All Features
Gleb Tsipursky
Although deeply fulfilling, establishing and growing a quality-oriented startup poses serious dangers for the mental health of quality leaders. During the expansion stage, a founder will often face brutally long work weeks, pressure from different sources to manage the startup while raising funding…
Jason Chester
Before we get into a case study about how enterprisewide SPC software would work on both the shop floor and the C-suite, let’s talk about a long-held bias about “blue-collar” workers: That because they’ve traditionally been associated with manual labor, they should use manual tools; “white-collar”…
Ryan E. Day, Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest, Taran March @ Quality Digest
In order to best illustrate how enterprisewide SPC software can help address shop-floor problems and then funnel the captured data to the corporate level where strategic issues can be analyzed, here is a case study of a hypothetical manufacturing facility. In it, the company makes effective use of…
Eric Weisbrod
In recent months, we’ve learned that manufacturing during a global health crisis puts organizations under immense pressure to maintain operational efficiency while upholding product quality and employee safety.
Initially, organizations focused simply on taking the steps required to survive. However…
Guoli Chen
A novelty in the C-suite not so long ago, the chief sustainability officer (CSO) is fast becoming a fixture in companies of note as climate change and inequality increasingly dominate global attention.
During the past year alone Citigroup, General Motors, and International Paper have each…
Tom Taormina
After more than 50 years as a quality control engineer and having worked with more than 700 companies, it is my observation that the vast majority of quality professionals hold their prime directive to be reducing defects to the lowest acceptable level by minimizing process variability. Most of us…
Sébastien Breteau
In recent months, the widespread lockdowns of Covid-19 have exposed global supply chains to unprecedented shifts and volatility in consumer behavior, impacting innumerable organizations, industries, and consumer goods. While much of the supply-chain overhaul conversation has focused on drops in…
Annette Franz
I recently read a Recruiterbox article that stated: “Culture can either immunize or infect a company. Good culture can revitalize and motivate. Negative culture increases employee absences and turnover while decreasing their overall productivity while at work.... Employee turnover alone can cost a…
Amitrajeet Batabyal
Arguing against globalization is like arguing against the laws of gravity, said former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. Globalization, the international trade in goods and services with minimal barriers between countries, may seem inevitable as the world’s economies become more…
Sridhar Kota, Glenn Daehn
The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed glaring deficiencies in the U.S. manufacturing sector’s ability to provide necessary products—especially amidst a crisis. It’s been five months since the nation declared a national emergency, yet shortages of test kit components, pharmaceuticals, personal…
LauraLee Rose
The reality for small and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs) is that they are going to have to be good at training their workforce or they won’t make as much money. That’s a blunt assessment, but the need for proficiency in training will only increase, whether it’s retraining current employees for…
Jennifer Mallow
Covid-19 has led to a boom in telehealth, with some healthcare facilities seeing an increase in its use by as much as 8,000 percent. This shift happened quickly and unexpectedly, and has left many people asking whether telehealth is really as good as in-person care.
During the last decade, I’ve…
Eric Stoop
When it comes to quality management objectives, what many manufacturers don’t understand about cost of quality could hurt them.
A survey by LNS Research asked more than 500 manufacturing executives to identify their most important financial and quality management objectives. Across the board,…
Paul Laughlin
During this month of thinking about thinking, it’s a good time to learn from fresh perspectives, like summer interns.
As a leader, it can often be helpful to adopt what Buddhism describes as a beginner’s mind or shoshin: seeking to let go of past knowledge, status, and assumptions to see things…
Manfred Kets de Vries
Effective organizations rely on teamwork, not least because it facilitates problem solving. Many leaders, however, are ambivalent about teams. They fear overt and covert conflict, uneven participation, tunnel vision, lack of accountability, and indifference to the interests of the organization as a…
Edward D. Hess
As the digital age advances and technology takes over more jobs, workers must get better at those “human” skills computers can’t do. They must excel at critical thinking, innovative thinking, collaborating, and emotionally engaging with others in the creation and delivery of products and services…
ASQ
You already know that technological advances of the past decade have resulted in a new industrial revolution often referred to as the fourth industrial revolution or Industry 4.0. It’s a revolution driven by the exponential growth of disruptive technologies and the changes those technologies are…
Knowledge at Wharton
We’ve all been in lines that seem to last forever, especially if we choose our queue at the checkout, and the one next to ours is moving faster. You know the existential dread that comes along with standing in a dedicated queue and waiting interminably. To make service of all kinds more efficient,…
Jon Speer
Imagine you’re a patient going in for any medical procedure. You probably think very little about the risks of the medical device being used on you. Generally, patients trust clinicians’ expertise and seldom wonder if the products being used have undergone rigorous testing and are proven to be safe…
Harry Hertz
Rest? The new normal will be about activity, you say. Actually, I believe some rest will be necessary. After the frenzy of activity since March 2020 to establish new work patterns and new home life patterns, many of us—especially those with young families—have been left totally exhausted. So some…
Shobhendu Prabhakar
The “mantra” for continuous improvement is to learn from our mistakes. Not only learn but also take necessary actions and come up with strategies to prevent the recurrence of the same or similar mistakes. It is true for humans as well as for businesses. In business, especially in the oil and gas…
Tina Berger
A manufacturing apprenticeship pilot program in Florida is taking a hybrid approach that replaces the traditional classroom element with competency-based, on-demand e-learning. It could help bring the apprenticeship career development tool into the digital age and be a breakthrough for…
Steve McKee
Is 2020 a bump in the road or the beginning of the end? That’s not a trick question. For some companies, the virus and lockdown have been inconvenient and annoying, but navigable. For others, they have been devastating. And the social unrest has troubled us all.
For nearly two decades, my firm has…
David English
As we all become accustomed to the ongoing restrictions as a result of Covid-19, an increasing number of Brits are looking for new and innovative ways to learn and develop. From home DIY to exercise classes, there are all kinds of weird and wonderful ways the British population is making the most…
Tom Taormina
Each article in this series presents new tools for increasing return on investment (ROI), enhancing customer satisfaction, creating process excellence, and driving risk from an ISO 9001:2015-based quality management system (QMS). They will help implementers evolve quality management to overall…
