Poor-Quality Cost


Book Description

An easy-to-read and highly informative book on an extremely important subject.Provides a road map for establishing a system for the identification and elimination of poor-quality costs.Gives management at all levels an important tool for maximization of profit eliminating the concept of optimum operating quality-cost point.




Principles of Quality Costs, Fourth Edition


Book Description

The last decade has seen wide changes in how quality standards are applied in industry. We now have two functions: quality assurance and process improvement. Quality assurance focuses primarily on product quality, while process improvement focuses on process quality; the principles of quality cost support both. The purpose of this book remains the same as the third edition: to provide a basic understanding of the principles of quality cost. Using this book, organizations can develop and implement a quality cost system to fit their needs. Used as an adjunct to overall financial management, these principles will help maintain vital quality improvement programs over extended timeframes. This fourth edition now includes information on the quality cost systems involved with the education, service, banking, and software development industries. You'll also find new material on ISO 9001, cost systems in small businesses, and activity based costing. Additional information on team-based problem-solving, customer satisfaction, and the costs involved with the defense industry are also offered.




Poor-Quality Cost


Book Description

An easy-to-read and highly informative book on an extremely important subject.Provides a road map for establishing a system for the identification and elimination of poor-quality costs.Gives management at all levels an important tool for maximization of profit eliminating the concept of optimum operating quality-cost point.




Crossing the Global Quality Chasm


Book Description

In 2015, building on the advances of the Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations adopted Sustainable Development Goals that include an explicit commitment to achieve universal health coverage by 2030. However, enormous gaps remain between what is achievable in human health and where global health stands today, and progress has been both incomplete and unevenly distributed. In order to meet this goal, a deliberate and comprehensive effort is needed to improve the quality of health care services globally. Crossing the Global Quality Chasm: Improving Health Care Worldwide focuses on one particular shortfall in health care affecting global populations: defects in the quality of care. This study reviews the available evidence on the quality of care worldwide and makes recommendations to improve health care quality globally while expanding access to preventive and therapeutic services, with a focus in low-resource areas. Crossing the Global Quality Chasm emphasizes the organization and delivery of safe and effective care at the patient/provider interface. This study explores issues of access to services and commodities, effectiveness, safety, efficiency, and equity. Focusing on front line service delivery that can directly impact health outcomes for individuals and populations, this book will be an essential guide for key stakeholders, governments, donors, health systems, and others involved in health care.




Quality Management in Plastics Processing


Book Description

Quality Management in Plastics Processing provides a structured approach to the techniques of quality management, also covering topics of relevance to plastics processors. The book's focus isn't just on implementation of formal quality systems, such as ISO 9001, but about real world, practical guidance in establishing good quality management. Ultimately, improved quality management delivers better products, higher customer satisfaction, increased sales, and reduced operation costs. The book helps practitioners who are wondering how to begin implementing quality management techniques in their business focus on key management and technical issues, including raw materials, processing, and operations. It is a roadmap for all company operations, from people, product design, sales/marketing, and production – all of which are impacted by, and involved in, the implementation of an effective quality management system. Readers in the plastics processing industry will find this comprehensive book to be a valuable resource. - Helps readers deliver better products, higher customer satisfaction, and increased profits with easily applicable guidance for the plastics industry - Provides engineers and technical personnel with the tools they need to start a process of continuous improvement in their company - Presents practical guidance to help plastics processing companies organize, stimulate, and complete effective quality improvement projects




The ASQ Quality Improvement Pocket Guide


Book Description

This pocket guide is designed to be a quick, on-the-job reference for anyone interested in making their workplace more effective and efficient. It will provide a solid initial overview of what “quality” is and how it could impact you and your organization. Use it to compare how you and your organization are doing things, and to see whether what’s described in the guide might be useful. The tools of quality described herein are universal. People across the world need to find better, more effective ways to improve the creation and performance of products and services. Since organizational and process improvement is increasingly integrated into all areas of an organization, everyone must understand the basic principles of process control and process improvement. This succinct and concentrated guide can help. Unlike any other pocket guide on the market, included throughout are direct links to numerous free online resources that not only go deeper but also to show these concepts and tools in action: case studies, articles, webcasts, templates, tutorials, examples from the ASQ Service Division’s Service Quality Body of Knowledge (SQBOK), and much more. This pocket guide serves as a gateway into the wealth of peerless content that ASQ offers.




Quality is Free


Book Description

"Do things right in the first place, and you won't have to pay to fix them or do them over. Whether you manage a large plant or run your own small business, applying this simple principle of quality control will boost your profits and your career. 'Quality Is Free' sets forth easy-to-implement programs, using actual case histories to demonstrate just how well quality control works, and providing important tools for success"--




Making Medicines Affordable


Book Description

Thanks to remarkable advances in modern health care attributable to science, engineering, and medicine, it is now possible to cure or manage illnesses that were long deemed untreatable. At the same time, however, the United States is facing the vexing challenge of a seemingly uncontrolled rise in the cost of health care. Total medical expenditures are rapidly approaching 20 percent of the gross domestic product and are crowding out other priorities of national importance. The use of increasingly expensive prescription drugs is a significant part of this problem, making the cost of biopharmaceuticals a serious national concern with broad political implications. Especially with the highly visible and very large price increases for prescription drugs that have occurred in recent years, finding a way to make prescription medicinesâ€"and health care at largeâ€"more affordable for everyone has become a socioeconomic imperative. Affordability is a complex function of factors, including not just the prices of the drugs themselves, but also the details of an individual's insurance coverage and the number of medical conditions that an individual or family confronts. Therefore, any solution to the affordability issue will require considering all of these factors together. The current high and increasing costs of prescription drugsâ€"coupled with the broader trends in overall health care costsâ€"is unsustainable to society as a whole. Making Medicines Affordable examines patient access to affordable and effective therapies, with emphasis on drug pricing, inflation in the cost of drugs, and insurance design. This report explores structural and policy factors influencing drug pricing, drug access programs, the emerging role of comparative effectiveness assessments in payment policies, changing finances of medical practice with regard to drug costs and reimbursement, and measures to prevent drug shortages and foster continued innovation in drug development. It makes recommendations for policy actions that could address drug price trends, improve patient access to affordable and effective treatments, and encourage innovations that address significant needs in health care.




Communities in Action


Book Description

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.




Hand to Mouth


Book Description

The real-life Nickel and Dimed—the author of the wildly popular “Poverty Thoughts” essay tells what it’s like to be working poor in America. ONE OF THE FIVE MOST IMPORTANT BOOKS OF THE YEAR--Esquire “DEVASTATINGLY SMART AND FUNNY. I am the author of Nickel and Dimed, which tells the story of my own brief attempt, as a semi-undercover journalist, to survive on low-wage retail and service jobs. TIRADO IS THE REAL THING.”—Barbara Ehrenreich, from the Foreword As the haves and have-nots grow more separate and unequal in America, the working poor don’t get heard from much. Now they have a voice—and it’s forthright, funny, and just a little bit furious. Here, Linda Tirado tells what it’s like, day after day, to work, eat, shop, raise kids, and keep a roof over your head without enough money. She also answers questions often asked about those who live on or near minimum wage: Why don’t they get better jobs? Why don’t they make better choices? Why do they smoke cigarettes and have ugly lawns? Why don’t they borrow from their parents? Enlightening and entertaining, Hand to Mouth opens up a new and much-needed dialogue between the people who just don’t have it and the people who just don’t get it.