Quality Toolbox

This book is a comprehensive reference to a variety of methods and techniques: those most commonly used for quality improvement, many less commonly used, and some created by the author and not available elsewhere. The reader will find the widely used seven basic quality control tools (for example, fishbone diagram, and Pareto chart) as well as the newer management and planning tools. Tools are included for generating and organizing ideas, evaluating ideas, analyzing processes, determining root causes, planning, and basic data-handling and statistics. The book is written and organized to be as simple as possible to use so that anyone can find and learn new tools without a teacher. This edition liberally uses icons with each tool description to reinforce for the reader what kind of tool it is and where it is used within the improvement process. With this book close at hand, a quality improvement team becomes capable of more efficient and effective work with less assistance from a trained quality consultant. In this second edition, the author added 34 tools and 18 variations. Chapter 4 has been expanded to include detailed case studies from three Baldrige Award winners. An entirely new chapter, "Mega-Tools: Quality Management Systems," puts the tools into two contexts: the historical evolution of quality improvement and the quality management systems within which the tools are used.
Content:
Front Matter
• List of Figures and Tables
Prefaces
• Table of Contents
1. How to Use This Book
2. Mega-Tools: Quality Management Systems
3. The Quality Improvement Process
4. Quality Improvement Stories
5. The Tools
Appendix
• Resources
Index