Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs – April 2014

Welcome to April 2014 edition of Carnival of Quality Management Articles and Blogs.

We continue with our topic for in-depth view: Nonconformity / Non – conformance, focusing on Non – conformance in this issue.

Refusal | objection | dissent | protest | disobedience | disagreement

         and Antonyms

concurrence |acceptance |agreement |approval

for noncompliance .

A non-conformance is a departure from an agreed arrangement between an approval authority (or orthodox position) and an individual or group performing work.

In the context of quality management an “arrangement” is commonly an agreement to conform to: A Work Product Standard; A Predefined Procedure; A Work Product Specification; A Documentation Plan; An International Standard for Best Practice.

Nonconformity refers to a failure to comply with requirements, whereas Nonconformance refers to a deficiency in a characteristic, documentation, or procedure that renders the quality of an item or activity unacceptable or indeterminate; nonfulfillment of a specified requirement.

A non-compliance is the failure to adhere to an Act or its Regulations
A non-conformance is the failure to comply with a requirement, standard, or procedure.

A Google search throws up a host of additional informative article and links in so far as Non-conformance / Non-compliance is concerned. Among several such results, we take a look at selected few, from different fields.

Failure or refusal to comply. In medicine, the term noncompliance is commonly used in regard to a patient who does not take a prescribed medication or follow a prescribed course of treatment.

The process of determining noncompliance is an important aspect of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards system, as well as the only established mechanism for determining noncompliance with the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) itself. Noncompliance with an NPT safeguards agreement constitutes violation of Article III of the NPT, the obligation to accept safeguards on all nuclear material, and, depending on the circumstances, possibly a violation of Article II, the obligation not to acquire nuclear weapons.

Noncompliance: Any action or activity associated with the conduct or oversight of research involving human subjects that fails to comply with the research plan as approved by a designated IRB or federal regulations or institutional policies governing such research. Non-compliance may range from minor to serious, be unintentional or willful, and may occur once or several times.

Noncompliance with regulations by enterprises is said to be rife in developing countries. Yet there is limited systematic evidence of the magnitude of noncompliance at the enterprise level. Making innovative use of two complementary data sources, this paper quantifies noncompliance for India’s Factories Act without the question of illegality ever being raised directly with enterprises. The paper finds that more than twice as many firms are not complying as are complying. Further, the number of non-compliant firms is much larger than the number of firms adjusting out of the regulation. Thus noncompliance with the Factories Act is a key feature of the “missing middle” in India. The paper explores the main trends and patterns of noncompliance and highlights a number of key issues for further analytical and policy research.

As we search for more results, we observe that more of the articles deal with the subject from Quality (Management or Function or Profession). Hence we will take a more detailed look at these articles in our future edition when will be having a look at the subject purely in terms of Quality (Management or Function or Profession).

Next, we turn our sails to our regular sections, starting with an international body actively engaged in furtherance of quality.

The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) is the premier global advocate for product development and management professionals. Our mission is to improve the effectiveness of individuals and organizations in product development and management. This is accomplished by providing resources for professional development, information, collaboration and promotion of new product development and management.

The development of new products and services involves an integrated set of unique activities. PDMA is the only organization that focuses on addressing this challenge by providing the following opportunities for professional development: education, experience, networking and recognition.

Updates can be obtained from PDMA News blog for association news or the PDMA Blog which features content from PDMA members.

And then move over to ASQ TV Episode- Six Sigma

Six Sigma is a well-known quality method. But like most quality techniques, its use changes and evolves as organizations do. In this episode, we discuss benefits and challenges associated with implementing Six Sigma; how to distinguish the Six Sigma belt colors; the potential return on investment of implementing Six Sigma; the basics of DMAIC; and play a fun game of “Name That Black Belt.”

Lean and Six Sigma Conference Audio

Costs and Savings

DMAIC

Our ASQ’s Influential Voice for the month is -Shon Isenhour

Shon IsenhourBased in Charleston, South Carolina, Shon Isenhour specializes in business process management, strategic planning, organizational change management, and reliability engineering. He has led improvement initiatives for industries such as pharmaceuticals, metals, petrochemical, paper, and power generation, among others. He is direction of education and work execution management at GPAllied. Shon writes about reliability on Reliability Now, with a tagline – Developing and Sustaining Improved Corporate Bottom Line Performance.

We take a detailed look at one of the posts on this blog.

Education Without Application Is Just Entertainment: 3 things that can help create a return on education.

Retention:Take the time to map out the skills you need the person to have and the learning objectives associated with those skills. Then the training can be customized to only provide the points and topics they need to be successful.

Application: Once a student has seen a new way to do something in the training environment they must apply the skills nearly immediately. This helps with the previous topic of retention but it also creates success and real world examples that can be used to continue the change process.

Culture Manipulation: With a pull from leadership and the success of quick application you can begin to manipulate the culture into the target state.

We do not have a fresh insight this month in so far as Curious Cat Management Improvement Carnival category is concerned.So we take a brief stay at Good Process Improvement Practices and related articles – Change is not Improvement – How to Improve – Where to Start Improvement – Operational Excellence – How to Manage What You Can’t Measure – Making Better Decisions – Find the Root Cause Instead of the Person to Blame

I look forward to your active participation in enriching the blog carnival as we pursue our journey …………….

Author: ASHOK M VAISHNAV

In July 2011, I opted to retire from my active career as a practicing management professional. In the 38 years that I pursued this career, I had opportunity to work in diverse capacities, in small-to-medium-to-large engineering companies. Whether I was setting up Greenfield projects or Brownfield projects, nurturing the new start-ups or accelerating the stabilized unit to a next phase growth, I had many more occasions to take the paths uncharted. The life then was so challenging! One of the biggest casualty in that phase was my disregards towards my hobbies - Be with The Family, Enjoy Music form Films of 1940s to mid-1970s period, write on whatever I liked to read, pursue amateur photography and indulge in solving the chess problems. So I commenced my Second Innings to focus on this area of my life as the primary occupation. At the end of 12 years now, even as I have evolved a certain pattern for my blog, I need to plan to create certain definitive changes in that pattern over next year or two. Because, The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.