Joseph Juran, the Architect of Quality, paved the way for the active pursuit of quality in Business with the Juran Trilogy.

The Juran Trilogy redefined quality management; reducing chronic defects and the costs associated below a 20% industry expectation.

The Juran Trilogy has been shown to give benefits across multiple parameters, increasing productivity, reducing cycle-times, improving human safety, and reducing product failure rates – with a 80% reduction in some cases.

For us as Process Street, the Juran Trilogy is one of our favorite tools for improving business operations. It’s a straightforward methodology that brings results.

Learn how to apply the Juran Trilogy for your business, and improve the quality of operations. Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to your section of choice, alternatively scroll down to read all we have to say:

• What is the Juran Trilogy?
• Using the Juran Trilogy for quality control: Quality planning, control and improvement
• Implementing the Juran Trilogy using Process Street
• Juran Trilogy examples: Quality improvement in the real world

Let’s get started!

Alex Zubkov is a technical writer at LITSLINK from Dnipro. Alex has 15 years experience in sales, marketing, and product promotion for both local and international markets. He’s also a techno geek and amateur photographer with a love of gadgets and the Arsenal FC.

Quality assurance (QA) is an essential stage of any software development cycle. It helps developers catch the lingering bugs and inconsistencies in the product’s functionality before you deliver it to your customers.

According to Statista, companies spent 35% of their financial resources on software testing in 2015. In 2019, this figure went down to just below a quarter of the company’s budget, but it is still taxing in 2020 to balance financial expenditure and product performance.

A sophisticated QA process can cut costs by reducing the number of errors that need fixing and, subsequently, the amount of iterative testing required. It can also improve the reliability of the testing process, further reducing expenses, which is crucial for startups and low-budget, middle-size enterprises.

In this article, we’ll briefly run through the key stages of the QA process:

• Key stages of the QA process
• What tools should you use?
• The role of QA processes in your startup growth

Let’s get started!
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Quality management. Oh, how I love thee.

You’ve given us rubber flavored cookies, phones that go up in smoke, and exploding car airbags (we’ll get to all of that later).

Last year, 337 food products passed through stringent quality management procedures and went to market with major issues. So major, in fact, that each and every one of those products had to be recalled. This cost the US economy over $7 million.

But, the cost of poor quality management surrounding the production of food is only a tiny part of the picture:

“Defective product incidents have caused in excess of $2 billion of losses over five years” – Allianz, Product Recall, Managing the Impact of the New Risk Landscape

When you consider that the global quality management software market is valued at $7.96 billion, why are we, as consumers, still being exposed to low quality, defective products?

Because, contrary to what most organizations think, there is more to quality management than simply making a good product. You need to know how you’re going to make it good and how you’re going to make sure it remains good.

In other words, you need a plan. A quality management plan to be exact.

The reasons for this will become even clearer as we make our way through this Process Street post and discuss:

• What is a quality management plan?
• What is the most useful thing about a quality management plan?
• What’s included in a quality management plan?
• How to enforce a quality management plan

Let’s get planning.
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Call center quality assurance is like going to the dentist: everyone agrees it should be done regularly, no one likes doing it, and it’s probably been put off much longer than it should.

No one’s blaming you – agents hate it, supervisors hate it, even quality assurance auditors hate it. It’s tedious, time-consuming, and repetitive. Add to that the high call center attrition rate and low job satisfaction, and you may be wondering: why even bother?

Well, I’ll tell you. In this post, I’ll cover:

• What is call center quality assurance?
• Why is call center quality assurance important?
• How to overcome your QA obstacles
• 11 free call center quality assurance templates
• Automate your workflow with Process Street + Zapier

Plus I’ll provide you with 11 free checklists to take the drudgery out of QA audits!

