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Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
After Nelson Mandela’s death, I asked my students how Mandela’s life might inform our views of management and leadership. They were not very forthcoming with responses, and I asked them why this would be. As you can imagine, many of them are much younger than I. They responded that they had heard…
Alan Nicol
My wife coined the phrase “headless chicken leading the blind” last week to describe the phenomenon of her organization experiencing a bit of a crisis. It’s a common enough situation that we all feel familiar with it.
Something goes wrong that affects most or all of the business, and suddenly…
MIT News
MIT engineers have devised a way to measure the mass of particles with a resolution better than an attogram—one millionth of a trillionth of a gram. Weighing these tiny particles, including both synthetic nanoparticles and biological components of cells, could help researchers better understand…
James Lamprecht
Anyone who has done an online search using the terms “risk analysis,” “managing risk,” “risk management,” or any other variation will have discovered that the subject has been around for a long time and been covered by numerous authors. Still, the daunting challenge remains: How can one conduct…
Michelle LaBrosse
Have you ever worn a shoe that doesn’t fit just right? Sometimes, when you first try it on, it appears to fit just fine. As more time goes on though, you notice that it is pinching here and there, creating calluses as you walk, and just doesn’t feel right. In this particular situation, would you…
Kevin Meyer
Once again I have the privilege to be part of Curious Cat’s annual management improvement blog review and will be taking a look back at three of my favorite blogs.
TimeBack by Dan Markovitz
Dan has become one of my favorite bloggers, and a good friend, by showing how lean can be applied to personal…
Julie Mitchell
With a growing population placing ever-greater pressure on resources and clamoring for new technology, engineers are in demand like never before. But expanding the talent pool is a global challenge.
“The well-being of the world largely depends on the work of the engineer,” said Sir William…
Annette Franz
For those of you who have never heard the phrase “The third rail,” here are a couple of definitions to get you started. The Urban Dictionary defines it as: “A dangerous area of discussion, a point at which the mere mention of a subject results in disaster. Commonly used in politics.”
Wikipedia…
Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence
[Hexagon Metrology: North Kingstown, RI] -- Hexagon Metrology has announced the release of WLS qFLASH, a compact white light solution (WLS) that utilizes state-of-the-art blue light technology, for industrial measurement applications. The new Hexagon Metrology WLS qFLASH is a non-contact, stereo…
MIT News
Finding the most efficient way to transport items across a network like the U.S. highway system or the Internet is a problem that has taxed mathematicians and computer scientists for decades.
To tackle the problem, researchers have traditionally used a maximum-flow algorithm, also known as “max…
Cognex Corp.
The produce industry is moving to implement a systematic, industrywide approach to closely track where fresh produce comes from and where it goes. One of the great challenges in this effort is the automatic recognition of a wide range of different package designs and hand stamps currently used to…
Bruce Hamilton
Twenty years ago, I was introduced to a graphical method for, as it was put to me, “sharing what you see” with others. It was referred to as a material and information flow diagram, or M&I for short.
Brian S., a consultant from TSSC who was assisting my factory, pointed to a diagram he had…
ESI International
ESI International’s top 10 trends in project management highlight the need for leadership within projects, whether Agile or Waterfall. They also discuss the challenges associated with finding qualified project managers, and finding the right balance of project management approaches in this…
FARO
Today’s new 3D metrology technology is making an impact on the design of championship Indy race cars. Andretti Autosport uses 3D metrology and laser scanning technology for applications in design, reverse engineering, and quality assurance. Advancement in, and simplification of, technologies such…
Arun Hariharan
A couple weeks ago, I needed to withdraw some money from a mutual fund that I’m invested in. Some mutual funds charge a small withdrawal fee to the investor, called an “exit load.” This is typically 1 percent if the investor withdraws his money within a year of investing it. When my money was…
Michael Causey
Given the fact that the FDA probably doesn’t know what it plans to do in 2014, predicting their actions is challenging, to put it mildly.
With that slightly weasel-like caveat, it’s worth noting three events in 2013 that will almost certainly impact 2014.
CDRH’s Office of Compliance…
Matthew E. May
Just before the holiday break, I broached the subject of systems. Given the current management rage focusing on the power of distinctive corporate culture as the key enabler of constant innovation, it’s worthwhile to think about how systems and culture intertwine.
My friend Michael Shrage likes…
Peter Dizikes
A kidney transplant is a lifesaving operation—and yet every year in the United States, about 10 percent of donated kidneys go unused, after being rejected by multiple potential recipients.
Why is this? According to Juanjuan Zhang, an associate professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, the…
Christine Schaefer
Last month in Missouri, the Governor’s Conference on Baldrige in Education kicked off a large-scale improvement initiative that has the backing of key education groups in the state. With a mission to “facilitate school districts’ deployment of the leadership and management principles that have…
Jim Benson
I’ll bet you have a lot of things to do. Of course you do. We all do. A personal kanban anti-pattern I’m seeing is that people are filling their kanbans with things to do, and then... doing them. They are becoming productivity machines. And that’s really bad.
Look, there’s a limitless amount of…
William A. Levinson
The adage that the only bad publicity is no publicity may apply to celebrities, but this article will show how the wrong kind of fascination can be enormously destructive to businesses that actually deliver products or services.
My last column, “Propaganda, Fascination, and Quality,” discussed…
Tripp Babbitt
W. Edwards Deming is often given as the source for the following quote: “Managing a business on historical data is like driving a car while looking in the rearview mirror.” Deming actually borrowed the quote from Myron Tribus. The idea is that management should be looking ahead and not behind.…
Donald J. Wheeler
You have spent good money obtaining your experimental results, and now the time has come to communicate those results to those who need to take action. This column will describe how to cut through the complexities of your analysis and communicate the results quickly and easily.
You have 30…
Dan Nelson
Paul Batalden, M.D., professor at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, once said, “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” This idea seems applicable to any system of human design. Phrased slightly differently using ISO 9001 parlance, “Every…
Dimensional Metrology Standards Consortium DMSC
(DMSC: Burleson, TX) -- On Dec. 19, 2013, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) approved the Quality Information Framework, v. 1.0 (QIF v1.0) as an ANSI standard. This new standard covers the digital interoperability needs for a wide variety of uses including feature-based dimensional…
