All Features
The Pyzdek Institute
(The Pyzdek Institute: Tucson, AZ) -- For 50 years, the go-to method of improving call center performance has been monitoring and coaching. Yet measures of performance like disclosure compliance, call resolution, cross/upsell rates, and handle time are not continuously improving and in fact have…
InnovMetric Software
(Innovmetric: Quebec, Canada) -- InnovMetric Software has released Phase II of DirectReplay, a new Play Inspection tool that automatically builds a guided, step-by-step sequence to capture 3D datasets of a new piece. The new tool is built into v. 12.1 of PolyWorks.
Phase I of DirectReplay, which…
Stanford News Service
The terms “black swan” and “perfect storm” have become common for describing disasters ranging from the 2008 financial meltdown to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But according to Elisabeth Paté-Cornell, a Stanford professor of management science and engineering, people in government and…
Paul Naysmith
My Tuesday evenings have recently been filled thanks to the entertainment provided by the very nice people at the History channel. I’ve been thoroughly entranced by the show, The Men Who Built America. Production quality aside, it’s really an incredible feat, on reflection, how a TV channel could…
Bill Kalmar
Thanksgiving is my favorite celebration. Unlike other holidays, there is no pretentiousness. One just arrives at the host home dressed in an everyday wardrobe and not encumbered with loads of presents.
Now, that is not to say that as a guest you can’t bring a tasty food dish or a bottle of wine…
The Conference Board
(The Conference Board: New York) -- Today, corporations are embracing and analyzing “big data” to transform business and industries and spur innovation. Despite the plethora of data gathered during the past two decades, human resources functions have made little progress in using these data to help…
Steinbichler
(Steinbichler: Plymouth, MI) -- Steinbichler, a worldwide provider of optic measuring and sensor technology, will present the a new portable coordinate measuring device, the handheld touch probe T-POINT CS at EuroMold 2012, Nov. 27–30, 2012. The T-POINT CS offers a new dimension in coordinate…
Jon Miller
At the heart of the Toyota Way are two pillars, continuous improvement and respect for people. These are supported by five values: challenge, improvement (kaizen), seeing for yourself (genchi genbutsu), respect, and teamwork. The word “challenge” means either a tangible thing, such as competition…
Matthew E. May
In our world of excess everything, savvy innovators realize that less is actually best. They know that delivering a memorable and meaningful experience hinges on user engagement, which is best achieved through a subtractive approach. Anything excessive, confusing, or wasteful is intelligently and…
Alan Nicol
Outsourced solutions are some of the simplest for the business improvement analyst and the biggest nightmares for the process improvement analyst. They are simple for the business improvement analyst because, on the surface, outsourcing expertise proves to be a cost-effective way to improve upon a…
Bruce Hamilton
Bob was an outside salesman in from the field for a sales meeting at the plant. We asked him to stop by to participate with a problem-solving team assigned to one of his customers, ABC Co. We’d tried everything, so we thought, to correct a defect in a product that we produced for ABC.
The product…
Mike Micklewright
If you’ve answered the question above with, “Absolutely yes, I am a very humble leader,” you probably are not.
But don’t get me wrong: Humility should not be a substitute for confidence. In fact, perhaps the two greatest assets a lean leader, change agent, innovation pioneer, or a continuous…
National Physical Laboratory
The National Physical Laboratory (NPL), part of the United Kingdom’s National Measurement Office, has developed a new range of 3D standards for verifying freeform coordinate measurement machines (CMMs). The standards allow the verification of portable and fixed noncontact coordinate measuring…
Tripp Babbitt
American management has a long-established industrialized mindset in service industries. The trend started in post-WWII when the problem being solved in manufacturing was how to quickly provide products to a world that could only turn to the United States. This was because the competition (i.e.,…
NIST
Acting U.S. Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank has named four organizations as recipients of the 2012 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest honor for performance excellence through innovation, improvement, and visionary leadership. The winners in this, the 25th anniversary…
Creaform Inc.
Cédric Touchette, holder of the Guinness record for fastest speed on a gravity-powered street luge (157.41 kmh/97.81 mph) decided to take up a new challenge: pass the symbolic mark of 100 mph, with no engine. Among the other thrill seekers interested in this challenge was Louis-Étienne Bouchard-…
Barbara A. Cleary
When NASA engineers asked, “Could Mars have once harbored life?” and set out to investigate by launching the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, PQ Systems was in the background, not only cheering on their efforts, but also contributing indirectly to the mission through its relationship with…
Umesh Pahwa, Suryakant Bajpaico
It can be tempting for foreign players to look at the operating and marketplace challenges that Australian enterprises face and see only quality problems. It’s a temptation that should be resisted.
We, at Genpact, very quickly learned as much after being invited to help a top 20 Australian company…
Koji Kiribuchi
With the motto, “Improved Operations through Improved Safety,” Delta Q Consultants provides risk assessments, accident investigations, safety consulting, and applied research and development specializing in fire and explosion dynamics for a wide range of clients.
The firm is headquartered in Marco…
There are several programs on the market that provide information to consumers about energy efficiency. However, the ENERGY STAR program, a joint effort of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is likely the best known program.
When consumers see…
(Gigahertz-Optik: Puchheim, Germany) -- The expert committee members involved in writing ANSI/IESNA RP-27.2-00, IEC/DIN/EN 62471 (CIE S 009), and DIN EN 14255-1— “Photobiological safety of lamps and lamp systems—Measurement techniques” recognized that lamp manufacturers and distributors, safety…
Michelle LaBrosse
The definition of invigorate is: To put vitality and vigor back into someone or something. Sounds pretty easy, right?
Where do you find this extra vitality and vigor? How do you determine whether someone or something is lacking vitality and vigor? What exactly is the process for putting vitality…
Olympus
(Olympus: Center Valley, PA) -- Available for the first time as a standalone unit, the Olympus DP26 high-resolution microscope camera streamlines image capture and saves valuable workspace—all without the need for a PC connection.
The DP26’s new control unit is the latest enhancement to a camera…
Todd Patkin
In many organizations, employees go through their days assuming their hard work goes unnoticed by co-workers and, especially, their bosses. Feeling this way, these employees will lose motivation, and productivity will be mediocre at best.
In a very real way, acknowledging employees’ efforts and…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
During the early 1980s, when I was a young man fresh out of college, I wanted to work in the advertising industry as a writer. I took the traditional approach and sent résumés with my three best writing samples to 80 advertising agencies. The response I got? Zero.
I made several follow-up phone…
