SC QUALITY GUILD
Free resources for the quality professional, all in one place.
Self study built from our primers, practice tests with the reasoning behind every answer, calculators and tools for the work itself, and a Clinic where quality professionals answer each other’s questions. Free, and growing with everyone who uses it.
SHARE WHAT YOU KNOW · LEARN WHAT YOU DO NOT · GET THERE TOGETHER
Seven ways in. None of them costs anything.
SC Quality Guild Academy
Guided certification courses, taught by Q-Bot. Narrated lessons with the picture building on screen, exercises, a practice check after every lesson and a test after every module. Seven courses are open now.
Start a course →Trivia
A ranked round at the top and bottom of every hour. Fifteen questions, thirty seconds each, the same paper for everyone in the room. Drop in without joining anything.
Join the next round →Q-Bot
A quality coach you can talk to. Ask about an 8D, a control chart or an audit finding and get a short, plain answer read aloud, with a little dry humor. A few questions a day, no sign-up.
Ask Q-Bot a question →Quality Clinic
Bring a problem you are stuck on and the room answers it. Votes sort the useful replies to the top, and after thirty days the question goes — so nobody is ever handed a link to a two-year-old thread.
See what is on the board →Professional resources
Twelve calculators for the work itself — capability, control charts, gauge R&R, sampling, yield. Every constant derived in your browser.
Open the resources →Self study
A week-by-week plan from each primer, practice sets with the reasoning behind every answer, two timed practice exams and a readiness score by section. Free, and no account needed.
Start studying →Practice tests
More than 3,800 original questions across eight certifications, with the reasoning behind every answer and a score for every Body of Knowledge requirement.
Take a test →No sign-up. Just answer it.
One question from the bank, drawn at random. The reasoning appears the moment you answer, and every question on the site carries the same reasoning.
New every day Question of the day → One question a day for your certification, with a streak to keep.COVERED
WITH REASONING
CALCULATORS
COURSES
Ten certification primers.
Written against the published Body of Knowledge topic by topic, at the cognitive level each topic is actually tested at. Every self-study plan is built week by week on its primer.
Every title is two volumes
ASQ examinations are open book, and collections of questions and answers are not permitted in the room. Volume 1 has no questions in it at all, which is why it can go in with you. Volume 2 holds the practice sets and full rationales, and stays at home.
They are the only thing here that costs anything, and they are how the rest stays free. Nothing on this site requires them — not the self study, not the trivia, not the practice tests.
The practice items are original and appear in none of the books. The calculators are complete, not trial versions. You can work the self study, use this site for a year, pass your examination and never buy anything, and that is a perfectly good outcome.
No pass-rate claim appears anywhere on this site or in any of our primers, because no study material can support one. No question we publish is a remembered examination item.
About us
Free resources for the quality professional, all in one place: self study, practice tests, calculators and tools, and a Clinic where quality professionals answer each other’s questions.
To help individuals build confidence, master foundational concepts, and achieve professional certification through expertly crafted primers and a supportive learning community.
To cultivate a community of professionals who share best practices, answer each other’s questions, and advance at their own pace toward ASQ certification.
Most guides teach the tools. The examination asks for judgment.
Of the sixty-seven topics in the Certified Quality Auditor Body of Knowledge, only seven are examined at the level of describe it. The rest ask a candidate to apply a rule to a situation they have not seen, analyze a scenario and separate what matters from what does not, evaluate whether a proposal is adequate, or assemble a document that works.
A guide that presents the tools as a list and then tests recall prepares a candidate to recognize every term on the paper and answer almost none of the questions. The gap is not knowledge. It is the distance between naming a thing and knowing when to use it.
SC Quality Guild exists to close that gap — and to make sure nobody has to close it alone.
No pass-rate claim appears anywhere on this site or in any of our primers, because no study material can support one. No question we publish is a remembered examination item, and every practice item we offer is original.
SC Quality Guild is not affiliated with ASQ and is not a certifying body. That independence is what lets us say plainly which topics are examined lightly and which will decide your result.
Six things every topic has to do.
The structure is fixed across the series, which is what makes a topic a reader has never seen feel navigable. Every topic in every primer carries all six, in this order.
What it is
Stated plainly, in language a reader who has never met the term can follow, before any notation appears.
Why it exists
What problem it was invented to solve. A tool without a purpose is a definition you will forget by Thursday.
How it works
Worked through on real numbers from the primer's running case study, not a toy example that reconciles with nothing.
What to expect
What a normal answer looks like, so a result that is off by a factor of ten announces itself before it gets written down.
Where it fits
Which phase, which decision, which chair you are sitting in when you reach for it — and when it is the wrong tool.
What it touches
Cross-referenced to every other topic that depends on it, so the primer reads as a network rather than a sequence.
