What is the Broken Quality Initiative?

The Broken Quality Initiative is a response to industries’ pervasive lack of knowledge regarding variation and the only tool capable of making sense of variation, the process behavior chart (control chart). 

This lack of knowledge is reflected in the often haphazard, disorganized, and chaotic way methods that individuals, teams, and organizations use to improve quality and reduce costs. Rather than work to understand and eliminate the sources of variation that make processes unpredictable, inordinate amounts of time and attention are dedicated to gut feelings and guess work. While this sentiment is often accompanied by best efforts and hard work, the lack of theory to guide actions reliably digs the hole deeper.  

Since the mid-1920s, with the seminal work of Dr. Walter Shewhart at Bell Labs, a method and tool capable of making sense of data has been at our fingertips. It is due time that industry put to work what Shewhart discovered more than 100 years ago. It is due time that individuals, teams, and organizations learn to turn data into insights and insights into actions that result in change using process behavior charts.