Geographic:
USA - Canada - United Kingdom
Europe - Asia - Australia - South America
ASQ Local Sections - Local Baldrige Organizations - Community Quality

The Practice of Management Improvement:
Deming - Statistical Process Control (SPC) - Statistics - Six Sigma - Design of Experiments - Theory of Constraints

Areas of Application:
Manufacturing - Health Care - Service - Public Sector

Education:
Quality Learning - K to 12 - University - Degree Program - Course

Library - Software - Consultants

Topical connections provide quick lists of web resources related to many specific topics. You can also use the search option (on the right side of this page) to search Curious Cat Connections (as well as our library and bookstore).

The aim of the Curious Cat Management Improvement guides is to contribute to the successful adoption of management improvement to advance joy in work and joy in life.   thoughts on our aim

Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections attempts to help you find the best online management improvement resources for your needs.
We also offer Web Feeds that Management Improvement sites can use on their sites. For more information on how you can provide continuously updated management improvement content on your site as simply as adding some simple code to your site see our Web Feed information page.

The Curious Cat Management Improvement Guide Highlights includes selected resources and short descriptions letting you know something about those resources. Some of the resources will stay listed permanently some will be placed on the list to highlight them for varying lengths of time. You may want to start here. If you don't find these resources useful you may not have the same ideas we do about what information is valuable.

The Online Quality Resource Guide includes the resources most related to what we see as the core of Quality, Management Improvement... (Deming's System of Profound Knowledge, System Thinking, Statistical Process Control, Customer Focus, Learning Organizations, Innovation, QFD, Teamwork, Strategic Planning and Creating Joy in Work.

In our guide to online Deming resources we attempt to present the resources those who find Deming's thoughts valuable would find most helpful.

Our Library highlights excellent articles, papers, reports... found online.

The Curious Cat Management Improvement Bookstore mirrors the aim of this guide. We offer books by Deming, Scholtes, Wheeler, Senge, Joiner, Achoff, Kohn, Wheatley, Box, Langford... many at 20 or 30% discounts.

The Online Public Sector Continuous Improvement Resource Guide contains sources relating to Management Improvement in the Public Sector and other sources that may be useful to those trying to continually improve their Public Sector organizations.

Our guide to Statistics focuses on those online resources helpful to the practical application of management improvement in the real world. In the hopes of illuminating our take on statistics - those who have contributed most to applying statistics in this way, in our opinion, include: Walter Shewhart, William Hunter, George Box, W. Edwards Deming, Donald Wheeler and Brian Joiner. Without an understanding of statistics (as represented by those individuals listed above) sustained, rapid, long term improvement is much more difficult. However, much that is called statistics is a not much help.

The Community Quality Electronic Network guide links to community groups that help focus the management improvement attempts in their own communities such as the Madison Area Quality Improvement Network and the Indy Quality Productivity and Involvement Council.

Success without learning through consultants or seminars is possible but much more difficult. But many seminars and consultants will do more harm than good. We maintain this guide to conferences and seminars we recommend to try and help you with this quandary. Most likely there our other excellent sources our guide aims to give you links to some of the best resources we, and our peers, recommend.

The Curious Cat Global Management Improvement Resource Links focuses on online resources outside the USA.

The Curious Cat Management Improvement Resource List is our most comprehensive section containing many links and all those that don't fit in the topical guides. The topical guides do include resources not included on the list. So, for example, to find all the Deming resources make sure you try the World Wide Deming Web or to find Community Quality information try the Community Quality Electronic Network Guide. Guides to specific topics related to continuous improvement:

Aim of Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections

To contribute to the successful adoption of management improvement to advance joy in work and joy in life.

We welcome any comments or suggestion on our aim or the usefulness of our guides. Joy in work and joy in life may seem like lofty goals (and undoubtedly to many idealistic and unrealistic goals). We have devoted a great amount of time to this guide and would not have done so without the instances we have seen of the joy successful adoption of these ideas have brought to those we know.

Also we have seen great need in the world for better living conditions from Kenya to England to Thailand to Washington DC. Realistically we believe many people want nice houses, good food, indoor plumbing, telephones, roads... We believe the adoption of the management improvement ideas presented here can help give people joy in life by providing excellent products at affordable prices. Obviously material wealth is not everything we also believe the adoption of the management improvement ideas presented here can help our governments reduce crime, improve education, maintain the infrastructure (roads, phones, utilities), maintain a safety net and basically do a better job providing the citizens what they want.

We also know that most changes within organization don't result in any significant improvement. Our hope is that our efforts will help those who attempt to improve succeed. Thus giving them the courage to adopt more of the ideas explored in the guide. Over a long period of time the ideas presented by visionaries like W. Edwards Deming, Russell Achoff, David Langford and Peter Scholtes will penetrate our organizations thus making the workplace a more joyful place.

If you think this is all a bunch of hogwash, we hope you can put aside those feeling for long enough to examine the guide. We feel the guide can help you help your organization improve productivity, deal with its chronic problems, reduce waste, improve customer satisfaction even if you find our aim misguided. We take the "successful adoption of management improvement" piece of our aim very seriously and are focused on solutions that can work now in the organizations we all live in. While the biggest payoffs for our organizations will take fundamental shifts in thinking (and thus won't likely happen at first) we don't want to sit idly by until then.

Bookstore Connections Library