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free book summaries, About the Author
Dr. S. Tom Foster is a professor, author, and consultant in the field of quality management. Among Dr. Fosters areas of expertise are strategic quality management, quality-based learning, service quality, Six Sigma, quality in government, and technology-based quality improvement. Dr. Foster is a professor of quality and operations management at Boise State University and also has taught at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Missouri-Columbia. Dr. Foster has professional experience in manufacturing, financial services, and international oil exploration. He has consulted for more than 20 companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Trus Joist MacMillan, Cutler-Hammer/Eaton Corp., Heinz Frozen Foods, QWEST, and Healthwise Corporation, as well as the U.S. Department of Energy. Dr. Foster served on the 1996 and 1997 boards of examiners for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and has served as executive director for the Idaho Quality Award. Dr. Foster is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Operations Management, Benchmarking for Quality Management, and the Quality Observer. He has published more than 40 quality-related articles in such journals as Decision Sciences, the International Journal of Production Research, the Journal of Quality Management, the Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, the International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management, the Quality Management Journal, and Quality Progress. He is listed in Who's Who in the World and Who's Who in America. Dr. Foster is founder of www.freequality.org, principal of Foster Management Consulting, and was awarded the ASBSU 2000 Outstanding Faculty Award. In addition, he was the winner of the 2002 Decision Sciences Institute Innovative Education Award.
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Much has happened since publication of the first edition of Managing Quality: An Integrative Approach in 2000. The book has been adopted by faculty at many top universities and has also been utilized within many firms. It has been translated into Chinese and rose to number four on the list of quality-related bestsellers at Amazon.com-Japan. It appears that there is a market for a text with an unbiased contingency perspective on quality. An explanation of some of the themes and core values that permeate this text follows. MAJOR THEMES Integrative Approach. Workers and managers in organizations are somewhat limited by their particular functional preparation and specialization (going back to their educational training). This narrow preparation filters how they analyze and cognitively interpret information. However, quality management has emerged as a discipline that is not owned by any of the functional areas such as operations management, human resources, marketing, and so on. An example can be seen when attempting to define quality. If a CEO states in a company meeting that "we need to improve quality," she might be thinking that, from a strategic point of view, the firm needs to become more competitive. The marketer in the audience hears this as an admonition to improve customer responsiveness. The engineer envisions tighter specifications, and the production worker worries that the company is going to be downsized. Just using the unreliable term "quality" results in this problem. Therefore, students of quality must recognize this imperfection in communication about quality in order to improve organizational understanding. This is the basis for the integrative approach used in this text. Students will view quality from a variety of functional perspectives and, in the process, gain a better understanding of the problems associated with improving quality. Contingency Approach. There is no "one way" or "magic pill" that companies can implement to improve quality. Therefore, the contingency approach is used to instruct students how to assess the current condition of a firm and identify gaps in quality deployment as a basis for future improvement. Thus, improvement is based on the contingent variables that are operative in a firm as it exists. This contingency approach is introduced in Chapter 1 and permeates the rest of the text. It is a premise upon which everything else is based. The contingency approach has been successfully taught by the author in undergraduate and graduate courses, as well as at a number of firms and organizations. Of course, a sound understanding of quality fundamentals is important if students are to be able to make effective strategic choices for the future. FEATURES OFTHIS TEXT Organization. The text is organized as follows: First, an understanding of basic and advanced quality concepts is provided. Next, the focus moves to assuring quality through product, service, and process design. Third, the implementation of quality management and control is presented. The final section of chapters focuses on approaches for continuously improving the quality system. The book's organization reflects the logical life cycle that firms follow in the quality journey. Coverage of Quality Tools. Quality tools and approaches&<51;such as statistical quality control, the basic seven tools, Six Sigma, the seven tools for management, and the Taguchi method&<51;are presented. Implementation problems with these tools are also discussed. The philosophy adopted in this text is that organizations should not necessarily focus on quality tool choice as the strategic emphasis in quality planning. Instead, skilled managers will assess operational variables in the organization, such as leadership, respect for employees, learning and knowledge creation, customer focus, and others. If there are gaps between the current state and the desired state for the organization concerning these variables, then an understanding of the tools is useful when selecting the most appropriate ones to address these gaps in organizational performance. Practical Presentation. Students using this text will take away discrete concepts, tools and approaches that can be implemented in real firms today. This means that this text is cutting edge and hands-on in its execution. Among the important topics that are not included in other texts are the real-world topics of team facilitation and training. More and more, managers must be able to facilitate teams and train and develop employees. These functions must eventually be integrated into organizations that want to attain world-class levels of performance. In addition, throughout the chapters features such as introductory quotes, Quality Highlights, chapter questions, cases, solved problems, and practice problems focus on real-world issues. Coverage of Quality in Service and International Environments. Service and globalism are realities in the business world that are addressed in this text. Again, this is part and parcel of the integrative approach. Other emergent topics such as diversity, environmental standards, and technologies (e.g., workflow software in services, and ISO 14000) are presented. Coverage of ASQ, CQM, and CQE. This text is designed to include topics necessary for the American Society for Quality (ASQ) certification as a Certified Quality Manager (CQM). Also, many topics associated with the Certified Quality Engineer (CQE) are found in the detailed chapter concepts. CHANGES TO THIS EDITION In the years since the first edition, the quality management field has changed. ISO 9000:2000 was published, ISO/TS 16949 was launched, the Baldrige standards stabilized, Six Sigma exploded, and several new quality-related stories emerged, such as those of Firestone, Ford, and Enron. It is time for a revision. Following is a list of the changes and additions in the second edition:
- Additional Chapter on Quantitative Tools. There is an additional chapter on statistical quality control and several new reliability models.