If you came for the templates, grab them here:

• Call Center Agent Training Program Checklist Template
• Call Center Quality Assurance (QA) Agent Training Process Checklist Template
• Call Center Quality Assurance Structure Template
• Call Center Quality Assurance Audit Template
• Call Center Customer Service Quality Assurance Form
• Call Center Sales Quality Assurance Form
• Call Center Outbound Sales Quality Assurance Form
• Call Center Helpdesk Quality Assurance Form
• Call Center Metrics Calculation Checklist Template
• Manager Weekly Report Checklist Template
• Daily Supervisor Checklist

If you want to use these checklists, just sign in with your Process Street account and start customizing your templates. If you don’t have an account yet, sign-up here to get started with your free trial!

Otherwise, let’s get to it.
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I don’t want to alarm you, but without process control, you’d be dead.

What? How? Why? …What?!

Your body is continuously performing a series of processes to keep you alive, and it’s constantly checking for irregularities in these processes. If it picks up an abnormality, it immediately takes measures to regulate it and return it to its desired state. Like when you’re too hot, for example. Your body recognizes that your temperature is above normal and produces water, in the form of sweat, to cool you down.

So you see, process control is the reason you’re alive and able to enjoy this Process Street post!

But this isn’t a lesson in biology (thankfully); the same concept can be applied to organizations too.

With adequate process control, businesses can perform efficiently, effectively, and safely. They can function at a consistent level and can even reduce operating costs by up to 6%. Without it, they would miss opportunities, make costly mistakes, and struggle to survive.

“Process control is the ability to monitor and adjust a process to give a desired output.” – Beck Electric Actuators, What is Process Control?

To discover how process control can cut costs and eliminate errors within your organization, we need to find answers to the following questions:

• What is process control?
• Who uses process control & what do they use it for?
• Why should organizations use process control?
• How can you implement process control with Process Street?

To satisfy your curiosity (and return your body back to its normal state!), you’d better keep reading…
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I have a proposal for you.

I can build you a house, complete with walls, windows, doors, and a roof for $350,000.

Do we have a deal?

No. I didn’t think so!

To make a decision like this, you need cold hard facts. You need details, clarity, and proof! You need budgets, breakdowns, and solid guarantees.

That’s exactly how a project stakeholder feels when they receive your project proposal, and to further complicate things, calculating an average proposal win rate is next to impossible.

Project stakeholders will, on average, receive around 50 proposals a week. To choose you out of this huge pile, they need clarity, details, specifics, lateral thinking, and a whole heap of persuasion.

You need to learn the art of how to write a project proposal, to stand any chance of winning their investment, and increasing your proposal success rate.

So, join me in this Process Street post where we will take the following lessons in how to write a project proposal:

• Lesson #1: What a project proposal is
• Lesson #2: What a project proposal reviewer is really looking for
• Lesson #3: The surefire way to succeed with your project proposal
• Lesson #4: The 4 types of project proposal & how to create them (with tips & templates)
• Lesson #5: A little more about Process Street and how it can help your project proposals

If you’re in a hurry, grab this Project Proposal Template Checklist, and catch up with the class later:

Click here to access the Project Proposal Template Checklist!

Now, butts on seats, no talking, and let the class begin!
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Elisabeth Swan is the co-author of “The Problem-Solver’s Toolkit” and co-host of “The Just-in-Time Cafe Podcast.” She’s been a process improvement consultant, speaker, and innovator for over 30 years. She’s the Chief Learning Experience Officer for GoLeanSixSigma.com, a former cast member of ImprovBoston, and – if asked – may still be able to ride a unicycle.

Surgeon Atul Gawande made headlines when he told the world that a simple checklist could drastically reduce unnecessary deaths in The Checklist Manifesto.

Yet, checklists conjure images of forklift drivers on loading docks with clipboards counting boxes. How could they transform healthcare?

“He has… produced a 90-second checklist which reduced deaths and complications by more than one-third in eight hospitals around the world – at virtually no cost and for almost any operation.” – James Clarke, reviewing The Checklist Manifesto, Ulster Med J. 2011 Jan; 80(1): 54.

Aviation was transformed decades earlier when management and engineers at Boeing Corporation created the pre-flight checklist after the 1935 crash of the prototype Boeing B-17 at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. Checklists have become so essential to the airline industry that most crashes can be traced to the misuse or failure to complete a checklist.

