Qu ality Progress | D eCember 2013 salar y survey v olume 46/Number 12
Putting Best Practices to Work
www.qualityprogress.com | December 2013
The Global Voice of QualityTM
Hiring m
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Putting Best Practices to Work | December 2013 | www.qualityprogress.com
Contents
FEATURES
•
Breaking More Down
Access 19 more sections of the QP Salary Survey, including four dedicated to self-employed consultants.
•
All in One
The five salary survey sections printed in this issue of QP are also available in the complete salary survey online report—200-plus pages containing 24 sections and more than 110 graphics—in PDF format.
•
Calculated Moves
Access results and make quick comparisons with QP’s updated salary calculator.
•
Hear It Out
Listen to a webcast with analysis of this year’s survey findings and career advice.
•
Back to Basics
Translated in Spanish.www.qualityprogress.com
Only
@
SALARY SURVEYRead Their Minds
In today’s competitive job market, everyone looks for an advantage over others seeking the same job and promotion. Something new in this year’s QP Salary Survey report might give you an edge: an analysis of the qualifications, assets and traits hiring managers expect to see in candidates for specific job titles in the quality community.
From there, pore over all 24 sections (19 online) of the most
comprehensive examination of salaries in the quality community to gain more insight into how you compare to others. You’ll find breakdowns of quality professionals’ salaries by job title, education, training, years of experience, certification and more.
by Max Christian Hansen
Behind the Results
The methodology behind taking loads of data and making sense of it all.
Overview of the Money
Salary by job title.
Regional Variations
Salary by U.S. regions and Canadian provinces.
Earnings Rise With Experience
Salary by number of years in the quality field.
Certifiably Valuable
Salary by ASQ and Exemplar Global certification.
Rewards for Master Black Belts
Salary by Six Sigma training.
18
SERVICE QUALITY
The Service
Quality Platform
A five-step framework can be the building blocks for service organizations to develop effective quality programs and process improvement activities, which ultimately leads to better customer service. by Arthur J. Swersey
25
29
33
37
45
52
56
Hiring managers tell how to get the job in this y
ear’s Salary Survey results
DO YOU
QUALIFY?
Experience Certifi cations Education Industr y knowledge18
LogOn
• Complex coordination in safety, compliance and documentation.
Expert Answers
• Measuring customer experience. • SPC for low-volume assembly.
Keeping Current
• Curing what ails the Obamacare website. • Three 2013 Baldrige recipients named.
Mr. Pareto Head
QP Toolbox
QP Reviews
DEPARTMENTS
Up Front
Being selective.Perspectives
Be a trendsetter.3.4 per Million
Taking the best of two methods.
Quality in the First Person
Carrying social responsibility over into your personal life.
Career Corner
Is now the time to reinvent yourself and your career?
Back to Basics
A strategy to strengthen SOPs.
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Being Selective
The attributes of high-caliber candidates
It’s been saId—repeatedly—that money makes the world go ‘round. And yes, what you take home is certainly a contributor to your satisfaction with your job. Someone has to pay the bills, right?
But there are so many more facets to a fulfilling career. Employee engagement is one of the biggest buzzwords right now, probably because of the linkage research has shown between engaged employees and organizations that are more productive, more efficient and more profitable.
According to a recent Gallup report, “2013 State of the American Workplace”: “Engaged workers are the lifeblood of their organizations. Work units in the top 25% of Gallup’s Q12 Client Database have significantly higher productivity, profitability, and customer ratings, less turnover and absenteeism, and fewer safety incidents than those in the bottom 25%.” (The report can be found at www.gallup.com.)
And this is one reason hiring and retaining the best and brightest talent is getting so much attention these days: Engagement is tied to the right employees being in the right jobs. This year’s QP Salary Survey specifically targeted hiring managers with a set of questions related to what they look for when reviewing candidates for employment. Respondents to these questions got very specific about what it takes to pique their in-terest in the QP Salary Survey analysis presented in “Read Their Minds,” p. 18. Author Max Christian Hansen also provides some in-depth analysis as to the key attributes hiring managers zero in on.
When you’re looking to hire someone to join your team, finding the right fit is essen-tial to maximizing performance and the engagement that employee feels.
There’s another lesson here for those of you who are coasting, ambivalent or down-right miserable in your jobs. If you acquire the down-right skills, experience, and training and education, you will have a much easier time rising to the top of the candidate pool when that dream job opens up. QP
Seiche Sanders Editor
ExEcutivE Editor and associatE PublishEr Seiche Sanders associatE Editor Mark Edmund assistant Editor Amanda Hankel manuscriPt coordinator Valerie Ellifson contributing Editor Megan Schmidt coPY Editor Susan E. Daniels art dirEctor Mary uttech graPhic dEsignEr Sandy Wyss Production Cathy Milquet advErtising Production Barbara Mitrovic
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Kathy thomas markEting administrator Matt Meinholz Editorial officEs phone: 414-272-8575 fax: 414-272-1734 advErtising officEs phone: 866-277-5666 asQ administration cEo paul E. Borawski managing directors Ajoy Bose Julie Gabelmann Brian J. LeHouillier Michelle Mason Laurel nelson-rowe
to promote discussion of issues in the field of quality and ensure coverage of all responsible points of view, Quality
Progress publishes articles representing conflicting and
minor-ity views. opinions expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily of ASQ or Quality Progress. use of the ASQ logo in advertisements does not necessarily constitute endorsement of that particular product or service by ASQ.
