All Features
Taran March @ Quality Digest
At the University of California at San Diego, lean concepts have taken hold. Along with its process improvement curriculum, the university applies what it teaches through initiatives around campus. Projects both complex and simple tackle the snags, waste, and bottlenecks of academic life. Students…
Ryan E. Day
Lean looks at ways to reduce waste and improve flow. The principles are relevant to virtually every organizational sector and vertical. It’s no surprise, then, that so many organizations tout lean and devote resources to lean initiatives. But, too often, there is a tendency for a company to promote…
Orit Peleg
Gathered inside a small shed in the midst of a peaceful meadow, my colleagues and I are about to flip the switch to start a seemingly mundane procedure: using a motor to shake a wooden board. But underneath this board, we have a swarm of roughly 10,000 honeybees, clinging to each other in a single…
Jody Muelaner
Understanding the causes of faults and defects, and then improving the system or process so it won’t happen again, is central to lean manufacturing. This article looks at some of the methods used to identify the root causes of issues so that you can prevent downtime and move toward zero-defect…
Takeshi Yoshida
‘Lean” is such a convenient term; everyone uses it based on their own definition. People frequently use “lean” in place of “efficiency,” probably because it sounds more cool. Another round of cost cutting? Sure, let’s tell everyone we’re “going lean,” again.
Lean is a proven, powerful productivity…
Travis Carlton
Whether we’re talking to a front-line operator, a plant manager, or CEO, people’s reactions to being assigned a new recurring task are remarkably similar: “Oh great—more to do.” Sound familiar?
It’s a reaction that’s common in organizations transitioning from paper-based to an automated digital…
Calin Moldovean
As today’s industries and operations become increasingly more global, an effective management system is rapidly becoming an essential part of a sustainable business strategy. A management system defines how work is done, the desired results, and the controls imposed to ensure those outcomes.
Your…
Chip Bell
I recently visited the Key West home of famed writer Ernest Hemingway. The descendants of Hemingway’s many six-toed cats still live on the grounds and join visitors as a part of their tour. “A cat has absolute emotional honesty,” wrote Hemingway. “Human beings, for one reason or another, may hide…
Ryan E. Day
With more than 300 employees headquartered in a modern 150,000+ sq ft facility, Plasser American Corp. (PAC) manufactures top-quality, heavy railway construction and maintenance equipment for customers in North America. To stay competitive with international competition, PAC continually looks for…
Nadia Naffi, Ann-Louise Davidson, Houda Jawhar
Today, the survival of many organizations depends on their plans to leverage cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to transform their workplaces into augmented environments.
A recent IBM study found that, as a result of AI and intelligent automation, 120 million workers will need…
Davis Balestracci
Editor’s note: The following browsable offering from Davis Balestracci represents a good chunk of his knowledge base. If you’re looking for improvement ideas, motivation, or a swift kick in the pants for yourself or your team, you’ll find them in this collection of his most popular columns.
In the…
William A. Levinson
The Automotive Industry Action Group’s (AIAG’s) and German Association of the Automotive Industry’s (VDA’s) new Failure Mode and Effects Analysis Handbook (AIAG, 2019) offers significant advances over FMEA as practiced 15 or 20 years ago.1 The publication is definitely worth buying because the new…
Bruce Hamilton
This year marks the 35th anniversary of a remarkable and unfortunately also singular event in my career: In 1985, my employer, United Electric Controls (UE), elected to remove time clocks from the factory.
At the time of this unusual decision, I had already been employed at UE for 14 years in a…
Anton Ovchinnikov
Left to their own devices, humans tend to fall prey to biases that make them poor decision makers. For instance, among other foibles, most purchasing managers routinely under-order. In fact, past research has shown that managers are typically 10 to 20 percent off the mark when it comes to ordering…
Harry Hertz
‘I have been offered a significant increase in salary by another employer and am giving my two-week notice.”
My guess is that this is the most common reason given when employees quit their current job. But is salary the real reason most employees quit? I have always suspected and believed that,…
Aaron Fox
If industrial manufacturing had a buzzword of the decade, it might be “Industry 4.0.” The concept is inescapable, yet it can be hard to define, especially for small and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs). After all, SMMs’ capabilities, needs, and budgets look very different from the large companies…
Penelope B. Prime
The United States and China have reportedly reached a so-called phase one deal in their ongoing trade war.
While few details have been disclosed, the agreement principally seems to involve the United States calling off a new round of tariffs that were slated to take effect on Dec. 15, 2019, and…
Nathan Furr
Few companies and CEOs have attracted as much praise, derision, skepticism, and enthusiasm as Telsa Motors and its founder Elon Musk. Having interviewed Musk and the Tesla leadership as part of my research, one of the questions I’m asked most frequently is: How can you make sense of Tesla’s wild…
Corey Brown
Many manufacturers see reducing changeover time as a golden opportunity to improve operational efficiency and reduce waste. For good reason, a simple reduction in changeover time can increase output, reduce inventory, reduce work in progress, and improve responsiveness to customer demand.
Yet, the…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
What a year.
No matter your job, your industry, or your political beliefs, this year has been a heck of a ride. The (still ongoing) trade war with China, manufacturing gains (and losses), the 737 MAX, Hong Kong riots, North Korea, Brexit, impeachment. What a mixed bag of ups and downs that has…
As usual with Quality Digest’s diverse audience, this year’s top stories covered a wide range of topics applicable to quality professionals. From hardware to software, from standards to risk management, from China trade to FDA regulations. It’s always fun to see what readers gravitate to, and this…
Jesse Lyn Stoner
Values are beliefs about what is fundamentally important. They affect your decision making and your behaviors, whether you are conscious of them or not. Your real values are reflected by your behavior, and if your espoused values are not consistent with your behavior, you will lose credibility and…
Christy Lotz
After being an ergonomist for almost 15 years, I can honestly say I have never been more excited about the future of this field. When I first began working at Humantech and would do wall-to-wall assessments every week, I didn’t think I would last.
The pen and paper-based methods we used were often…
Gwendolyn Galsworth
Some mistakes managers make at the start of a visual conversion are serious and hard to repair. For example, when managers decide to commandeer the task of implementing the visual where—or simply order it into existence. Either way, this is the damaging loss of an opportunity of inestimable value…
Andrea Canidio
The culture of overwork—with the expectation of incredibly long hours and interrupted vacations—is often criticized for its negative impact on workers and organizations. Workers suffer from burnout, are not as productive as they think they are, and make mistakes, as research has made overwhelmingly…
