Ever since the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) was established in 1987, many other countries have developed their own version of a national quality award (NQA). These NQAs tend to follow the general framework of the MBNQA with different emphases on criteria items such as...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss areas where there could be gaps between traditional quality management concepts and the reality, and point out the modern‐day paradigm shifts as thoughts and ideals of the past gradually give way to realistic assessments and concrete tools of...

Control charts are widely used in industry to monitor processes that are far from Zero-Defect (ZD), and their use in a near Zero-Defect manufacturing environment poses many problems. This book presents techniques of using control charts for high-quality processes, and some recent findings and...