QualitY ProgrEss
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P
December 2013 • Qp 5
log
on
Account for complexity
While reading the conclusion of Mustafa ghaleiw’s article, “Quality vs. Safety” (September 2013, pp. 22-27), which states that quality should be first in everything the industry does or processes won’t be safe, I became quite uncomfortable because it does not adequately reflect the complexity of offshore development proj-ects. It is unrealistic to think that a single discipline would have sufficient expertise to envelop all systems and processes. For instance, the bow tie and safety-critical elements examples that are presented are generally owned by the risk management and process safety engineering teams, respectively.Similarly, document control is owned by project services, record control by information management and assurance reviews are conducted by an independent safety and operation group function.
The quality discipline in oil and gas projects is confined to quality control activities, such as planning for product realization and validation of manufac-turing processes via the deployment of inspectors. This set of activities is comprehensive and complex in itself, with multiple interrelated processes and process verification requirements, leading to regulatory acceptance of the asset by the regional authority to operate.
Quality professionals in the oil and gas industries should act as integrators to help maintain the focus on the requirements of customers—the users of the asset. I refer to oscar Combs’ article, “Standard Wise,” (September 2013, pp. 16-21): “The ability to meet requirements is directly correlated with having an initial understanding of
Seen&
Heard
Stay
Connected
Find the latest news, quips and targeted content from QP staff.
Executive Editor & Associate Publisher Seiche Sanders: @ASQ_Seiche
Associate Editor Mark Edmund: @ASQ_Mark
Assistant Editor Amanda Hankel: @ASQ_Amanda
Contributing Editor Megan Schmidt: @ASQ_Megan [email protected] www.facebook.com/ groups/43461176682 www.linkedin.com/groups/quality-progress-magazine-asq-1878386 them.” We also should remember that
ASQ's manager of quality certification also includes organizational excellence. Prashant Hoskote highlights this in an article: “Too many quality leaders are practitioners—tactical thinkers who are more absorbed with methods than with business needs and organizational out-comes … quality must prove its value.”1
As quality professionals, we should always establish that requirements are documented and understood, adequate resources and competencies are in place to execute, and records will be generated that requirements were met. In my opinion, this is the overall highest quality risk to the business.
Quality professionals do not need to replace subject matter experts in every-thing to achieve these fundamental pillars of safety, compliance and documentation. For example, equipment performance teams should set the functional design input requirements, and reliability teams should be in place for projects. But this quality improvement concept is not well established in the industry.
Max Lyoen Houston
RefeRenCe
1. Prashant Hoskote, “Quality—It Isn’t What You Throw at a Problem,” Quality Management Forum, Summer 2013, pp. 1-4.
Quoted on quality
Just read the new issue of Quality Progress (“Words to Work By,” novem-ber 2013, pp. 18-25). Fantastic work! Very well compiled, as always, and fun to read! Thank you for publishing my quote—it feels great.
Prateek Dhariwal Dubai
Tune In
The latest episode of ASQ TV covers stan-dards and auditing.
In the episode, learn why ISO 9001 is being revised, hear how to prepare for a standards audit and get a refresher on the finding sheet.
Watch for the next epi-sode, available Dec. 17, which focuses on careers in quality. Visit http:// videos.asq.org to access the full video library.
December 2013 • QP 7
Q
QUALITY PROGRESSP
PAST CHAIR
James J. Rooney, ABS Consulting, global government Division
CHAIR
John C. Timmerman, gallup Inc.
CHAIR-ELECT
Stephen K. Hacker, Transformation Systems International
TREASURER
Chava Scher, RAFAEl—Advanced Defense Systems (retired)
PARLIAMENTARIAN
Karla Riesinger, ASQ
DIRECTORS
Heather l. Crawford, Apollo Endosurgery Raymond R. Crawford, Parsons Brinckerhoff Ha Dao, Emerson Climate Technologies Inc. gary n. gehring, Saskatchewan Ministry of
governmental Relations
Kathleen Jennison goonan, M.D., goonan Performance Strategies
Eric A. Hayler, BMW Manufacturing Co. James M. loseke, Sargento Foods Inc. Joanne D. Mayo
Elías Monre´al, Industrial Tool Die and Engineering Richard A. Perlman, Bayer HealthCare
Steven J. Schuelka, Calumet College Daniel E. Sniezek, lockheed Martin (retired) g. geoffrey Vining, Virginia Tech Department of
Statistics
Alejandra Vicenttin, Vicenttin Performance Excellence and Kaizen
Bharat Wakhlu, Tata Services ltd., a division of Tata Sons J. Eric Whichard, JE Whichard and Associates
QP EDITORIAL REVIEW BOARD
Randy Brull, chair
Administrative Committee
Brady Boggs, Randy Brull, Jane Campanizzi, larry Haugh, Jim Jaquess, gary Maclean, R. Dan Reid, Richard Stump
Technical reviewers
Andy Barnett, David Bonyuet, David Burger, Bernie Carpenter, l.n. Prabhu Chandrasekaran, Ken Cogan, linda Cubalchini-Travis, Ahmad Elshennawy, Mark gavoor, Kunita gear, Daniel gold, T. gourishankar, Roberto guzman, Ellen Hardy, lynne Hare, Ray Klotz, Tom Kubiak, William laFollette, Pradip Mehta, larry Picciano, gene Placzkowski, Tony Polito, Peter Pylipow, John Richards, James Rooney, Brian Scullin, Amitava Sengupta, A.V. Srinivas, Joe Tunner, Manu Vora, Keith Wagoner, Jack Westfall, Doron Zilbershtein
QuiCk Poll ReSulTS
Each month at www.qualityprogress.com, visitors can take an informal survey. Here are the numbers from last month’s Quick Poll:
How did the U.S. government shutdown affect you?
