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ASQ Quality Press

Titles appearing in Reference — Research Book News — May 2009
Arrangement is by title.

Communication; the key to effective leadership.

Pauley, Judith A. & Joseph F.Pauley.
ASQ Quality Press, ©2009    90 p.    $42.00    HD30
978-0-87389-767-9

The two authors of this guide are CEO and President of a training and communications consultancy, and they use decades of management and leadership experience to show executives how improve team cohesiveness and productivity at work and in their everyday lives. The authors describe six personality types for employees (Reactor, Persister, Dreamer, Rebel, Promoter and Workaholic) and provide strategies for motivating, organizing, establishing trust and getting results from each group. Advice is also given for dealing with people in distress, and how leaders can manage their own stress levels in times of crisis. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

ISO 9001:2008 internal audits made easy; tools, techniques and step-by-step guidelines for successful internal audits, 3d ed. (CD-ROM included)

Phillips, Ann W.
ASQ Quality Press, ©2009    166 p.    $40.00    TS156
978-0-87389-751-8

Written for managers, internal audit coordinators and internal auditors, this guide to ISO 9001 requirements is designed to help companies pass the registration audit in a more efficient and cost-effective manner. Phillips is a consultant that has helped companies with ISO 9001, QS-9000 and ISO/TS 16949 registration, and she explains how an internal audit should differ from an external one by providing value to an organization and improving the bottom line. Instructions are given on preparing a work environment for a successful audit, managing an internal audit team, outlining audit responsibilities and objectives, performing the audit and writing up the report. For its third edition, this book contains a CD-ROM that contains all of the forms, checklists and examples that are presented in the appendices. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Process improvement using six sigma; a DMAIC guide.

Shankar, Rama.
ASQ Quality Press, ©2009    110 p.    $31.00    HD62
978-0-87389-752-5

With a quarter century experience in various manufacturing industries, Shankar (Illinois Institute of Technology and Great Lakes Institute of Management, India) offers quality practitioners a guide to help them through an improvement project. Though she emphasizes that the primary goal is to improve a process, she also seeks to remove the fear of the Six Sigma method and the worry about statistics that many people bring to the task. The stages she walks through are define, measure, analyze, improve, and control. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Root cause analysis; the core of problem solving and corrective action.

Okes, Duke.
ASQ Quality Press, ©2009    182 p.    $45.00    HD30
978-0-87389-764-8

A knowledge architect who consults on managing quality, Okes details five steps for solving quality problems in organizations, focusing heavily on the analytical process involved in finding the actual causes of problems. They are defining the problem, understanding the process, identifying possible causes, collecting the data, and analyzing the data. He leaves out statistics and other tools of quality management, paying attention instead to the methods and approaches for using them effectively. Other topics include identifying and selecting solutions, organizational issues, human error and incident analysis, and improving corrective action. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Six sigma for the new millennium; a CSSBB guidebook, 2d ed.

Pries, Kim H.
ASQ Quality Press, ©2009    436 p.    $92.00    HD62
978-0-87389-749-5

Pries is with a private firm in the U.S. where he specializes in software integration testing, hardware testing, product verification and validation testing, and reliability testing; he also teaches professional and continuing education programs at the U. of Texas, El Paso. His text is designed to walk readers through the Six Sigma Body of Knowledge (BoK) at a medium level of detail, to supply the Black Belt candidate with enough information to pursue the ASQ Certified Six Sigma Black Belt examination aggressively. The nine chapters of the text correspond to the nine sections of the BoK, and some 25 tables and 80 figures are included throughout to illustrate the various concepts. The second edition includes new material to show the Black Belt candidate how to work through some of the standard statistical tests likely to be encountered on the certification exam. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Stakeholder-driven strategic planning in education; a practical guide for developing and deploying successful long-range plans.

Ewy, Robert W.
ASQ Quality Press, ©2009    123 p.    $40.00    LB2817
978-0-87389-753-2

Ewy has been a high school teacher, a state department of education supervisor of special projects, a senior member of a regional educational laboratory, and the director of planning in a school district that won the prestigious national Baldrige Award. Currently an education consultant in strategic planning, continuous improvement, and process management, he offers a practical text for school district administrators and strategic planning teams interested in serious long- range planning to create exceptional learning environments for students and satisfying professional working conditions for staff members. Coverage includes an overview of the why and how of strategic planning; surveying stakeholders; internal review of school district performance; developing the strategic plan and the strategy map; developing a balanced scorecard to evaluate improvement; deploying the strategic plan; and timeline options. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)