Software for Quality: Symphony Technologies: Featured Articles Archive

Articles Archive

Symphony brings you informative articles by experts and practitioners in the field of Quality & Productivity.

These articles are focused on Popular Quality & Productivity. It will always be our endeavor to publish simple, basic, informative and insightful articles about all aspects of Quality & Productivity...something that you can take with you and use.

Feedback

We would welcome your comments and suggestions about the articles published. It is through interaction with you Quality Professionals that we can continuously improve.

We invite you to participate in the effort by contributing articles and case studies.
Please email us at: editor@symphonytech.com.

Subscribe to Article Alert

Click here to Subscribe FREE to the 'New Article Alert'. We shall email you whenever we publish a new article on out website.

Check out the previously published articles below: Click on the image to download the article in PDF format.

Process Capability Evaluation - Looking beyond the obvious: This article touches on basic Process Capability calculations with bilateral and unilateral tolerances. It also discusses various approches that may be taken when the data are not normally distributed.

Measurement Systems Analysis - A management perspective: An introductory article on what is MSA and why it is so important in all quality initiatives.

Three Romeos and A Juliet: Our early brush with Design of Experiments: This is an entertaining story about how three young students discovered the power of DOE trying to win over the heart of the damsel of their dreams! Ravi Khare narrates this episode out of his youthful days, and how it related to his training in DOE in later years.
Now a featured article on iSixSigma.

Technique Review - Short-Run SPC: With consumers' tastes changing frequently, companies are forced to adopt small batch production schedules. To conduct SPC studies on these short runs, where the batch may get over before sufficient data is collected, is a new challenge. We need to focus on the actual Process Parameters that produces the part rather than the traditional method of measuring a part characteristic to control the process. This technique review is based on Thomas Pyzdek's famous book - The Six Sigma Handbook.

Simulation - A powerful technique to improve Quality & Productivity: Simulation is an important and useful technique that can help users understand and model real life systems. Once built, the models can be run to give realistic results. This provides a valuable support in making decisions on a more logical and scientific basis. Ravi Khare, in this article makes a simple introduction to the techniques and methods of simulation, and explores the various applications where people have used simulation to improve Quality and Productivity.

The Balanced Score Card: Shree Phadnis, in his article on Balanced Score Card shows how it is important to get an Enterprise view of the organization's performance by integrating Financial measures with other key performance indicators. In this technically fine, yet easy to read article, the author delves into the objectives that every organization tries to achieve viz. Customer satisfaction, Internal business processes and Organizational growth, learning and innovation.

Customer Satisfaction Measurement: The new standard ISO 9000:2000 is increasingly being looked upon as a sound business practice rather than just a Quality Standard. Among the major changes from the earlier standard are greater emphasis on Management Responsibility, the Process Approach and Measurement of Customer Satisfaction. In this article, Ashish Bhave has tried to demystify the concept of Customer Satisfaction and methodology of its measurement.

The Power of PRE-Control: PRE-Control technique helps shop operators to control the process so that defective parts are not produced. Although simple to understand for even the shop operators, PRE-Control is statistically robust. Unlike SPC where we need 25 subgroups before we can draw control limits and conclusions, PRE-Control starts giving feedback about the process from the very beginning making it highly responsive to the process signals, that too without charting!

Appropriate Tolerancing for Improved Profits: The techniques of Scientific Tolerancing based on analysis of the effects of variation on the output, lead to lowering of costs, improvement of Quality, and Robustness of Application, for products and processes. This can be achieved without incurring extra costs.

Production Scheduling With a Spreadsheet: Production Scheduling Systems have been considered the forte of ERP software solution providers - affordable only by large corporate users.
Tony Rice shows us that with some training in the principles of production scheduling, an average user can harness the enormous power of spreadsheets to implement not just a prototype, but also full-scale production scheduling application. Reading this article will reiterate your belief, that the best and most practicable solutions and often the simple ones.

Measuring Your Process Capability: Process capability is the long-term performance level of the process after it has been brought under statistical control. It is the ability of the combination of your 5 M's to produce a product that will consistently meet the design requirements and the customer expectation.
Dr. Nosh Kapadia explains: How to calculate Cp, Cpk, Cpl and Cpu indices, Why should You know the Capability of Your and your supplier's Processes, The difference between Capability indices and Process performance indices, The relation between Process capability and defect rate and Some assumptions and precautions while calculating process capability indices.

The Six Sigma Approach: Six Sigma is a system that combines the continuous improvement tools, which are on hand to Focus on our processes, Analyze and compare them, and Objectively assign resources to those processes requiring the most attention.
This article discusses Six Sigma approach right from its evolution at Motorola and GE in the early '90s. Specifically, What exactly is Six Sigma Approach, The Six Sigma Methodology and the four phases of a Six Sigma Project, Strategies to be adopted for introduction of Six Sigma in different types of organizations and Criticism of Six Sigma.

Top