All Features
Jason Stoughton
The underground storage shelves of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Museum are filled with loads of charmingly weird objects accrued throughout more than a century of scientific work. However, the original purpose of quite a few of these objects is lost in time. They are…
Mike Richman
The dog days of summer have arrived, but fear not! We brought you another cool episode of QDL this past Friday, covering lean improvement, the Deming philosophy, leader psychology, and Industry 4.0. Here’s a closer look:
“Century-Old Factory Gets an Upgrade with 6S” Penn-Troy Manufacturing Inc.…
Nate Dvorak, Ryan Pendell
Retention is challenging for many organizations, especially in today’s tight labor market, where 63 percent of full-time employees say it is “somewhat likely” or “very likely” that they could find as good a job as the one they have now.
Retention can also be complicated. Pay and promotions alone…
Jennifer V. Miller
Is your organization built on a culture of trust?
Look around you; there are plenty of clues as to whether trust abounds. How quickly are decisions made? How many people do you copy (or worse, bcc) on emails? Do executives check in on the “troops” even when on vacation?
Given that 82 percent of…
Nicole Radziwill
ISO 31000 defines risk as “the effect of uncertainty on outcomes.” Identifying risks and determining ways to respond to them help you learn about your processes, your organization, and the environment you’re operating within. It also raises your awareness of how any of these things might change in…
ISO
(ISO: Geneva) -- The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, announced its intention to use ISO 13485 as the basis for its quality system legislation.
The International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) international standard, …
Rob Matheson
MIT researchers have developed novel photography optics that capture images based on the timing of reflecting light inside the optics, instead of the traditional approach that relies on the arrangement of optical components. These new principles, the researchers say, open doors to new capabilities…
Brad Egeland
First off, let me state that I really, really believe that remote project management is a great solution for most projects. It has worked extremely well for me for the past 10 years or so. But I know it’s not for everyone. Remote project management, while often a sensible and cost-effective…
Manfred Kets de Vries
A certain amount of stress is needed for us to function effectively. Stress is very much a part of the human condition. We all face disappointments, setbacks, losses and pain. But to live a rich and meaningful life, we must learn to deal in a constructive way with life’s challenges.
Stress evolved…
Harish Jose
I came across an interesting phrase recently. I was reading Kozo Saito’s paper, “Hitozukuri and Monozukuri,” and I saw the phrase “kufu eyes.” Kufu is a Japanese word that means “to seek a way out of a dilemma.” This is very well explained in Daisetz T. Suzuki’s wonderful book, Zen and Japanese…
Oscar Combs
ISO 9001:2015, clause 6.1 requires an organization to identify its risks and take actions to address identified risks. It is very tempting to start with a huge list of potential risks for the organization, but is the organization focusing on the actual risks that have an effect on its operations?…
Ruth P. Stevens
Lead generation is a major preoccupation of the typical B2B marketing department. Indeed, most B2B marketers report that leads—with an emphasis on quality leads—are their primary goal. So, let’s review the top prospecting tools and techniques that are working for B2B marketers today. And if you…
Bruce Hamilton
Bob C. was a frontline employee with 25 years of experience. His day was spent operating a machine that stripped and terminated leadwire assemblies. Problem was, there were more than 1,000 different assemblies, and it seemed that, while the machine was always busy, it was always behind schedule.…
Annette Franz
Is there a link between corporate culture and the bottom line? In a nutshell, yes. Corporate culture is linked to so many business decisions and business outcomes, you might be surprised.
Today’s article is a follow-on to, “A Fish Rots From the Head Down,” in which I wrote about the need for…
Richard Wilkinson
Whether it’s the effort to redefine the kilogram or researching the Harry Potter realm of quantum mechanics where things can somehow be in two or more places at one time, quite a bit of the science carried out at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) can be hard for the average…
Katie Takacs
As a consumer, it’s nearly impossible to get away from videos, advertising or otherwise. To give you a numeric sense of our collective obsession with online moving images: Since last year, YouTube has started registering more than a billion hours of video viewing every single day.
We all know the…
Jim Benson
‘What if there’s a task in my options column that just never moves?”
This question comes up in almost every class we teach.
And we ask, “What if that happens?”
We get answers like, “You have to make time for it,” or, “We need to find out why we didn’t start it.”
Maybe. Maybe that was…
Kumar Mehta
Establishing the conditions that encourage innovation is the best way for your company to develop an environment that lets you produce offerings with new and novel value—innovations in the eyes of your users. The most innovative companies do this instinctively—perhaps because of the culture…
MachineMetrics
(MachineMetrics: Northampton, MA) -- As part of a global initiative to ensure the continued success of its customers, SECO Tools is expanding its customer service capabilities through a partnership with MachineMetrics, whose manufacturing analytics engine will provide SECO and its customers with a…
Mike Richman
Dirk is on vacation, so I had the show all to myself this week. To celebrate, I picked stories that resonate with my own personal perspective of quality—revolving around team building, innovation, apprenticeship, and thinking. Let’s take a look:
“Fight to Win: How a Little Friction Sparks…
Mark Rosenthal
During a TED talk, Amy Edmondson, the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, talks about “How to turn a group of strangers into a team.” Although long-standing teams are able to perform, our workplaces today require ad-hoc collaboration between diverse groups.…
Chip Bell
Standing in the gate area of Delta Airlines at the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport, I was watching the monitor to learn if my name appeared on the “upgrade to first class” list. Honestly, I was feeling totally entitled since I fly a gazillion miles a year on Delta.
Had my name not…
Michael Jarrett
Transformational leaders are the exception, not the rule.
A consistent picture emerges from lists of top CEOs. In Harvard Business Review’s Best-Performing CEOs ranking, Pablo Isla of Inditex, the parent company of Zara; Ajay Banga of Mastercard; and Bernard Arnault of LVMH stand out for both…
Alaina Love
Stanford University professor Carol Dweck and colleagues have spent decades studying the distinct ways in which individuals view intelligence and learning, most recently expanding this research to how students view pursuing a passion. Her research has profound implications for the work environment…
Willie Davis
Congratulations: You’re new to your organization, and the obligatory “meet and greets” are complete. You have met your team, your supervisor has conveyed expectations, your office is organized and—most important—you now know how to get to and from the coffee machine. The euphoria of getting the new…
