All Features
Gleb Tsipursky
‘I don’t see how we can replace the serendipitous idea generation of hallway conversations,” said Saul, the director of quality management for a 1,500-employee enterprise software company, during a planning meeting about the company’s post-vaccine return to the office. “If we don’t return to the…
Barnaby Lewis
Harran blinks in the sunlight, adjusting his eyes. He’s an inquisitive child, enthusiastic for all things new, yet still he struggles to understand what he’s looking at. A man is pressing marks—triangles or wedges—into a piece of clay, explaining that in this way he can speak to people, even when…
Knowledge at Wharton
Most managers dread giving feedback. Offering a blend of praise and criticism is supposed to help your team members do more of what they’re good at and improve in areas where they’ve missed the mark. But research shows it rarely works that way. In her book How to Change (Ebury Digital, 2021),…
Adriana Lynch
If there’s anything the last decade has taught us—and the Covid-19 pandemic has punctuated in grand fashion—it’s that businesses must get digital or they may become invisible. Branding, formerly an exercise that involved plastic signs, billboards, and newspaper print ads, has now firmly taken up…
Rodney Rohde
Medical laboratory professionals form the backbone of healthcare and the public health system. They conduct some 13 billion laboratory medicine tests annually in the United States. As of February 2022, these individuals had also performed more than 900 million Covid-19 tests and counting during the…
Shannon Karels, Kathy Miller
Many tools and concepts can be applied when implementing a transformation in a business. But what makes the transformation meaningful? What is the thing that will drive the transformation’s success?
It’s not how well standard work is written or the number of pull cards in the loop, although it’s…
Derek Hills
The importance of medical device cybersecurity is growing exponentially. As more devices become connected to the internet, threats to public safety mount. Cybercriminals, formerly interested in stealing financial or medical records, have begun to essentially hold healthcare providers hostage by…
Sachin Waikar
‘Diversity means lots of things,” says Amir Goldberg, an associate professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business. “These days, it evokes the idea of race or gender, but it’s also about how people think.”
Beyond their demographic differences, people working in a group…
Gleb Tsipursky
A tall, thin man in his late 50s approached me after my closing keynote for a manufacturing association conference on how leaders can avoid business disasters. He looked distraught and agitated. I hoped he wasn’t angry with something I said.
Mark introduced himself and asked me to tell him more…
Ben Bensaou
For many organizations, the biggest challenge of innovation isn’t coming up with good ideas—it’s making sure those good ideas are noticed and acted upon. This is a particular challenge for multinationals, such as global pharmaceutical and health company Bayer, which have thousands of staff spread…
Tahira Reid, James Gibert
People interact with machines in countless ways every day. In some cases, they actively control a device, like driving a car or using an app on a smartphone. Sometimes people passively interact with a device, like being imaged by an MRI machine. And sometimes they interact with machines without…
Mike MacPherson
For managers seeking to boost employee engagement, this is something that can only be earned, not enforced. If the past two years have shown us anything, it’s that genuine employee enthusiasm, motivation, and drive at work come from a passion for the work. No amount of free lunches, ping-pong…
Ryan E. Day
Chickens come home to roost, and canaries meet their demise in coal mines. But hey, we knew there was a high probability of each happening eventually, right? However, when a black swan shows up with severe impact and consequences, everyone is caught off guard. I’m wondering if it’s a black swan…
Rebecca Saenz
There are three key things cobot developers and employers using cobots must remember when considering implementation: 1) human life takes precedence, 2) human life takes precedence, and 3) human life takes precedence.
Dictionary.com defines cobot as “a computer-controlled robotic apparatus that…
Bert Thornton, Sherry Hartnett
The past two years have been tough. Many of us are feeling bogged down, burned out, and wary of what the future holds. But instead of creeping into 2022 with a sense of dread, what if you bounded into it with optimism and confidence?
Yes, there’s a way to revitalize your career, your outlook, and…
Josh Wilson
Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, Rahm Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff and Chicago mayor, famously quipped that you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Few of us will face the number of crises that a big-city mayor or a presidential aide may deal with in a day, but we still need…
Katie Rapp
For manufacturers, artificial intelligence (AI) can be a game changer. Greater efficiencies, lower costs, improved quality, and reduced downtime are just some of the potential benefits. This technology isn’t just for large manufacturers. High-value, cost-effective AI solutions are more accessible…
Prasad Akella
We are a full two years into post-pandemic manufacturing life, with the omicron variant the latest cause for concern. It might sound hyperbolic, but I’m pretty sure manufacturing will never be the same as it was in 2019. In some ways, that’s a good thing.
One silver lining of the novel coronavirus…
Ben Bensaou
A manufacturer of the fabric used to reinforce car tires might not seem an obvious source of innovation inspiration. But in just a few years, Kordsa, a part of the Turkish industrial conglomerate Sabancı Group, transformed itself from a price-driven maker of commodity products into a provider of…
Maxim Wheatley
Three years’ worth of new graduates have entered the workforce entirely remote due to the changing atmosphere of the work world, and more companies than ever are fully remote. Millions of employees have experienced remote work for the first time and don’t plan to go back to brick-and-mortar offices…
Etienne Nichols
If you’re looking for information on medical-device design controls and product development, you can find a practically endless number of articles, videos, and podcasts with a few quick online searches. Yet with so much out there on these topics, there’s a glaring omission of a closely related…
Gleb Tsipursky
Are you worried that having hybrid and, especially, full-time remote employees will undermine employee on-the-job learning, integration into company culture, and intra- and inter-team collaboration? This issue recurrently came up with organizations that I guided in developing strategies for…
Artem Kroupenev
The manufacturing industry was thrown into the spotlight early in the pandemic as consumers rushed to stores, panic-buying everything from canned goods to water bottles. Since then, the industry has had more than its fair share of challenges, including the critical ramp-up of vaccine and…
jeffdewar
With membership in ASQ down, ISO 9000 series certifications down, and an unnerving reduction in quality management staff in many companies during the pandemic, today’s quality professionals are justifiably concerned about their future and career choice.
Here’s my take on the future of quality: It…
Mike Richman
It’s hard to fathom that Quality Digest, a little Northern California media company respected by all and beloved by many, turned 40 in November 2021. For a human being, 40 may be the new 30, but it’s still just creeping up on middle age. For a small business, on the other hand, 40 years is…