• I wasn’t affected. 51.6%
• I lost access to some of the services I need. 19.3%
• I was furloughed. 16.1%
Visit www.qualityprogress.com for the latest question: What do you like best about your job?
• The amount of money I make. • lots of career growth opportunities. • It’s challenging.
• I don’t like my job.
QP
Quality
News
Today
Recent headlines from aSQ’s global news service
(All URls case sensitive)
Automakers Mine Data to Track, Trace Defects
Tiny recalls are growing across the industry, experts say, as automakers, like drug companies and food manufacturers, build sophisticated data-mining operations to guard against costly and reputation-crippling recalls. (http://bit.ly/automakersmine)
Put Down That Doughnut: FDA to Ban Trans Fats
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has taken a first step toward potentially elimi-nating most trans fat from the food supply, saying it has made a preliminary determina-tion that a major source of trans fats—partially hydrogenated oils—is no longer “gener-ally recognized as safe.” (http://bit.ly/transfatban)
• Complete package
View 19 more sections of the QP Salary Survey, including four dedicated to self-em-ployed consultants. The five salary survey sections printed in this issue of QP are also included in the complete salary survey online report, with more than 200 pages contain-ing 24 sections and more than 110 graphics, in PDF format.
• Number crunching
Access results and make quick comparisons with QP’s updated salary calculator.
• More to hear
listen to a webcast analyzing this year’s survey findings and providing career advice.
• Back to Basics
Read this month’s Back to Basics column, “Pyramid Scheme,” p. 80, in Spanish.
www.qualityprogress.com
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Measuring customer experience
Q: I am trying to develop appropriate cus-tomer experience metrics for service delivery touch points at a financial institution, such as automated teller machines, internet bank-ing, point of sale, mobile banking and bank branches. These metrics should be linkable to appropriate business financial performance outcomes, such as profitability, deposit liabil-ity growth and value of new accounts. Can someone who has worked on this help?
Fajimi Oladapo London A: In today’s environment—where every dollar not only counts, but is absolutely vital to long-term viability—you want to make sure that expenditures are moving the ap-propriate dials. In this case, it sounds like you want to make sure that the expense designated to improve customer experience not only improves the customer experience, but also improves some associated financial measurements.
Here is something important to remem-ber: There are no silver bullets when it comes to metrics. More important than a catalog of potential metrics is a process to generate the metrics that you need, not a list of metrics that has worked for someone else. You need
to know how to uncover and establish your own metrics.
There are two important tasks that must be completed: a current-state assessment and a future-state design. There are at least two schools of thought here. One position is not to bother with the current state. It will only serve to put you in a box consisting of existing paradigms. The other way to think about this is in terms of a gap assessment. It is easy to debate that without the current state and future state, it is impossible to know what gaps need closing.
So where do you start? Consider estab-lishing your current-state baseline. As part of this exercise, it is critical to know the current performance levels for all dimensions, not just customer experience. In the past, I have taken a substantial matrix of data, correlated the data against itself and evaluated it for cause and effect. This narrows down the data from the trivial many to the vital few.
Next, or perhaps even concurrently, con-sider asking your customers what is impor-tant to them in terms of customer experience. Conduct surveys, interviews, focus groups or workshops to obtain the voice of the customer (VOC). You may want to consider a benchmarking exercise and research to find out what others are doing in this space.
At this point, you have your current state, potentially know what the future state looks like, and you have the VOC. You have a nice data set that you can leverage for con-versation. Bring in functional leaders and start asking what they really need to run their area. Sometimes, leaders struggle with understanding the outputs (the “Y” vari-ables). Spend time with them
to make sure they get this part, as it is crucial to the success of the initiative. You are now ready to start testing for alignment between the identified metrics and the associated levers. This is where you learn whether you have the correct data so that you know the needle will go in the correct direction when you turn a dial. Here is an example of apply-ing this thought process:
You find out that your customers are not happy with the number of times they are handed off during one of their calls to your organization. Your data also show there is a correlation between the number of handoffs and the number of times a cross-selling op-portunity is successful. You decide to invest in training to reduce the number of handoffs by increasing the breadth of knowledge your call center personnel have. After a period of time, the cross-selling rate improves.
In this example, you were able to turn the dials (take action to reduce handoffs) and see a positive resulting outcome.
This response to your question does not give a listing of metrics. Rather, it gives an approach to get the metrics you need. Too many times, individuals look for silver bullets that just do not exist. A good process is bet-ter than a silver bullet any day.
Keith Wagoner AVP Partner Solutions Lincoln Financial Group Greensboro, NC
SPC for low-volume assembly
Q: How can assembly manufacturing orga-nizations meaningfully implement statistical process control (SPC) if they are purchasing all parts and assembling only a few units per month?
