101 Good Ideas: How to Improve Just About Any Process - Softcover

BERNOWSKI

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0873893913 ISBN 13: 9780873893916

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Inc.,US, 1998

Synopsis

This book consists of a collection of articles that appeared in Quality Progress between April 1988 and January 1999. The magazine is published monthly by the American Society of Quality Control. The articles consist of real-world applications and common tools and approaches to quality improvement.

About this title

From the Author

Our good idea is now a book.
Ever have a boss who listened? We had one back in 1988, and the roots of this book can be traced to that relationship. You see, Brad Stratton first proposed developing a continuing series of articles titled "One Good Idea" back in 1985. At that time, he worked for a restaurant trade magazine with a less-than-ideal boss. His response to the proposal was a shrug of the shoulders and an "I don’t know about that." Actually, he didn’t know much about a lot of things. He eventually was promoted to vice president (the Peter Principle at work) before being fired.

A few weeks after Brad arrived at Quality Progress magazine, he told that story to his editor, Nancy Karabatsos.

"So what happened to your idea?" she asked.

"Nothing," Brad said.

"Well, I think we should do it," she said.

And we did.

After getting the green light from Nancy, Brad oversaw what was dubbed One Good Idea for the next few years. Shortly after Nancy left the magazine in May 1990, Brad became editor and Karen Bemowski was promoted to associate editor—Brad’s old position. Within a few months, Karen took over the monthly editing of the column.

101 Good Ideas, therefore, is a collection of the One Good Idea articles that appeared in Quality Progress, the monthly magazine of the American Society for Quality, between April 1988 and January 1998. While Brad and Karen edited the majority of the articles and now this book, the book’s strength comes from the experiences of the authors who submitted the articles and the members of the magazine’s review board who reviewed them and offered suggestions to make the articles better. Without their contributions, this book would not exist.

The 101 good ideas are real-world applications of common process improvement tools and approaches. One could read several books about quality improvement and not find as many implementation examples as can be found in 101 Good Ideas.

Where the book differs from what has appeared on the pages of Quality Progress is the articles have been arranged in groups with similar articles. Where several months (or years) might have passed between articles about how to promote quality or analyze data, this book places them on consecutive pages. We also link the various articles in each chapter with an introduction.

Our hope is that regardless of whether one is a long-time reader of Quality Progress or a first-time visitor to the world of improving processes, he or she will find value in the information. We can both honestly report that we have learned a great deal from these articles and enjoyed revisiting them while preparing this book.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Inc.,US
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0873893913
• ISBN 13: 9780873893916
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128