Most guides open a topic with a list of learning objectives a reader cannot yet parse. Ours put them at the end, where they work as a self-check: if you cannot do all of these, go back.
Not general warnings. Each names a specific mistake candidates actually make and says why the wrong answer is attractive. A common error that names no specific mistake is a key point wearing the wrong label.
A primer teaches. People carry you the rest of the way.
Certification is a solitary experience for most people who attempt it, and that is the main reason candidates stall. The Guild exists so that the question you are stuck on has already been answered by somebody who was stuck on it last month.
One of these is permitted in the exam room. One is not.
ASQ examinations are open book. Reference material is bound and inspected before you go in. Collections of questions and answers are not permitted, and a reference source containing them may not be carried in unless the questions are removed. Candidates using single-volume guides tear pages out at the door.
The Primer
Teaching content, worked examples and reference appendices. Zero practice questions, zero multiple-choice options anywhere in it — verified by search, not by assumption.
- Every Body of Knowledge topic, in the certifying body's own order
- Formula reference and constant tables computed from first principles
- A one-page tool selector, glossary, acronyms and annotated reading
- A full Code of Ethics chapter before Part 1 of every volume
Practice & Solutions
Section question sets, two full-length practice examinations, and a rationale for every answer that names the distractor most candidates take and says why it is wrong.
- Every answer cites the subsection to reread, not just the correct letter
- Exams weighted to the published question allocation, section by section
- Answer positions balanced, so pattern-guessing does not help
- A diagnostic that turns a wrong answer into a page number
Send us something
A bug, a wrong answer, a question the clinic should carry, a correction to one of the primers, or an offer to write something. It reaches Anthony directly and every message gets read.
Your address is used to reply and nothing else. Not shared, not added to any list.
The primers
Ten certifications, each written against the published Body of Knowledge topic by topic. Open any title for its exam facts, structure and a free practice test.
Not a certification. A book about doing the work.
Out of Chaos
Aligning Quality and Lean into a Holistic Management System
Quality and lean were separated artificially, and that separation has cost organizations more than either method ever saved them. A thirty-year career argued into one case: that the two are complementary rather than competing.
Read a page and see what is in it →Actual pages from the book.
Not a description of how it teaches — the pages themselves, at trim, as they print.
This is Volume 1. No questions in it anywhere, which is why it can be carried into an open-book examination with you.
Every topic is set this way: the material, then a KEY POINT naming the distinction the examination actually tests, then a COMMON ERROR showing the trap most candidates fall into.
What the examination covers
Select any section to see how the primer teaches it.
Volume 1 is the primer and contains no questions, which is why it may be carried into an open-book examination. Volume 2 holds the practice sets and full rationales, and stays at home.
Computed, never borrowed
Every chart is generated from the book's own case study data. No stock imagery, no scanned tables, no diagram lifted from anywhere.
Practice tests
More than 3,800 original questions across eight certifications, with the reasoning behind every answer. Each one is a full self-assessment that covers every requirement in the current Body of Knowledge. None of the questions appears in any of the books.
THESE QUESTIONS ARE ORIGINAL AND ARE NOT ACTUAL EXAMINATION QUESTIONS. PERFORMANCE ON THEM DOES NOT PREDICT PERFORMANCE ON THE EXAMINATION.
Leave Study mode off until the report.
Study mode is off by default, so an attempt runs like the exam: no feedback until the end, and the options are shuffled every time. That measures what you know, not what you recognize once an answer is shown — and recognition is exactly what fails under examination conditions. Turn Study mode on when you want the answer and explanation after each question.
Treating a good score here as a prediction. ASQ reports a scaled score, and no practice set can tell you whether you will pass. What the report can do is mark every requirement Strong, Borderline or Gap from your last six answers on it, and point you at what to study next — then Work on my weak spots drills only the requirements that are not yet Strong.
Quality Clinic
Ask the room. Anybody can answer, the room votes the useful ones up, and after thirty days it goes — so nobody is handed a link to a two-year-old thread.
Claim a name
Pick the name you want to appear under and a passphrase to hold it. Claiming a name means nobody else can use it, and it is what lets you vote — one vote each is meaningless if anybody can be anybody.
The email is optional and used for two things: to tell you when new study material opens, and to get you back in if you forget your passphrase. Without it there is no way back into a name if the passphrase goes. It is not sold, not shared, and not used for anything else. Already claimed this name? The name and passphrase sign you back in, here or on another device.
The questions and answers below are written examples, not real people. Everything works here in your browser, but nothing is saved and nobody else can see it.
What are you stuck on?
Out of Chaos
Aligning Quality and Lean into a Holistic Management System
Actual pages from the book.
The chapter is called The Fragmentation of Quality and Lean. This subsection is called ISO Gets Lawyered Up, which tells you most of what you need to know about the tone.