A: Let’s first interpret “a few units” as 30 or less per month. For the purchased parts,
December 2013 • QP 9 assume there is a mixture of commodity
items and custom parts built to supplied drawings. As for the finished item, assume it is complex, such as a large medical instrument or an aircraft.
In this scenario, the primary focus must be on the parts and working with the suppliers. while the onus is technically on the suppliers to demonstrate capability of their processes to make your parts, you must work with them in partnership. It is more about supplier relationships than it is about SPC.
At the macro level, when choosing a supplier, verify it has a certified quality sys-tem or one that meets your organization’s requirements. At the detail level, you must identify critical dimensions or performance requirements of the parts or part drawings, measurement methods must be agreed upon and suppliers must provide inspection data via certificates of conformance.
Incoming part inspection must be con-ducted for verification until there is confi-dence in the suppliers and the parts. This is often termed “item certification.” Your orga-nization will have to define just how much data are required before incoming inspection can be reduced or eliminated for a specific part. This may be a function of part criticality. Some high-priced custom parts may always require incoming inspection while, for others, inspection may be reduced or eliminated after a period of time. Commodity items may require minimal or no inspection.
within your operation, subassembly
test-ing results and final testtest-ing results can be charted over time. what is the nonconform-ing rate of subassemblies or finished units when initially tested? P-charts can be used. This can be done based simply on number of subassemblies or finished units, or it can be done with consideration for part complexity. For example, a subassembly may have 20 parts. Count the critical dimensions on each of the 20 part drawings and total them. This can be termed “opportunities for error.” (There are other ways to count opportuni-ties, but we’ll use critical dimensions for the purpose of this discussion.)
Say there are 100 critical dimensions (opportunities) in the parts of a certain subassembly. The nonconforming rate can be expressed as the number of failures divided by the number of opportunities. For example, if there were two failures in 10 subassemblies, the nonconforming or defect rate for that subassembly for that week or month could be expressed as:
2 / (10 subassemblies x 100 opportuni-ties) or 2 / 1,000 or 0.2% or 2,000 defects
per million opportunities (DPMO). The same could be done for other subas-semblies with results presented in Pareto fashion. If desired, an adjusted Pareto can be developed factoring in dollar value per
sub-assembly. Resources may then be directed accordingly.
This example is best understood when thinking about putting together an initial subassembly from parts. But as subas-semblies are put together into higher-level assemblies, the method still can be applied.
At the initial subassembly or higher as-sembly level, in addition to critical dimen-sions, the opportunity count can include per-formance requirements such as mechanical actions or electrical requirements.
But don’t get too caught up in the math. In almost all assembly or manufacturing operations, if you really want to know what the problems are, just ask the people doing the work. They will tell you.
Peter E. Pylipow Principal engineer Vistakon—Johnson and Johnson Vision
Care Inc. Jacksonville, FL
For More InForMatIon
1. Peter E. Pylipow, “My Supplier’s Capability is What?” Quality
Progress, May 2003, pp. 60-64,
http://asq.org/pub/quality-progress/past/0503/qp0503pylipow.pdf.
2. S.K. Vermani, “Capability Analysis of Complex Parts,” Quality
Progress, July 2003, pp. 65-71, http://asq.org/data/
subscriptions/qp/2003/0703/qp0703vermani.pdf. 3. T.M. Kubiak, “Perusing Process Performance Metrics,”
Quality Progress, August 2009, pp. 52-55, http://asq.org/
performance-metrics.pdf.
exPeRT
ANSwe RS
too many times, individuals look for silver bullets
that just do not exist.
a good process is better
than a silver bullet any day.
turn to the experts
Have a quality-related question? Let us help. Submit your question at www. qualityprogress.com, or send it to [email protected], and our subject matter experts will help you find a solution.
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Implementing Six Sigma The Quality Technician’s Handbook
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The essential quality reference for most ASQ exams
by Forrest W. Breyfogle, III
A great CSSBB reference by Gary K. GriffithGreat for CQT and CQI exams.
LSS Primer
The Lean Six Sigma Primer is written to a QCI BoK. There are more case studies and lean content than in any other QCI products. 400 questions are included. A solution text is also available.
RAM
Dictionary
ISO 9001 Internal
Auditing Primer
Spanish
Green Belt
ISO Primer
Quality System
Handbook
by Tracy OmdahlMore than 2500 definitions. Great for any ASQ certification.
by Tracy Omdahl
Contains 2800 definitions. Helpful for Reliability and Quality Engineers.
by Bensley & Wortman
Presents a thorough treatment of the ISO implementation and documentation process. There are generic manuals on the CD.
by Edenborough
Details the selection, organization, and writing of quality documents. The disk contains procedures and work instructions.
by Greg Wies & Bert Scali
A convenient book for training internal auditors to the ISO 9001 expectations. An instructor CD is available.
The Spanish version of the CSSGB Primer.
Reliability & Maintenance
Analyst CD
Measurement Analyst CD
by Bryan DodsonSolve your Weibull, reliability, warranty, Bayesian & Maintenance, prediction & estimation problems.
Performs all measurements required in the AIAG manual. Contains ANOVA methods and excellent graphs.
