All Features
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Ryan E. Day
In our ultra-connected world, user experience (UX) can be a life-or-death matter for consumer-facing businesses. User experience is so critical that savvy leaders integrate UX/UI (user interface) design with product development and even consider UX when shaping business strategy. Madeline Fraser,…
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Claire Harbour, Antoine Tirard
In 2005, Fast Company published the now famous article, “Why We Hate HR.” Echoing a popular workplace belief, the authors asked why HR was broken and how it could be fixed. Human resources has evolved since then, with some corporations starting to think differently about the “people function.”
One…
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NordVPN Teams
The FBI reported earlier this year that complaints of cyber attacks received by its cyber division had risen to almost 4,000 a day—a 400-percent increase over pre-coronavirus numbers. In one four-month period (January to April), 907,000 spam messages, 737 incidents related to malware, and 48,000…
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Merilee Kern
As Covid-19 rages on, warning sirens have sounded of late amid a flurry of headlines surrounding ultraviolet C (UVC) light device-safety issues. Rightfully so, as the current pandemic has ushered in a veritable wild west of UVC gadget deployments with subpar consumer safeguards, instructions, or…
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Ayman Jawhar
As a business leader, you probably think similarly to McKinsey about what makes a great product manager (PM): a perfect combination of skills like business acumen, market orientation, and technical skill as well as soft ones... the usual suspects.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your…
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Jeb Banner
As the current pandemic unfolds, organizations’ boards of directors—especially in the healthcare industry—must continue leading and guiding. But gathering board members for in-person meetings is no longer an option.
In response, board engagement has gone digital. Planning, hosting, and following up…
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Dawn Bailey
I recently listened to a Ted Talk by Simon Sinek, author of the book Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (Portfolio, the Penguin Group, 2009), and it caused me to reflect on some key questions in and related to the Baldrige Excellence Framework, as well as leadership…
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Eric Weisbrod
The idea of digital transformation can be scary. The growth of technology is outpacing a comfortable pace of adoption for many manufacturers. But remaining content with the status quo often means being left behind. Digital transformation has become an imperative to give manufacturing organizations…
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Steve Wise
The importance of data analysis in manufacturing operations can’t be overstated. Over the years, manufacturers have used statistical process control (SPC) methods and tools to study historical data and reveal differences between comparable items: shifts, products, machines, processes, plants, lot…
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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…
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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”…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…