qa workbook the problem solving approach

• Business & Money
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Quality Control Problem-Solving Made Easy: An Actionable Workbook: Empower Your Quality Control Efforts with Practical Problem-Solving Approaches Paperback – August 29, 2023

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• Print length 130 pages
• Language English
• Publication date August 29, 2023
• Dimensions 8.5 x 0.3 x 11 inches
• ISBN-13 979-8860092549
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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0CH2QPCT5
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently published (August 29, 2023)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 130 pages
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8860092549
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.1 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.5 x 0.3 x 11 inches
• #19 in Industrial Quality Control
• #47 in Total Quality Management (Books)
• #73 in Quality Control (Books)

About the author

Sithila manoj weerasinghe.

Sithila Manoj Weerasinghe, a qualified quality assurance (QA) specialist and a proficient writer with a passion for health, fitness, and wellness. Holding a degree in science, Sithila Manoj Weerasinghe has acquired extensive knowledge and experience in product manufacturing, specializing in quality control and auditing.

As a seasoned QA specialist, Sithila Manoj Weerasinghe has developed a keen eye for detail, ensuring that products meet the highest quality standards. Sithila Manoj Weerasinghe's expertise and dedication to the field have earned them a reputation as a trustworthy and reliable professional.

In their spare time, Sithila Manoj Weerasinghe indulges their love for writing, exploring topics related to health, fitness, and wellness. With a deep interest in holistic living, Sithila Manoj Weerasinghe seeks to inspire and motivate others to adopt healthy lifestyle habits and practices.

Through Sithila Manoj Weerasinghe's engaging and informative writing style, they aim to educate their readers on the latest health trends and tips for maintaining a balanced lifestyle. Whether it's through blogs, articles, or social media content, Sithila Manoj Weerasinghe brings a fresh and unique perspective to the world of wellness writing.

Overall, Sithila Manoj Weerasinghe is a multifaceted individual with a strong work ethic, a passion for quality control, and a talent for writing. Their ability to combine their technical knowledge with their creative flair makes them a valuable asset to any team or project they undertake.

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• Our Thinking
• Problem Solving Skills

What are the most important problem solving skills?

by Clementine Benfield 19 December 2023

Our work lives are full of problems, in all sizes and levels of severity. As we all know, the tiniest niggle can fast become a significant issue if not dealt with appropriately. A productive workplace is imperative for hitting targets, and to achieve this, strategic problem solving is necessary.

Being prepared to learn is the first step, but you also need to develop the skills and techniques to successfully solve problems and make decisions. Once you’re equipped with the tools you need, there’s no complication you can’t overcome.

The outcome mindset: what is problem solving?

How do you approach problems?

Many of us have the same “problem orientation”: automatically perceiving an event as a "problem" and thus framing it negatively. We feel anxiety, reacting unconstructively as a result, either by ignoring the issue or seeking the easiest resolution, which isn’t always right.

The "outcome" mindset is a fantastic alternative. By switching our focus away from the roadblock and instead visualising positive outcomes, we steer clear of negative thinking, avoid wasting time by spiralling, and proactively look for solutions. Re-framing your problem as a challenge, or even an opportunity for improvement, can help you develop a long-term problem-solving strategy that benefits all aspects of your work.

Problem-solving skills and examples

There are many problem-solving tricks and techniques you can employ. Each one works well individually, but they are especially useful when utilised in tandem with each other to form a broader strategy. Let’s take a look at some.

• Creative thinking

Exploring problems from different angles is often key to solving them. When we let our assumptions and biases lead us, we can overlook or unfairly dismiss potential solutions. If you’d normally ask a certain colleague about something, try getting another perspective!

• Team working

Having confidence in your ability to problem solve is great, but stubbornly refusing help is counterproductive to a successful Agile team. It’s not just about reaching out to others for support and suggestions, but sharing your expertise and ideas with others as well.

• Emotional intelligence

Daniel Goleman’s theory of emotional intelligence enables a more positive approach to problem solving. By successfully understanding, managing, and wielding our emotions, we can adapt how we feel and ensure strong emotions don’t cloud our judgements.

• Decision making

Decision making encompasses several other problem-solving approaches: take the information you’ve gathered, and use it to make a situational judgement based on what you know. Don’t get bogged down in the details: stick to facts!

• Time management

Managing your time properly is guaranteed to make problem solving easier. Worrying about finding time to get to the bottom of something means you’re not giving your sole focus to the issue at hand. The more organised you are, the less stressed you’ll be, and the quicker answers will come.

• Analytical thinking

By approaching your problem from a critical perspective, you can apply logic and reason to analyse any situation and form an evaluation, which ultimately helps you come to the answer you were looking for.

• Communication

A problem shared is a problem halved! One of the easiest ways to solve a problem is to talk about it, and when you communicate clearly and efficiently with everybody on your team, you’re one step closer to your solution.

• Research skills

How often have you spent hours searching, only to realise you were looking in the wrong place all along? Knowing exactly where to go and what to search for will massively reduce wasted time and effort, so you can get back to problem solving.