Quality
Dictionary
En EspañolCSSGB
PRIMER
ISO QSHSite and global license available!!! Used by Chrysler, ITT, FedEx, Ford,
PERSPECTIVES
BY DeBra Kraft
Be a Trendsetter
Lead by example with your quality mindset in everything you do
QUALITY PROFESSIONALS should consider expanding their networking efforts into the business realm. Why? Our organizations expect us not only to eliminate the costs of poor quality, but also help optimize profitability. The only way to do that is by shedding plant-centric mindsets and infusing quality concepts into our organizational cultures. The only way to do that is by becoming the trendsetters. We must lead by example.
What would you do?
Leading by example means sticking with your quality mindset wherever you are and in everything you do. It means infusing quality concepts such as 5S and failure mode and effects analysis into how you ap-proach situations, even if you don’t create tape marks or use special forms to assign numerical values to each potential risk.
To see whether you lead by example,
think about what you would do in these situations:
1. You’re at an organized gathering, help-ing yourself to a cup of coffee. A small trash container has been placed at the end of the beverage table, but it’s not in view when you’re looking for a place to dispose of your empty coffee creamer pod. Before you arrived at the table, someone else apparently solved this dilemma by dumping his or her empty pod into a nearly empty metal bowl that had obviously been put into service to dispense full creamer pods rather than to collect empty ones. Other attendees followed suit, dumping used coffee stir-rers, empty creamer pods and tea bag envelopes amongst a handful of still-full pods. Do you follow suit, assuming this has become an accepted process? Or do you step up to initiate change by inform-ing the waitstaff, removinform-ing the bowl or
taking another action to separate the right way from the wrong one? 2. While you’re in line at a lunch buffet,
the person directly ahead of you tries to replace a small set of tongs into a bowl of shredded cheese, but misses. The tongs clatter to the floor. Do you apply the five-second rule by picking up the tongs and putting them back into service? Or do you flag down a waitstaff member to take away the tongs and replace them?
My assumption for the first scenario is that most of you would follow suit, using the metal bowl to discard your beverage table trash. The majority of people, after all, are followers rather than leaders. That’s just a fact of human nature. Besides, you’re a guest at this gathering; you’re not working.
But think about it for just a minute. Trash on top of a table isn’t acceptable at home. Why should you accept it anywhere else, under any circumstance? If just one person does the right thing, others will follow suit. As a quality professional, try to get in the habit of showing your colleagues the value of doing the right thing, whether you’re auditing a manufacturing plant or attending a business luncheon.
My fervent hope for the second scenario is that most of you would have the tongs removed. But that’s my hope, not my assumption. Sadly, I have witnessed situa-tions in which people who are employed in the field of quality applied the five-second rule instead.
If you’re not sure why that would pose a problem, force yourself to look at a much larger picture. Many manufacturing plants have distinct rules about dropped parts.
December 2013 • QP 13 Until and unless those parts are proved to
remain uncontaminated and undamaged, they must be segregated from good parts and considered nonconforming.
Now think about that set of tongs again. You don’t know what’s on the floor where they landed. Microscopic contami-nants are still contamicontami-nants. Animal feces and other germ-bearing things I’d rather not think about could have been deposited on that floor by any number of people’s shoes.
If a quality professional is willing to put his or her colleagues’ food at risk through potential contamination, it seems reasonable to assume that same person also could be willing to turn a blind eye to a dropped part—or worse, put it back amongst usable stock. If a quality profes-sional is doing that, count on everyone else in the organization doing it, too.
As quality professionals, it is up to us to be the clarion ringers and set the tone for a quality mindset in our organizations. We need to live and breathe quality, and set the example for everyone else in our or-ganizations. If we don’t, no one will. If no one takes the lead in setting the example, our organizations are doomed to repeat failures, or at the very least to never discover what it means to truly optimize profitability.
True quality = efficiency
But what does it mean, in the quality realm, to optimize profitability? The an-swer is simpler than you might think. It’s about efficiency—and that means being lean.
It’s a tough market out there. Organiza-tions that don’t go lean don’t get ahead. Regrettably, some organizations still seem to think going lean is all about cutting heads; but efficiency is the real driver. Without efficiency, process quality—and, by default, product quality—can take a significant hit.
In the automotive industry, the worst
quality hits can lead to recalls. Guess what? Recalls can cost far more than whatever was saved in the first place by cutting heads. True lean efforts involve developing efficient processes free of waste and always getting it right the first time. Today, process quality matters more than product quality because the latter is the direct result of the former.
Quality toolboxes should be restocked to include business concepts, especially those that are intricately linked to the costs of doing business. In turn, quality concepts also must take root in organiza-tional cultures. Those folks in finance who are always cutting budgets and com-plaining about overspending should take another look at the costs that might be hidden in their own inefficient processes. If the HR department is more heavily staffed or budgeted on the recruiting and hiring side than elsewhere, the processes targeting employee retention are probably inefficient—it’s costly to fuel a revolving door.
Setting the example
How can we get business colleagues to see the critical links between efficiency and quality? By setting an example. As quality professionals, we have a responsibility to put quality first. Don’t be so shy, lazy or impatient that you accept problems. Don’t play “follow the leader” and use a creamer bowl for a trash container because that’s what everyone else is doing. Be the leader. Raise your hand, raise your voice or just take the reins and start driving teams in the right direction. QP
DEBRA KRAFT is a senior process engineer and business unit audit program manager at a tier-one automotive supplier in Michigan. She holds a bachelor of fine arts degree from Wayne State University in Detroit and is a senior member of ASQ.
