All Features
Mark Lee Hunter, Luk Van Wassenhove, Maria Besiou
The digital revolution is transforming the relationship between consumers and companies. Nearly all business functions are feeling the effects, but conventional marketing sits squarely on the fault lines of disruption. Brand-authorized messages increasingly can’t compete with online customer…
NIST
Printing 3D metal objects is a booming industry, with the market for products and services worth more than an estimated $2.3 billion in 2015—a nearly fivefold growth since 2010. For this type of manufacturing, a metal part is built up successively, layer by layer, over minutes or hours. Sometimes…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
I n our June 23, 2017, episode of QDL we look at STEM education, personal kanban, and common mistakes when using SPC.
“ASME Supports STEM Opportunities Act of 2017”
Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) has introduced H.R. 2653, which promises to increase engagement of women and minorities…
NIST
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- It’s no surprise that tiny precision objects, such as the parts inside your smartphone, must be measured with laser technology in order to fit together and work properly. But some of the largest structures people depend on every day—including airplane wings and bridge…
Matthew Barsalou, Robert Perkin
As you drive east on I-70 coming from the Rockies, there is a point where you seem to have stopped descending, but a sign says, “Trucks: Don’t be fooled. Four more miles of steep grades and sharp curves.” The message is that it would be premature to relax at this point, and vigilant driving is…
Michael Ray Fincher
To meet the 2018 deadline for becoming certified to ISO 9001:2015, organizations are scrambling to overhaul their quality management systems. One major revision to ISO 9001 is the requirement to identify, evaluate, and address risks. Unfortunately, a tool most appropriate for these actions has…
Liri Andersson
Ten years ago, when we would ask senior executives or company directors what “digital” meant to them, their response would usually be something related to social media. Today, it might be apps, big data, 3D printing, the cloud, or another current example of digital technology. All such answers are…
Christopher Martin
Many of us are familiar with the concept of the Ohno Circle, innovated by Taiichi Ohno at Toyota during the 1940s. While familiarity with the technique and the goals it sets to accomplish is one thing, how many of us have actually participated? The surprising answer is… probably all of us, in a…
Roger Lehman, Julius Koh
Lucy felt hollow and dissatisfied. She was a star performer and had just helped her team clinch a large government deal that they had been working on for months. At the celebration that evening, Lucy was forced to put on a smile and a dynamic front. She had good relationships with her team members…
Robert A. Brown
Lean thinking has taken its rightful place in the effort to improve efficiency in manufacturing. However, it isn’t fulfilling its potential in many areas, most notably with knowledge workers. This is due to a fundamental flaw in how lean is presented and utilized. With a better constructed…
Steve Daum
I have daily conversations with manufacturer plant managers, quality managers, engineers, supervisors, and plant production workers about challenges when using statistical process control (SPC). Of the mistakes I witness in the application of SPC, I’d like to share the five most prevalent; they…
Phanish Puranam, Sunkee Lee
When organizations change how they compensate employees they are embarking on a social experiment, whether decision-makers know it or not. The trouble is the vast majority of these experiments are conducted unscientifically, yielding results that can be misleading or inconclusive.
The popularity…
Automated Precision Inc.
(Automated Precision Inc.: Rockville, MD) -- Automated Precision Inc. (API) has introduced the new OT2 Core wireless laser tracker that utilizes wireless and controller-free laser tracker technology.
“The OT2 Core is API’s response to the voice of our customers who want to have the high…
William A. Levinson
‘We’ve always done it that way” explains why many suboptimal and even obsolete methods are taken for granted. The range chart for statistical process control (SPC) is, for example, somewhat inferior to the sample standard deviation chart, and it is almost certainly a holdover from when all…
Bonnie Stone
18:37:21
In part one of “New Spin on the ‘Stand in a Circle’ Exercise,” I described how Taiichi Ohno, the creator of the Toyota Production System, used the “Stand in a Circle” exercise to help managers identify waste in their operations.
During this exercise Ohno would take a manager or student…
Chad Kymal
In the 1990s, Omnex worked with Ford Motor Co. to develop the Ford quality operating system methodology, which with maturity and broad experience has evolved into Omnex’s business operating system (BOS) process.
The quality operating system promised and has delivered the following: • Cross-…
Mike Richman
The June 16, 2017, episode of QDL included my hot take on Hexagon’s ginormous user conference as well as interviews with two of our favorite guests, Chad Kymal of Omnex and Kelly Graves of Internal Business Solutions. Take a look:
“Field Report: Hexagon Live 2017”
I and more than 3,000 of my…
ISO
(ISO: Geneva) -- Wastewater irrigation is an economical and high-in-nutrients option for even the poorest farmers. But, if untreated, the consequences for our health and the environment can be catastrophic. Discover the techniques that could transform agriculture as we know it, offering perhaps…
Kelly Graves
What are the common mistakes managers make when trying to motivate employees? In this article, we’ll discuss these mistakes and some better strategies to successfully motivate employees.
It’s human nature for managers to take the path of least resistance, and this often leads to making all…
Ryan E. Day
Sponsored Content
Building airplanes and spaceships poses some of the most unique engineering and manufacturing challenges mankind has ever encountered. Fortunately, you don’t have to build rockets to benefit from rocket science. Manufacturers of most any product can improve their efficiency and…
Bonnie Stone
During the mid-1940s, Taiichi Ohno established the Toyota Production System, which is primarily based on eliminating nonvalue-added waste. He discovered that by reducing waste and inventory levels, problems get exposed and that forces employees to address these problems. To engage the workers and…
MIT News
(MIT News: Cambridge, MA) --“Deep learning” computer systems, based on artificial neural networks that mimic the way the brain learns from an accumulation of examples, have become a hot topic in computer science. In addition to enabling technologies such as face- and voice-recognition software,…
Laurel Thoennes @ Quality Digest
You can be known as a hard worker and counted on to tie up loose ends, but fall behind when co-workers’ tasks are on hold until yours are complete, and you’re perceived as needing an attitude adjustment. What would you want to do? Place blame or work on a remedy? There is a solution: Personal…
Davis Balestracci
My last column mentioned how doctors and hospitals are currently being victimized with draconian reactions to rankings, either interpreted literally or filtered through the results of some type of statistical analysis. Besides the potential serious financial consequences of using rankings in the…
Jesse Lyn Stoner
Sometimes leaders make bad decisions or harm team morale by making autocratic decisions without involving others. And other times they waste their team’s time by unnecessarily involving them.
How do you know when and how much to involve your team in decisions? Sometimes the answer is pretty…
