All Features
Davis Balestracci
The Individuals chart is the “Swiss Army knife” of control charts. It usually approximates the supposedly “correct” chart under most conditions, and its use is much easier to understand and explain. It can also save you a major side trip into the swamp of unnecessary calculation minutiae,…
Curt Redden
We all seem to get it by now—more engaged employees perform at a higher level. The organizations that get their strategy right in this area provide a superior customer experience, have lower levels of employee churn, higher morale, and ultimately much higher financial performance. Their customers…
NIST
On February 14, 1929, gunmen working for Al Capone disguised themselves as police officers, entered the warehouse of a competing gang, and shot seven of their rivals dead. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre is famous not only in the annals of gangland history, but also in the history of forensic…
Visual Workplace Inc.
(Visual Workplace: Byron Center, MI) -- Visual Workplace Inc. offers an extensive line of both standard and customizable personal protection equipment (PPE) signage to communicate safety requirements to visitors and new employees, and to reinforce safety standards to existing personnel.
Common…
Mike Richman
The XXIII Olympic Winter Games are wrapping up this weekend (Feb. 25, 2018) in PyeongChang, South Korea. During the past two weeks, thousands of athletes competed on mountains, rinks, and tracks; the best of the best emerged with precious medals that they will cherish for the rest of their lives…
Jim Benson
Tonianne DeMaria and I run the Personal Kanban, Modus Institute, and Modus Cooperandi Corp-o-plex pretty much duo-handed. There’s a lot of work. The rules of Personal Kanban apply to us, too. We are constantly experimenting with new ways to visualize our work and limit our work-in-process (WIP).…
Jennifer Lauren Lee
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is home to one of the most sensitive machines in the world for measuring objects’ dimensions. Customers who rely on the instrument include the military, academia, instrument manufacturers, private industry calibration labs, and more.…
Ryan E. Day
Manufacturing activities have strong ties to economic prosperity. Deloitte’s 2016 Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index states, “Nations and companies are striving to advance to the next technology frontier and raise their economic well-being.” It’s no surprise that the manufacturing sector is…
Willie L. Carter
What differentiates a lean-thinking organization from a traditional one? Basically, the lean-thinking organization is grounded in the answers to two simple questions: “What do my customers value?” And, “What organization and work processes inside my company will most directly deliver that value?”…
John Toon
Can companies rely on the results of one or two scientific studies to design a new industrial process or launch a new product? In at least one area of materials chemistry, the answer may be yes—but only 80 percent of the time.
The replicability of results from scientific studies has become a…
ICEE
(ICEE: Galveston, TX) -- A new conference, titled “ISO 9001 and ISO 10018: Enterprise Engagement in Action,” will be held May 7–8, 2018, in Galveston, Texas, and will provide the first formal education program for professionals and organizations committed to implementing the quality management…
Sameer Hasija
Let’s assume you’re a company scouting for vendors for a variety of business-critical IT projects. Every candidate you approach wants to scoop up as much of your business as possible. Should you try to find the best partner for each task, or look for a one-stop shop?
The theoretical advantages of…
Dan Chalk
Although many manufacturing organizations have held firm to traditional operational processes for generations, the time has come for transformational change. There is an ongoing shift in cultural expectations of how, when, and where work happens, and it is driven by consumer choice. Industry…
Stephen McCarthy
Cost of quality (CoQ) is certainly not a new topic. It was first described in 1956 by American quality control expert Armand V. Feigenbaum in a Harvard Business Review article. As you likely already know, CoQ consists of four categories: internal and external failures, and appraisal and prevention…
Taran March @ Quality Digest
What must it be like to be Elon Musk? Here’s a guy who can successfully launch the world’s most powerful rocket into space, a feat hitherto reserved for nations with decent budgets. Since 2010 his commercial company, SpaceX, has been ferrying satellites to their permanent homes, and delivering…
Knowledge at Wharton
When Tide and other detergent manufacturers developed colorful, convenient pods designed to be tossed into washing machines and dishwashers, they never expected teenagers would try to eat them. But what was dubbed the “Tide pod challenge” quickly went viral, with teens posting videos of themselves…
Morten Wendelbo, Christine Crudo Blackburn
Flu season in the United States typically peaks in February, but this year’s outbreak is already one of the worst on record. As of Jan. 6, 2018, 20 children have died from the flu, and overall mortality caused by the virus is already double that of last year’s.
One reason the flu is so severe…
George Hall
Every year, would-be suitors spend lots on cards, nice trinkets, flowers, and even chocolates, trying to win the attention of their sweetheart or crush. It can be a dangerous game of risk and chance, quite often resulting in disappointment for one or both parties.
This is, I believe, most likely…
John Bell
I have written more than a 100 blog posts about leadership, strategy, and culture. Within that portfolio are several accounts of business reinvention and transformation. Yet it was only a few months ago that I composed my first post on another type of reinvention: personal reinvention. My own. …
AssurX
Recent FDA warning letters indicate that many drug manufacturers do not have their manufacturing in a state of current good manufacturing practices (CGMPs) control. During the first half of 2017, the FDA cited adulterated products and insanitary conditions as the two most common violations in drug…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Our Feb. 9, 2018, episode of QDL looked at electronic notes, electronic privacy, smart electronic device, and... wow... have we taken technology too far?
“Study Shows Doctors Record Better Notes After Using Best-Practices Program”
Shortcuts to electronic note taking, such as autofill and copy…
Noah Askin
Music lovers will likely know Spotify, a music streaming service that has become famous for curating tunes based on its users’ preferences. Back in 2013, Spotify had a personalized news feed called Discover that gathered together artists, album reviews, new releases, recommendations, and playlists…
Gwendolyn Galsworth
It’s easy enough to make a visual device—or borrow an idea for one from something you saw in a book or at another workplace. Reproducing other people’s ideas (as long as you say thank you) is a positive, and it can keep you going for a while. But not for very long.
Unless you are a natural-born…
Jessica Groopman
There’s much ado about blockchain, and still plenty ado about the internet of things (IoT). But are these two technology phenomena complementary? Both suffer from significant barriers such as scale, market fragmentation, costs, and regulatory issues. But if the past is prologue, technological…
Gordon Styles
Within the advanced manufacturing industry there will always be a race to reduce speed and cost while maintaining quality. To this end, the industry’s landscape continues to quickly change as new technologies enter the market, new strategies are adopted, and consumer preferences evolve. Below are…