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YouR
QualiTy
T
government
Critical Condition
Sick Obamacare website affects millions as White House scrambles for a cure
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the botched rollout of the website built to allow Americans to enroll in a health insurance plan under the Patient Protection and Affordable care Act—also known as obamacare—will go down in history as one of the biggest technology debacles ever.
Since its launch oct. 1, millions of people who used www.heathcare.gov to find a health plan have encountered error messages, delays, crashes and stalled ac-counts.1
the snarls didn’t end there. the reports generated from the federal exchange on new enrollees and sent to insurance providers were riddled with errors—such as syntax mistakes and transposed and dupli-cate data. insurers also reported receiving multiple enrollments and cancellations without time stamps from the same people. insurers resorted to contacting enrollees directly to follow up.2
Just six people successfully enrolled on the first day it opened. of the 9.47 million people who visited the site the first week, only 36,000 were able to complete the en-rollment process, according to an analysis
by the consulting firm kantar uS insights.3
“nobody is madder than me,” President Barak obama said as he spoke about the problem-ridden website—technology that’s at the very heart of his plan to bring health coverage to millions of Americans.
the online marketplace is central to the 2010 law to reform the u.S. healthcare sys-tem. every American will be legally required to have health insurance after Jan. 1 or face a penalty.4 the federal exchange and similar
state websites are meant to be one-stop shops for health insurance for Americans who can’t afford coverage and don’t get it through employers.
Complex project
the federal exchange is a huge system that’s composed of multiple systems with hundreds of integration points, making it innately difficult to manage, said robert charette, president of itABHi corp., a busi-ness and technology risk management consultancy.5 the website must fuse with
disparate platforms of other large govern-ment agencies in addition to the systems of state exchanges and insurance providers.6
the federal exchange website also must do many things: verify a person’s identity, legal residence and income; record his or her personal information; match the enrollee with health insurance plans; calculate subsidy eligibility; provide compari-son shopping
features and, finally, enroll the person in a plan.
System snafus
initially, obama blamed the website melt-downs on an overwhelming number of visitors.7 Software engineering experts
iden-tified fundamental issues with the website’s design and function, however.
Some software engineers have suggest-ed the website’s consumer end, designsuggest-ed by one contractor, is not “talking to” the website’s back end, which was created by a different contractor.8
“Anyone in software engineering will tell you that cross-group coordination is one of the hardest things to get right, and also one of the most crucial, because while program-mers are great at testing their own code, testing that their code works with every-body else’s code is much more difficult,” wrote software engineer David Auerbach in a recent Slate column.9
many of the problems also stem from a design element that requires users to cre-ate accounts before shopping for insurance. making all users go through the registration process created logjams that blocked most other users from the marketplace.10
Project management missteps
Building a system takes more than good programming. it also requires sound project management. the centers for medicare and medicaid Services (cmS) oversaw the entire project while also monitoring the develop-ment of the state exchanges.11
the flop isn’t that surprising, consider-ing the cmS and most of the government has no experience running a project this large, wrote Steve Bellian, a professor of computer science at columbia university, in a cnn column.12
December 2013 • QP 15
Sick Obamacare website affects millions as White House scrambles for a cure
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NAME: rob Herhold.
RESIDENCE: Dardenne Prairie, mo.
EDUCATION: Bachelor’s degree in business
manage-ment from Washington university in St. Louis.
CURRENT JOB: Former president of the institute for
Strategic management Practices. Herhold is currently disabled with Lou gehrig’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), but he continues to volunteer his expertise in quality to companies and nonprofit organi-zations.
INTRODUCTION TO QUALITY: During the late 1970s,
Herhold worked for trW inc., considered one of the first Fortune 500 compa-nies to use the toyota Production System. He met Shigeo Shingo and has been hooked on quality ever since.
PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE: During his days with mcDonnell Douglas (Boeing),
Herhold and others formed its first quality processes division. the division was on the cutting edge with total quality management and helped establish the Baldrige Foundation. Herhold is also a former executive with the excel-lence in missouri Foundation, which administers the missouri Quality Award, one of the most successful state quality award programs in the country.
ASQ ACTIVITIES: malcolm Baldrige national Quality Award alumni examiner;
past chair and board member emeritus of epworth children & Family Servic-es; member of the state advisory board of the missouri Small Business and technology Development centers; and member of the steering committee of the center for Supply chain management Studies at St. Louis university.
RECENT AWARDS: Herhold received the Ambassador Award from epworth
children & Family Services. He has also received the ASQ volunteer excel-lence Award and the Waldo vezeau technical Achievement Award, as well as other plaques and citations from ASQ and other organizations, includ-ing the Human resource management Association of St. Louis, march of Dimes, muscular Dystrophy Association, American red cross, university of missouri, Defense contract management command and the Finnish government.
PERSONAL: married 17 years to Jan. three grown children and two
grandchil-dren.
FAVORITE WAYS TO RELAX: reading and staying in touch with the
happen-ings in the quality profession.
QUALITY QUOTE: there are two phrases that most people define as Herhold’s
signature quotes: “trust the process,” and “You can’t make this stuff up.”
Q
Who’s Who in
“there are standard approaches, standardtools and standard software for building large-scale websites. using them correctly takes good planning and management. that was in short supply here,” Bellian wrote.
