All Features
Eric Stoop
According to the National Safety Council, the rate of preventable workplace fatalities per 100,000 workers has flattened or risen slightly since 2009 after decades of steady improvement in occupational safety.
Companies conducting layered process audits (LPAs) can help get the United States get…
Naphtali Hoff
The next and final step (No. 4) toward increased productivity is to aim to ensure that our new productivity process is sustainable and doesn’t quickly fizzle out. So often, we get excited about a new process but lack the tools, commitment, and mindset to see it to completion and long-term…
Howard Tiersky
Working from home (WFH) is quickly becoming the new normal. The Covid-19 pandemic kicked the WFH movement into high gear, and many experts believe it will continue long after the crisis has passed. (This article makes a solid case.) But before we can optimize this new way of working, we’re all…
Lee Seok Hwai
In the trenches of the battle against Covid-19, critical defensive gear and medical equipment are in short supply. Doctors and nurses fighting the nonstop onslaught of the highly contagious coronavirus desperately need more ventilators, test kits, surgical masks, shields, and gowns.
In Spain,…
James Anderton
While healthcare professionals globally struggle to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, acute care patients are taxing ICU units worldwide. Critical to the care needed for the most serious cases is breathing support through mechanical ventilators. In Italy, the worst-hit nation in Europe, the lack of…
Paula Caligiuri, Helen De Cieri
The coronavirus pandemic has forced tens of millions of employees across the United States to work from home. While this will save lives by limiting the transmission of Covid-19, it also poses significant challenges for employees’ well-being.
How can companies support the health of their employees…
Dave Coffaro
I recently read an article in an airline magazine about the resurgence of something called paint by numbers. The idea came about during the early 1950s, and it’s a mix between a coloring book and painting on a canvas. It allows anyone to create a detailed work of art, even if they’ve never taken an…
Lee Seok Hwai
Hong Kong scientists teaching a panicked populace to make their own surgical masks with paper towels and metallic wire must surely rank as one of the most Kafkaesque moments of the new coronavirus disease outbreak. But the worst is yet to be if global medical supply chains, already stretched in…
Ryan E. Day
Although Covid-19 shelter-in-home edicts usually use the terms “essential” and “nonessential,” most business owners think of doing business as essential for survival. Many organizations don’t have the resources to temporarily suspend business. They must find new ways to get it done.
In a Think…
Harish Jose
In today’s column, I am looking at wu wei, which is an important concept detailed in the Chinese classic text, Tao Te Ching. This term is generally translated into English as wu = no, wei = action, or no action. There are other similar concepts in Taosim such as wu shin or no mind.
Alan Watts, the…
Sensei Friedrich Fachidiot
Mea culpa! I have a reputation for mercilessly bashing management, but I’ve finally come to realize that I owe executives an apology.
As I have been constantly reminded in my career, these are very busy, very bright people. This column is a peace offering of my unique, executive quality-…
Jon Speer
Successfully run medical device companies are cross-functional. From product development, manufacturing, quality, and regulatory compliance, to marketing and sales, every business operation works together to produce and sell medical devices that improve the lives of end users. Still, many medical…
Ryan E. Day
The internet of things, or IoT, is a phenomenon that merges real-life devices with online control. Think smart home systems or maybe the FordPass Connect app. The manufacturing industry has already begun to leverage this idea to monitor heavy industrial equipment and analyze data from multiple…
Ken Maynard
When educational and public sectors consider applying a proven method like lean Six Sigma, the perception persists that this “manufacturing program” will not work in a nonmanufacturing environment. Along with that limiting assumption, there is an underlying expectation within the service industry…
Sophia Finn
Effective and efficient supplier management is possible, but not when we’re still using old tools and expecting different outcomes.
Emailing suppliers to communicate product specs, corrective action requests, or audit reports may be “the way it’s always been done,” but that doesn’t mean it isn’t…
Gleb Tsipursky
The Covid-19 coronavirus has developed into a widespread pandemic. With growing outbreaks of diagnosed cases in all 50 states, and vastly larger numbers of undiagnosed cases, there’s serious cause for concern. Yet quality professionals who follow the official advice on Covid-19 coronavirus prep…
This is supposed to be trade-show season. The time when companies send their employees to industry tech shows and user-group meetings to see and experience the latest offerings in their field. A time when companies expend a good portion of their budget on booth space, shipping costs, and hotel and…
Knowledge at Wharton
Companies and societies are at the precipice of rebuilding their foundations to compete in an age of advanced analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML). Yet, in the real economy—or in the world outside the tech companies—I see more struggle than success in making advanced…
Leslie Bloom
As the skills gap widens and more employees retire, decades of experience and company investment is predicted to walk out the door. With nearly 10,000 people turning retirement age daily, manufacturers will need to look to proactive solutions to capture tribal knowledge and transfer it to the…
Sean Spence
The outbreak of the Covid-19 virus in China and the railway disruptions across Canada represent two different yet similar classic case studies. They remind us that nations and global economies are becoming increasingly interconnected. Incidents thousands of kilometers away are being felt locally.…
Leslie Bloom
The Manufacturing Institute estimated that 2.4 million job openings in manufacturing—accounting for half of all open positions—will go unfilled between 2018 and 2028 as a direct consequence of the skills gap. This isn’t a future problem.
The challenges of the skills gap and a shifting workforce…
Ben Aston
A large portion of a digital project manager’s job is making sure the right parts of the project are being worked on. Projects need to be prioritized. Tasks within projects need to be prioritized, too.
Plan View’s Project and Portfolio Management Landscape Report found that prioritization was…
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…
Leslie Bloom
For those in the manufacturing and industrial sector, what’s commonly known as the skills gap is a well-documented issue. As a growing number of Americans retire, they take their decades of experience with them, resulting in a noticeable skills shortage.
The problem is poised to hit businesses…
Jack Dunigan
When the definition of power includes the “ability to exert influence,” then you’re also describing an element of leadership: knowledge. Take, for example, Ann Landers.
Ann Landers is a pen name invented by Chicago Times columnist Ruth Crowley in 1943 and taken over by Eppie Lederer in 1955. For…