The problem-solving cycle

When a problem first presents itself, our brains can enter default mode, searching for familiarity.

This can lead us to confuse a new problem with ones we’ve encountered before. At work, it’s likely you waste valuable time fixing problems that occur regularly. This is "single-loop learning" – we don’t establish why the problem is occurring in the first place, the root cause, so it keeps coming back.

Once you’ve addressed that root cause, you can try to stop its symptoms from recurring, otherwise known as "double-loop learning". The key to success here is to use a structured approach, like the problem-solving cycle below.

First, identify the problem at hand – what exactly is the issue? Once you know what you’re dealing with, it’s time to gather all the information you require, and identify the all-important root cause.

Having determined this, you can then begin to generate possible solutions and decide which one is best before implementing. It doesn’t stop there, however; monitoring the issue and conducting a review afterwards helps avoid single-loop learning, so hopefully the problem won’t reoccur.

How is problem solving changing in a VUCA world?

We live in a world of ever-accelerating change and digital transformation, often referred to as VUCA – volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Leaders play a key role in enabling their people, teams, and organisations to successfully navigate this environment, and one element of this is their approach to problem solving.

Professor Keith Grint believes that too often, leaders establish themselves as answer-givers –responding to requests with only a "do this or that” approach. The mistake here is this usually results in complex problems being treated as simple ones.

Grint notes that many problems in modern, digital organisations are far from simple and may have no single solution – or no solution at all, just opportunities to move forward. Adopting this approach also means organisations become dependent on their leaders for answers; people don’t learn to think for themselves.

Problem solving in the future requires leaders to ask questions, not give answers, encouraging and empowering their people and organisations to become individual problem-solvers, dealing with complexity in a more Agile and intelligent way.

The importance of problem solving skills

Whether in your own team or the wider working environment, problem-solving strategies are a vital set of skills you absolutely want on your toolbelt, making you as efficient, effective, and employable as you can be.

QA offer a range of professional training, including decision making courses , and training in leadership and management and project management . 

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Assessing the Quality of the A3 Thinking Tool for Problem Solving

• Conference paper
• First Online: 17 July 2016
• Cite this conference paper

• Alison Amos 4 , 5 ,
• Kinley Taylor 4 , 5 ,
• Kendra Johnson 4 , 5 ,
• Elizabeth Comitz 4 , 5 ,
• Robert Adams 4 , 5 ,
• Gregg Tracton 4 , 5 ,
• Bhishamjit Chera 4 ,
• Lawrence Marks 4 &
• Lukasz Mazur 4 , 5  

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 494))

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The objective of this pilot study was to assess the inter-rater reliability of a newly developed A3 Quality Assessment (QA) rubric to evaluate the quality of completed Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) projects that used an A3 Thinking Tool (A3) for problem solving. One A3 was independently reviewed by 7 PDSA experts using 5 main levels and 22 sublevels. Evaluations were compared and coded for agreement and used for statistical analysis. Fleiss’ kappa statistics was performed to test for inter-rater reliability between experts across 5 main and 22 sublevels. Preliminary results suggest that the A3 QA rubric meets reliability criteria with a moderate level of agreement beyond chance alone (κ = 0.44) and it is applicable to measure progress on problem solving abilities spearheaded via PDSA cycles. Additional verification testing is needed across multiple A3 improvement projects completed in multiple A3 Thinking templates.

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Taylor, M.J., McNicholas, C., Nicolay, C., et al.: Systematic review of the application of the plan-do-study-act method to improve quality in healthcare. BMJ Qual. Saf. 0, 1–9 (2013)

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our A3 reviewers (Ilario Costa, Becky Dodge, John McCreery, Heidi Troxler, Sabrina Vereen, Erica Wolak, and Nathan Woody) who helped develop the A3 QA rubric and who utilized it to assign scores on the A3 for our preliminary study. We would also like to thank all of those who helped provide feedback on the development of the rubric, including UNC Healthcare’s Operational Efficiency. We thank other members of the Division of Healthcare Engineering for helpful conversations and development of the research study. We would like to express our gratitude to the leadership in Radiation Oncology and Oncology in the North Carolina Cancer Hospital for allowing us to do this research and continue to advance the use of A3 improvement projects to improve the quality of care for our patients.

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Department of Radiation Oncology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Alison Amos, Kinley Taylor, Kendra Johnson, Elizabeth Comitz, Robert Adams, Gregg Tracton, Bhishamjit Chera, Lawrence Marks & Lukasz Mazur

Division of Healthcare Engineering, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Alison Amos, Kinley Taylor, Kendra Johnson, Elizabeth Comitz, Robert Adams, Gregg Tracton & Lukasz Mazur

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Correspondence to Alison Amos .

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University of Central Florida , Orlando, Florida, USA

Tareq Z. Ahram

University of Central Florida , Orlando, USA

Waldemar Karwowski

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Amos, A. et al. (2017). Assessing the Quality of the A3 Thinking Tool for Problem Solving. In: Ahram, T., Karwowski, W. (eds) Advances in The Human Side of Service Engineering. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 494. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41947-3_6

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41947-3_6

Published : 17 July 2016

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