It is a book with jokes in it about a subject that usually has none. That is deliberate.
Five chapters
Select any chapter to see what it covers.
Trivia
Live rounds at the top and the bottom of every hour. Fifteen questions, the whole room on the same one at the same second.
Nobody here yet
ROOM CHAT
EVERY QUESTION IN THIS ROUND
THIS ROUND
YOUR BEST ROUNDS
Resources
Twelve calculators, 72 tools and templates, and two 8D simulations. Everything runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Tools and templates
72 working tools and templates: a DMAIC project set (roadmap, SIPOC, charter, fishbone and 5 whys, FMEA, control plan, Gantt chart), plus sets for analysis and lean, auditing, inspection and measurement, and running a quality system. Fill them in, print them, or save them to a file.
See all 72 tools and templates
Simulations
A one-day supplier audit. You read the pack, choose the processes, interview the people who run them, and defend your findings at the closing meeting.
Check any constant against your own table.
When a resource page loads, your browser integrates the distribution of the range of n standard normal variables to obtain d₂ and d₃, then forms the chart factors from them. Agreement with the published values to four decimal places is the point.
Sigma level, DPMO and yield
1.5σ LONG-TERM SHIFT APPLIEDWhat gauge R&R does to Cpk
MEASURED VARIATION = ACTUAL + MEASUREMENT SYSTEMVariances add. The spread you measure is the process spread and the gauge spread together, and Cpk is calculated from what you measured — so every Cpk you have ever reported was lower than the process deserved.
Wrong decisions, per million parts
Linearity study
%EV AT EACH REFERENCE · POOLED · LINEARITY ACROSS THE RANGEOne appraiser, several certified references spread across the operating range, repeated readings on each. The result to read is %EV — how much of the part tolerance the gauge’s own scatter consumes, at each reference and pooled across the range. The linearity test below asks a second question: whether the gauge’s bias stays constant from one end of the range to the other.
One row per reference. Specification limits are per reference because each block stands for a different product band; leave them blank and the %EV columns read “n/a”. Blank readings are ignored.
k decides how much of the gauge’s scatter is charged against the tolerance, and the two values are conventions rather than choices: 6.00 covers 99.73 percent and is the MSA 4th edition default, 5.15 covers 99 percent and appears in older customer agreements. Switching knocks about fourteen percent off every %EV figure, so state which you used.
Repeatability at each reference
Linearity across the range
Linearity plot
Band check
Process capability
Cp · Cpk · Pp · Ppk · PPM · SIGMA LEVELControl chart builder
X̄-R OR I-MR · CONSTANTS COMPUTED · RUN RULES APPLIEDTHE MEANS CHART
THE RANGE CHART
| SUBGROUP | VALUE | SIGNAL |
|---|
Gauge R&R
AVERAGE AND RANGE METHOD · %EV, %AV, %R&R, ndcReading %R&R as a pass mark. The bands are a convention, not a rule: a system at 25 percent may be fine for a loose characteristic and useless for a tight one. Look at ndc and at which component dominates before deciding anything.
Pareto builder
SORTS, CUMULATES, AND TESTS FOR A VITAL FEW| CATEGORY | COUNT | SHARE | CUMULATIVE |
|---|
Sampling plan and OC curve
BINOMIAL · PRODUCER AND CONSUMER RISKCURVE COMPUTED FROM THE BINOMIAL DISTRIBUTION. NOT A REPRODUCTION OF ANY PUBLISHED SAMPLING STANDARD — USE THE STANDARD ITSELF WHEN A PLAN IS CONTRACTUALLY REQUIRED.
Control chart constants
DERIVED ON PAGE LOAD FROM THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE RANGEThese are not transcribed. When this page loaded, your browser integrated the distribution of the range of n standard normal variables to get d₂ and d₃, then formed the chart factors from them. Check any row against your own table — agreement to four decimals is the point.
| n | d₂ | d₃ | A₂ | D₃ | D₄ | E₂ = 3/d₂ |
|---|
d₂ = E[W] AND d₃ = SD[W], WHERE W IS THE RANGE OF n STANDARD NORMAL VARIABLES. A₂ = 3 / (d₂√n). D₃ = max(0, 1 − 3d₃/d₂). D₄ = 1 + 3d₃/d₂.
Every one of these is worked in full in the primers.
Yield, DPMO and sigma
RTY · NORMALIZED YIELD · DPU · HIDDEN FACTORYSample size
ATTRIBUTE OR VARIABLE · FINITE POPULATION CORRECTIONHypothesis test selector
ANSWER FOUR QUESTIONS, GET THE RIGHT TESTChoosing the wrong test is more common than computing the right one incorrectly, and it is examined directly on the Green Belt, Black Belt and Quality Engineer papers. Work down the tree; the reasoning is printed with the answer.