What are the Essential Quality Books in the last 15 years

[Randy]

Can i add another element to this thread? What is an essential qyality internal auditing book?

No such thing
auditing is an acquired skill and you can't get that from a book............Someone prove me wrong.

 

[TPMB4]

Perhaps clarify this as essential to someone new to auditing? Everyone has to n start somewhere.

 

[Bev D]

Quality Audits for Improved Performance by Dennis Arter is a decent start.
Of course Randy is right that experience and a great mentor/coach are essential.

 

[JustAQualityGuy]

Any recent book recommendations?

 

[Bev D]

Not really the classics are still the best.
What exactly are you looking for?
There is a huge difference between quality engineering books and quality assurance books.
And quality managers should know both

 

[JustAQualityGuy]

I did think so. Can never really beat the classics.

Being a new Leader, I want to be moving to a Quality Manager position.
However I still feel that my knowledge lacks in some of the areas of the foundational understandings.

How I can the QM I want to be?! Easy question to ask than it is to answer.

 

[Jen Kirley]

I did think so. Can never really beat the classics.

Being a new Leader, I want to be moving to a Quality Manager position.
However I still feel that my knowledge lacks in some of the areas of the foundational understandings.

How I can the QM I want to be?! Easy question to ask than it is to answer.

I find the classics, in updated revisions still make great references because there is so much in the subject that stays consistent. The ASQ Handbooks are an easier read than the Juran books, but ASQ's books contain less detail.

How can you be the QM that you want to be? Learn the core subjects, practice them, be organized/become organized, open your mind to the internal and external customers (this is not meant to imply your mind is closed, I am just describing what is important) so you can detect who is affected by what type of dysfunction. Try to improve a little at a time but be sensitive to how changes affect other related processes (this is why the interaction and sequence of processes matters) and keep records of what happens. Make yourself ready to measure outcomes if you are not already prepared to do that. Many tools are available to help.

You can learn a subject, but good leadership is largely dependent on character traits. There are a few physiological influences such as ODD, but the factor that more often impedes success is ego.

Disclaimer: I am an ASQ member.

 

[Mike S.]

The ones I listed over 10 years ago I would still list today, along with some others by the same authors.

 

[Tidge]

Being a new Leader, I want to be moving to a Quality Manager position.
However I still feel that my knowledge lacks in some of the areas of the foundational understandings.

How I can the QM I want to be?! Easy question to ask than it is to answer.

I have worked for maybe one good "Quality Manager", the rest all had one or more of the following negative attributes:

1. They didn't exhibit 100% trust in their direct reports... they were always open to "hear one side" during answer-shopping
2. They immediately took work themselves, without delegating
3. They didn't exercise active listening with their reports (like they would do with auditors) instead "speak their piece" (even if not relevant) or "be boss/bossy"
4. They were wildly inconsistent, such that it was never predictable what they would do or how the would react (because from what I could tell: "being purely reactionary is a sign of how seriously I take this job!"

Now: In many organizations it isn't necessary for a Quality Manager to know how to do everything... but they should know why a certain things needs to be done, and be able to evaluate that it was done correctly. For example: very few people (Quality or otherwise) are comfortable "mathing" and defer to a statistician. It doesn't make them a bad QM, until they reach the point they don't actually know what the statistician is telling them.

Anecdote: I once joined a quality org for a small company where the QM was extremely proud that everyone who worked in the org had the manual dexterity to operate one of the instruments that required a certain amount of incredible fine motor control and excellent visual acuity. Setting aside any question about if this practice kept them from hiring someone who might be missing a finger (or have some other disability) I thought this was crazy. I'd want everyone who worked at the company to fully trust the devices, but not everyone who works on an aircraft should be expected to pilot one themselves!