Quality management can be considered to have four main components: quality planning, quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement.[1] Quality management is focused not only on product/service quality, but also the means to achieve it. Quality management therefore uses quality assurance and control of processes as well as products to achieve more consistent quality.
Excerpt: Experimental Sites Partners, you don't want to miss this opportunity!!!! For the first time, school partners in both the Quality Assurance Program and the Experimental Sites Initiative will host a joint conference. The conference is scheduled for March 4-5, 2002, in Baltimore, Maryland at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel. This is immediately preceding the SFA Spring Conference at this site.
Government Accountability Integrity Reliability Office Collection
Excerpt: DOE?s track record of correcting problems with its quality assurance program is less than favorable. Recurring problems have persisted in the program despite DOE?s numerous attempts to correct them. DOE evaluations and NRC oversight activities have concluded that the program still falls short of expectations.
Excerpt: Washington (April 20, 2005) ? An international peer review team announced today that it has given the U.S. Government Accountability Office?s quality assurance system a clean opinion ? only the second time a national audit institution has been given such a rating by a multi-national team.
Excerpt: Multiple employer determination letter applications present special procedural challenges to the Employee Plans determination specialist and to the EP determinations organization. The purpose of this bulletin is to address some of these special issues especially in light of the centralization of the determination processing function and the centralization of the EP determinations quality assurance function. This bulletin does not address the determination applic...
Excerpt: Two changes in the organizational structure of the Employee Plans function necessitate a new set of procedures for processing adverse letters on EP determination applications. These changes are a) the centralization of the determination application process and the quality assurance function; and b) the organizational separation under the new TE/GE structure of the determination and examination functions. These revised procedures are designed to provide EP specia...
Government Reference Publication
Excerpt: We are pleased to provide you with our final report on the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency External Quality Control Review of the Department of Treasury Office of Inspector General.
The Newborn Screening Quality Assurance Program (NSQAP), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), distributed driedblood- spot (DBS) quality control (QC) materials for thyroxine (T4), thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), 17 ?-hydroxyprogesterone (17- OHP), total galactose (Gal), phenylalanine (Phe), leucine (Leu), methionine (Met), tyrosine (Tyr), valine (Val), citrulline (Cit), and ten acylcarnitines (C2, C3, C4, C5, C5DC, C6, C8, C10, C14, C16) to laboratories o...
The Newborn Screening Quality Assurance Program (NSQAP) is designed to help screening laboratories achieve excellent technical proficiency and maintain confidence in their performance while processing large volumes of specimens daily. We continually strive to produce certified dried-blood spot (DBS) materials for reference and quality control (QC) analysis, to improve the quality and scope of our services, and to provide immediate consultative assistance. Through our int...
Improving immunization practices in providers’ offices is one of the most effective methods to increase immunization coverage. The role of the Immunization Program is to oversee quality assurance of all immunization practices in the providers’ offices.
Excerpt: This guidance document describes key principles and best practices for Brownfields site assessment quality assurance and quality control based on program experience. It is intended as a reference for people involved in the Brownfields site assessment process. This guidance manual does not constitute a rulemaking by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The policies set forth in this document are intended solely as guidance. They are not intended, nor c...
Excerpt: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has developed an Agency-wide Quality System, which is authorized by EPA Order 5360.1 A2 (U.S. EPA, 2000a). The Order provides that all environmental programs performed by or directly for EPA are to be supported by individual quality systems that comply fully with the American National Standard Specifications and Guidelines for Quality Systems for Environmental Data Collection and Environmental Technology Programs [A...
Excerpt: The U.S. Geological Survey operated four external quality-assurance programs for the National Atmospheric Deposition Program/ National Trends Network (NADP/NTN) in 1995 and 1996: the intersite-comparison program, the blind-audit program, the interlaboratory- comparison program, and the collocatedsampler program. The intersite-comparison program assessed the precision and bias of pH and specific-conductance determinations made by NADP/NTN site operators. The anal...
Excerpt: The NARSTO Ozone and Particulate Matter Assessments emphasized that emission inventories are critical to the success of air quality management programs and that emissions inventories in Canada, Mexico, and the United States need improvement to meet expectations for quality, timeliness, and cost effectiveness. Accordingly, NARSTO sponsored a workshop to address new and innovative methods for emission inventory development and evaluation. Findings and recommendati...
Excerpt: FOREWORD: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has developed the Quality Assurance Project Plan (QA Project Plan) as a tool for project managers and planners to document the type and quality of data needed for environmental decisions and to describe the methods for collecting and assessing those data. The development, review, approval, and implementation of the QA Project Plan is part of EPA?s mandatory Quality System. The EPA Quality System requires a...
Excerpt: PROJECT SUMMARY An adequate quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) program requires the identification and quantification of all sources of error associated with each step of a monitoring program so that error, or variance, include analysis, and residual error. the resulting data will be of known quality. The components of those associated with sampling, sample preparation, extraction, In the past, major emphasis often has been placed on QA/QC aspects of samp...
Excerpt: Evaluating, Assessing, and Documenting Environmental Data Collection and Use Programs Part 1: UFP-QAPP Manual
Statistical Reference Document
Excerpt: Block Canvassing is an operation which strives to locate all possible housing units (HUs) for the purpose of updating the Census Bureau?s Master Address File. My observation of block canvassing during Wave-2 took me to the Las Vegas Census Office in Clark County, Nevada. I was at this office from Tuesday, February 23, 1999, through Tuesday, March 2, 1999. During my visit, I observed a three day block canvassing lister training session, a Quality Assurance (QA) t...
Excerpt: I. OVERVIEW Geography - related operations were an integral part of the preparations for the 1990 Decennial Census. The Statistical Research Division (SRD) was responsible for the design of the quality assurance program for many of the geographic operations. Much of our responsibilities involved devising quality control (QC) sampling plans to be used in assuring a desired level of accuracy for operations of interest. SRD also observed these geographic operations...
Introduction: As long ago as the 1930s, two men at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Walter A. Shewhart and W. Edwards Deming, developed techniques to bring industrial processes into what came to be called “statistical control.” Under this approach to management, limits of random variation in any aspect of a task were defined, establishing acceptable highs and lows in order to detect, study, and correct causes and effects in any process that affected the quality of a p...