purchasing" - more here including the presentation material. The talk focuses on presenting a number of Supplier Management practices and describing the quality tools that can be used to execute supplier management better.