A New York Times reviewer noted, “no matter how expert you may be, well-designed checklists can improve outcomes”. Since the purpose of process improvement is improving outcomes, Lean Six Sigma and checklists are natural companions.

To prove that, this Process Street blog post will show the relationship between checklists and lean six sigma, and provide you with a free DMAIC Improvement Project Tollgate Checklist that you can use right now.

Use the links below to jump to that section of the post:

• Lean Six Sigma and the role of problem-solving
• Lean Six Sigma & the checklist
• Introduction phase
• Define phase
• Measure phase
• Analyze phase
• Improve phase
• Control phase
• Checklists and Lean Six Sigma
• Use Process Street to reduce error

Or, if you just want the checklist, check it out below!

Let’s get started.

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During a routine cryogenic proof test on 28th February 2020, SpaceX’s Starship SN1 prototype suffered a catastrophic failure.

Musk indicated that the failure was due to bad welding at the base of the rocket, around the area of the puck that is designed to bear the engine thrust load.

Starship SN3 suffered a similar fate during a round of pressure testing, where the lower of the two tanks collapsed due to test configuration mistakes.

Of course, this is the whole point of testing; failures such as these are half expected, and should be planned for accordingly. Failures like SN1 and SN3 pave the way for future successes like the Crew Dragon launch to the ISS. Failure is an essential ingredient that is necessary to push the limits of understanding.

But it does raise an interesting and important question – when failure is a statistical inevitability, what role does process standardization and quality management play in the prevention and meaningful gain of failure?

In this Process Street article we’ll be looking at AS9100D, the foremost aerospace quality management standard. How can you implement, maintain, and utilize AS9100D to proactively mitigate failure, as well as a tool to learn from errors and failure to drive improvement and optimization?

We’ll cover:

• What is AS9100D?
• AS9100D vs ISO 9001
• Importance of aerospace quality management
• Benefits of AS9100D
• Free AS9100D templates
• How to implement AS9100D with Process Street

Want to skip straight to the templates? No worries! Here’s a preview of the free templates to come and a list that you can use to cut straight to the chase.

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In the fast-paced, full-throttle world of modern business, there’s an incentive to keep going, keep doing, keep pressing forward.

(Business. More like busyness, amirite? )

But what if I told you that striving forward without robust, solid processes is a massive mistake?

While Łukasz Tartanus found from his sample that 69% of businesses have documented processes, only 4% manage and measure them. This means countless businesses are zealously pressing forward with depreciated, outdated processes for their recurring tasks. If only their processes were optimized, these businesses would be able to grow and achieve internal targets far quicker.

This is why business process optimization is important. And it’s why you’re about to read my post on it.

I’ll define business process optimization, its benefits, explain how to go about it, and show you how Process Street makes process optimization super easy.

Just read through the following sections to get clued up:

• What’s the business process optimization definition?
• Is business process optimization right for you?
• Example of an optimized process
• How to optimize your business processes (with Process Street’s template)
• Use Process Street – and its automation features – for true optimization!

It’s time to learn about optimization!

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I’ve just finished watching this Netflix docuseries and I can’t stop thinking about it.

The Last Dance.

It’s ten juicy episodes, full of massive egos, incredible basketball, and a banging 90’s hip-hop soundtrack. It’s a fantastically brutal account of how the Chicago Bulls came to dominate the basketball scene throughout the 1990s.

The team was led to countless victories by three key players: Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman.

This, coincidentally, demonstrates the concept behind the Pareto chart, and this Process Street post perfectly.

I’ll explain what I mean by this later. First, let me go through what we’ll cover in this post:

• What is a Pareto chart?
• Where did the Pareto chart come from?
• How to read a Pareto chart
• When to use a Pareto chart
• How to create a Pareto chart with Process Street

I’m excited to get started. So, my cagers, let’s take it to the hole!

I admit. I may have googled “basketball terms” for that sentence… what I’m basically saying is; C’mon you lot! Let’s go!

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