GLOSSARY OF QUALITY IMPROVEMENT TERMS

Common-Cause Variation: Any normal variation inherent in a work process. (See also Special-Cause Variation.)
Complexity: Unnecessary work; any activity that makes a work process more complicated without adding value to the resulting product or service.
Continuous Improvement Process: The ongoing enhancement of work processes for the benefit of the customer and the organization; activities devoted to maintaining and improving work process performance through small and gradual improvements as well as radical innovations.
Control Chart: A line graph that identifies the variation occurring in a work process over time; helps distinguish between common-cause variation and special-cause variation.
Cost of Quality: A term used by many organizations to quantify the costs associated with producing quality products. Typical factors taken into account are prevention costs (training, work process analyses, design reviews, customer surveys), appraisal costs (inspection and testing), and failure costs (rework, scrap, customer complaints, returns).
Cross Functional: Involving the cooperation of two or more departments within the organization (e.g., Marketing and Product Development).
Customer: Any person or group inside or outside the organization who receives a product or service.
Customer Expectations: The "needs" and "wants" of a customer that define "quality" in a specified product or service.
Deming Cycle (also known as Shewart's Wheel): A model that describes the cyclical interaction of research, sales, design, and production as a continuous work flow, so that all functions are involved constantly in the effort to provide products and services that satisfy customers and contribute to improved quality. (See also PDCA.)
Department Improvement Team: Made up of all members of a department and usually chaired by the manager or supervisor, department improvement teams function as a vehicle for all employees to continuously participate in ongoing quality improvement activities.
Executive Steering Committee (or Executive Improvement Team): Includes top executives and is chaired by the CEO; encourages and participates in a quality initiative by reviewing, approving, and implementing improvement activities.
Fitness-For-Use: Juran's definition of quality suggesting that products and services need to serve customers' needs, instead of meeting internal requirements only.
Improving Steering Council (also known as Quality Steering Committee): A group of people with representation from all functions in the organization, usually drawn from management levels, chartered to develop and monitor a quality improvement process in their own functions. This group is often responsible for deciding which improvement projects or work processes will be addressed and in what priority.
Internal Customer: Anyone in the organization who relies on you for a product or service. (See also Customer.)
Internal Supplier: Anyone in the organization you rely on for a product or service. (See also Supplier.)
Juran Trilogy: The interrelationship of three basic managerial processes with which to manage quality, quality control, and quality improvement.
Just-In-Time (JIT): A method of production and inventory cost control based on delivery of parts and supplies at the precise time they are needed in a production process.
Kaizen: Japanese term meaning continuous improvement involving everyone-managers and employees alike.
Key Expectations: The requirements concerning a specified product or service that a customer holds to be most important.
PDCA Cycle: An adaptation of the Deming Cycle, which stresses that every improvement activity, can best be accomplished by the following steps: plan, do, check, etc. (See Deming Cycle.)
Process Improvement Team: Includes experienced employees from different departments who solve problems and improve work processes that go across-functional lines. (Also known as Service Improvement Team, Quality Improvement Team, or Corrective Action Team.)
Quality: a customer's perception of the value of a product or service; organizations, theorists, and dictionaries define it differently. Well-known definitions include:
"conformance to requirements" (Crosby)
"the efficient production of the quality that the market expects" (Deming)
"fitness for use"; "product performance and freedom from deficiencies" (Juran)
"the total composite product and service characteristics of marketing, engineering, manufacturing, and maintenance through which the product and service in use will meet the expectations of the customer" (Felgenbaum)
"anything that can be improved" (Imal)
"meeting or exceeding customer expectations at a cost that represents value to them" (Harrington)
"does not impart loss to society" (Taguchi)
"the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy a given need" (American Society for Quality Control)
"degree of excellence" (Webster's Third New International Dictionary)
Quality Circle: A small group of employees organized to solve work-related problems; often voluntarily; usually not chaired by a department manager.
Quality Initiative: A formal effort by an organization to improve the quality of its products and services; usually involves top management development of a mission statement and long-term strategy.
Special-Cause Variation: Any violation arising from circumstances that are not a normal part of the work process. (See also Common-Cause Variation.)
Supplier: Any person or group inside or outside the organization that produces a product or service. Suppliers improve quality by identifying customer expectations and adjusting work processes so that products and services meet or exceed those expectations. (See also Customer.)
Task Force: An ad hoc, cross-functional team formed to resolve a major problem as quickly as possible; usually includes subject matter experts temporarily relieved of their regular duties.
Total Quality Control (TQM): A management approach advocating the involvement of all employees in the continuous improvement process-not-just quality control specialists.
Work Partnership: A mutually beneficial work relationship between internal and external customers and suppliers.
Work Process: A series of work steps that produce a particular product or service for the customer.
Zero Defects: An approach to quality based on prevention of errors; often adopted as a standard for performance or a definition of quality (notably in Crosby Quality Training).