Shoddy testing
representatives from private contractors charged with building www.healthcare.gov told members of the House energy and commerce committee at a hearing in late october that full testing of the website didn’t begin until two weeks before it went live instead of months earlier.13
“You must create and emulate the cus-tomer experience as closely as possible,” said tim moynihan, vP of marketing at empirix, a network performance company that provides testing and monitoring services for web sys-tems. “You must understand how it works and appears from the customer side of the equa-tion, not the inside, it side of the equation.”14
Delayed start
While cgi Federal, a primary contractor, was awarded its $94 million contract to design the website’s back end in December 2011, the government was so slow to issue specifications that the firm did not start writing software code until spring 2013. As late as the last week of September, features were in flux because of-ficials kept making changes.15
“that becomes a real problem if you’re using a waterfall method where you begin with the requirement process, then move to coding, then move to testing, then release an entire system,” said kev coleman, head of research and data at HealthPocket, a site that compares and ranks health insurance plans.16
According to expectations
major it projects fail in the private sector, too, but without the entire nation watching.
“Anyone who has written a line of code or built a system from the ground up cannot be surprised or even mildly concerned that www. healthcare.gov did not work out of the gate,” said Jim Johnson, chair of the Standish group
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new research estimates that up to 440,000 Americans are dying each year from preventable hospital errors, which would make medical errors the third-leading cause of death in the united States.
the research, prepared by the Leapfrog group, a patient safety advocacy group, underscores the need for patients to protect themselves and their families from harm, and for hospitals to make patient safety a priority, group representatives said.
“During this time of rapid healthcare transformation, it’s vital that we work together to arm patients with the information they need and tell doctors and hospitals that the time for change is now,” said Leah Binder, president and ceo of Leapfrog.
the research also grades general hospitals in the united States. Leapfrog reports that many of these hospitals are making headway in addressing errors, ac-cidents, injuries and infections that kill or hurt patients, but overall progress is slow.
For more information about the research and how the hospital safety scores were calculated, visit www. hospitalsafetyscore.org.
HeALtHcAre
HOSPITAL ERRORS THE
THIRD-LEADING CAUSE
OF DEATHS IN THE U.S.
eXemPLAr gLoBAL
CERTIFICATION
ORGANIZATIONS
CHANGE NAME
the ASQ entity rABQSA international and inArte last month changed their names to exemplar global.
the organization, which develops personnel and training certification products for professionals and training providers, wanted “to recalibrate itself so that we can demonstrate that we now serve a broader community of professionals and organiza-tions in their pursuit of recognition of their abilities,” Peter Holtmann, ceo and president of exemplar global, said in a statement.
the rebranded rABQSA international inc. and inArte brands are represented in 190 countries and offer certifications to 15,000 industry professionals and more than 100 training organizations. For more information about the name change, visit exemplar global at www.exemplarglobal.org.
international, an it company. “the real news would have been if [www. healthcare.gov] actually did work.”17
Still, government it has a notorious reputation for poor project manage-ment and an overreliance on contractors. A 2008 report showed 48% of fed-eral it projects were restructured because of cost overages or goal changes. Another 2008 report said 43% of the Department of Health and Human Services’ major projects were being monitored by the office of management and Budget because of poor performance and other concerns.
After improvements trickled in and outages occurred in the first few weeks following the rocky launch, the White House enlisted some of the best and brightest from google, oracle and redHat to fix the problems that were still rampant and crippling the website in early november.18,19
But the clock is ticking, and some officials worry the troubled website may start to directly affect the success of the healthcare law.20 the White
House hopes to enroll 7 million people in obamacare by the end of 2014. “obama says the product is good. You can have the best product in the world, but if no one can buy it, it really doesn’t matter,” said David Lloyd, ceo of intelliresponse, a customer service technology provider.21
—Megan Schmidt, contributing editor
EDITOR’S NOTE
To see the references and links to the sources, read the online version of this article at http://asq.org/ quality-progress/2013/12/keeping-current.html.
Website woes
(continued from p. 15)BALDrige AWArD
THREE HONORED AS
2013 AWARD RECIPIENTS
three organizations from two different categories have been name recipi-ents of the 2013 malcolm Baldrige national Award.
the recipients, announced nov. 13, include: • Pewaukee School District, Wi (education category).
• Baylor regional medical center at Plano, tX (healthcare category). • Sutter Davis Hospital, Davis, cA (healthcare category).
“the Baldrige program has had a tangible impact on the success of thousands of organizations worldwide and our nation’s economy, and the winners will undoubtedly continue that legacy and serve as role models for their peers in the health care and education sectors,” u.S. commerce Sec-retary Penny Pritzker said during the announcement of this year’s award recipients.
the Baldrige judges also recognized two organizations that excelled in one or more of the Baldrige criteria categories. they are:
• Duke university Hospital, Durham, nc. • Hill country memorial, Fredericksburg, tX.
A ceremony honoring the organizations will take place during the 26th Quest for excellence conference April 7-9, 2014, in Baltimore.
to read more about the recipients, visit www.nist.gov/baldrige/ baldrige_recipients2013.cfm.