- Six Sigma. A chapter on Six Sigma has been added. This chapter focuses on organizing, deploying, and implementing Six Sigma.
- Other Changes. In addition, there is updated information about topics such as ISO 9000:2000, the recent Baldrige standards changes, other new standards, lean manufacturing, design of experiments, and countless other topics. This field is constantly changing&<51;requiring several updates so that students have the latest approaches. Of course, these are presented from a contingency perspective.
- Active Models. There are interactive Excel spreadsheets in the accompanying CDROM that correspond to examples in Chapters 12 and 13 and that allow the student to explore and better understand important quantitative concepts. Students or instructors can adjust inputs to the model and, in effect, can answer a whole series of "what if" questions that are provided (e.g., What if variation in the process changes? What if the process indicates changes are needed? What if we change the sample size?). These Active Models are great for classroom presentation and/or homework.
FOR THE STUDENT Custom Web site. By logging on to http://www.prenhall.com/foster, students will find direct links, organized by chapter, to company Web sites, quality tools, training slides, and knowledgebase topics. Student CD-ROM. A CD-ROM, with the following, is in the back of each copy of the book.
- Excel files&<51;for many text examples.
- Active Models&<51;described above, for examples in Chapters 12 and 13.
- Video clips&<51;selected video clips (one to two minutes in length) that illustrate chapter-related topics.
FOR THE INSTRUCTOR Besides the changes and additions, we substantially added support materials for this book. Instructor's CD-ROM. This CD-ROM contains the following resources for the instructor:
- Instructors Manual&<51;The manual includes solutions to the practice problems and case study questions.
- Test Item File&<51;The test item file, updated by Ross Fink of Bradley University, contains a variety of true/false, multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, short answer, and problem-solving questions for each chapter. The test item file can also be downloaded from Prentice Hall's Web site at http://www.prenhall.com/foster.
- PowerPoint presentations&<51;A set of PowerPoint presentations is available for each chapter. These slides can also be downloaded from Prentice Hall's Web site at http://www.prenhall.com/foster.
- TestGen-EQ software&<51;The test bank is designed for use with the TestGen-EQ test generating software. This computerized package allows instructors to custom design, save, and generate classroom tests. The test program permits instructors to edit, add, or delete questions from the test banks; edit existing graphics and create new graphics; analyze test results; and organize a database of tests and student results. This new software allows for flexibility and ease of use. It provides many options for organizing and displaying tests, along with a search and sort feature.
I found the book to be well written, the author obviously knows his material quite well.
However, the author seems to be politically conservative, his viewpoint slips through in his bashing of JFK and Clinton and in other areas. That said, once I realized that political orientation of the author, I was able to put it aside and get to the meat of the matter. The author's discussion of the Baldrige process obviously comes from his extensive experience as an award examiner. His discussions of how corporations have used the Baldrige process were quite illuminating.
When I looked at the source material the author quotes from, I found one misquote and a botched bibliographic reference. For this, I blame the publisher for failing to properly fact check the book. I guess $126.67 list price does not buy much these days.
The cd material is rather ho-hum, it consist of example spreadsheets and videos.This book is very well written and contains a lot of information about quality management. I recommend this book for anyone seeking to know more about how to improve quality.
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