December 2013 • QP 17
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A balance between quality and customer engagement is needed to increase the value of products and services organizations provide to both internal and external cus-tomers, according to the first of four reports that comple-ment ASQ’s global State of Quality research.
the five-page “spotlight” report highlights an ASQ-coined term—Qustomer—and says 67.4% of respondents share some quality performance information with cus-tomers, but a delicate balance is critical to success: too much interaction with customers can be costly, but too little won’t yield adequate information to improve quality. in addition to striking a balance, the report concludes there are other challenges to incorporating the customer into the quality process, including cultural differences, intellectual property issues and regulatory standards.
the report also describes how organizations such as Airbus, ABF Freight and Booz Allen Hamilton share informa-tion within their organizainforma-tions about the role of customers. “these spotlight reports take a close look at the data presented in the global State of Quality research, provid-ing real-world examples of the impact of quality,” said ASQ chair John timmerman. “the Qustomer spotlight offers examples of how organizations are engaging customers to improve product performance and services, and offers approaches that all companies can use and benefit from.”
to download the Qustomer spotlight report, visit http://asq.org/global-state-of-quality/index.aspx. the report is free to ASQ members and $29 for nonmembers. gLoBAL StAte oF QuALitY reSeArcH
REPORT PUTS THE
SPOTLIGHT SQUARELY
ON THE ‘QUSTOMER’
Mr. Pareto Head
By Mike Crossen
ASQ
NEWS
SECOND kEYNOTE ANNOUNCED tony kern, the
founding partner and ceo of convergent Perfor-mance LLc, a think tank based in colorado Springs, co. has been announced as the second keynote speaker for ASQ’s 14th annual Lean and Six Sigma conference—to be held Feb. 24-25 in Phoenix. kern has authored seven books on human performance, including the Plane of excellence trilogy
(Redefin-ing Airmanship, Flight Discipline and Darker Shades of Blue). He is
also a featured columnist for Canadian Skies, Vertical and Vertical 911 magazines. kern joins Shane A. Yount, the previously announced keynote speaker for the lean and Six Sigma event. Yount is a nationally recognized author, speaker and principal of competitive Solutions inc., an international business transformation consulting firm. Watch for more updates on the conference at http://asq.org/conferences/six-sigma. early-bird registra-tion pricing runs through Jan. 13.
PITTSBURGH SECTION HONORED ASQ’s Pittsburgh Section has
re-ceived the keystone Alliance for Performance excellence (kAPe) Award. kAPe helps Pennsylvania organizations achieve performance excellence using the Baldrige criteria as a framework for improvement. Five other award recipients were recognized along with the ASQ section at a ban-quet and conference in november in Harrisburg, PA.
STUDENT MEMBERSHIP UPGRADE Student members of ASQ can now
select to participate in one of ASQ’s 25 forums and divisions as a way to further network with those in the quality community and learn best practices. the upgrade is one way to enhance this level of membership and improve the experience of student members. For more information about membership levels, visit http://asq.org/membership/members/ your-benefits.html.
Read TheiR Minds
THE QUALITY PROFESSION
is helping the world economy pull
out of its long slump. Those who responded to this year’s QP Salary Survey seem
to be experiencing their own recovery—be it ever-so-slight. After a year in which
the average salary for full-time employees in the United States stagnated, the
nee-dle moved upward again for quality professionals in 2013.
The average salary for full-timers in the United
States was $88,458 in 2013, up a bit from 2012’s
aver-age of $86,743. That latter figure was $343 lower than
the average salary in the previous year, the first time
the U.S. average had decreased in the 27-year history
of the survey.
This year’s increase, amounting to only 1.58%
over two years, is nothing to crow about, however.
Clearly, the world economy—and the quality
pro-fession itself—still face some struggles.
If you’re a quality professional aiming to clear
career hurdles and build a successful career, what
can you do? Answer: Understand the needs of the
marketplace, and prepare yourself accordingly.
Hiring managers weigh in
Each year, QP accompanies its salary survey
re-sults with a discussion of some aspect of the
em-What hiring managers
look for in job candidates
by Max Christian Hansen
SponSored by
exTRa * exTRa * exTRa * exTRa * exTRa * exTRa * exTRa * exTRa * exTRa
QP Salary Survey
“All ThE
nUmbErS
yoU nEEd
To know”
december 2013 • Qp 19
Read TheiR Minds
Part 1. Regular Employee Results
Section 1
Salary by Job Title p. 29 Section 2
Salary by U.S. regions and Canadian provinces p. 33 Section 3
Salary by number of years of experience in the Quality Field p. 37 Section 4
Salary by ASQ and exemplar Global Certification p. 45 Section 5
Salary by Six Sigma Training p. 52 Section 6
Salary by number of Work Hours online Section 7
Salary by nonexempt vs. exempt Status online Section 8
Salary by number of years in Current position online Section 9
Salary by number of years in Current position and in the Quality Field online Section 10
Salary by number of employees overseen online Section 11
Salary by division Size, organization Size and Location of Headquarters online Section 12
Salary by Industry online Section 13
Salary by Geographic Location online
Section 14
Salary by organizational Quality Infrastructure online Section 15
Salary by extent of Quality responsibilities online Section 16
Salary by Highest Level of education online Section 17
Salary by Highest Level of education and
number of years in Quality online Section 18
Salary by exemplar Global Certification online Section 19
Salary by Gender and Age online Section 20
Size of raise and Additional Annual payments online
Part 2. Self-Employed Consultant Results
Section 21
Consultant overview online Section 22
base earnings by years of experience online
Section 23
base earnings by education and Training online
Section 24
base earnings and rates by Age,
Gender and Geographic Location online note: All sections printed in this issue of Qp are also available in the online report in pdF format at www.qualityprogress.com/salarysurvey.
