All Features
Gwendolyn Galsworth
When James Womack and Daniel Jones published Lean Thinking in 1996, they offered the world a book that collected the core principles of a key operational model. Though not stated directly, they created a profile for the Toyota Production System (TPS) that was revelatory and highly useful, adding a…
Olympus
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Restriction of hazardous substances (RoHS) regulations help protect the public from dangerous or toxic materials in consumer products and electronics. Beyond public health and safety concerns, noncompliance represents significant potential costs, including fines, product recalls…
Mike Richman
Friday, Oct. 6, 2017, is Manufacturing Day, one of the most important events of the year for those of us working within industry. On this occasion, we should all take some time to honor the science and art of manufacturing, an endeavor that has quite literally built our amazing modern society from…
Bob Emiliani
I recently posted a version of the graphic below with the caption: “Not perfect, but close. It’s about right.” The response was overwhelmingly positive. A great majority of people recognized it as a unique comparison, one that they had never seen before, and also as an accurate comparison that…
Patrick Nugent
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A simple fact in manufacturing is that everyone has to measure. However, measurement is not simply about inspection; manufacturers need the right tools to increase quality, maximize productivity, and ultimately, make measurement a value-added process.
One of the most critical…
Annette Franz
There’s a problem with journey maps? Well, not with the maps themselves but with how people talk about them.
I love attending webinars and reading articles about journey mapping because I’m always curious about how others talk about them, what their approaches are, and what outcomes they’ve…
Eric Stoop
In December 1998, NASA launched the Mars Climate Orbiter, a robotic space probe intended as the communications relay for the Mars Polar Lander. By September 1999, the spacecraft had disintegrated after coming too close to Mars and passing into its upper atmosphere.
The problem? A simple unit…
Jack Phillips, Patti Phillips
According to W. Edwards Deming, “Every system is perfectly designed to achieve exactly the results it gets.” This applies to any quality initiative and any other activity, including learning and development. Yet, according to an ATD/ROI Institute study, only 8 percent of CEOs see the results most…
Taran March @ Quality Digest
One thing you can say about that critical commodity called steel: It gets around. Ancient ironware excavated in what is now Turkey has been dated to 1800 B.C. Some 1,200 years later, blacksmiths in Sri Lanka employed furnaces driven by monsoon winds to produce a high-carbon steel. The Tamils of…
Mary McAtee
True to my profession as an engineer, I am a total geek at heart and proud of it. Spending time in automobile museums always fascinates me. It excites me to see a prescient innovator from the past come up with an idea like headlights. The first ones were Limelight carbide models that had a nasty…
Thomas Kochan, Lee Dyer
The technologies driving artificial intelligence (AI) are expanding exponentially, leading many technology experts and futurists to predict that machines will soon be doing many of the jobs that humans do today. Some even predict humans could lose control over their future.
While we agree about…
Austin Thomas
Since commercially available 3D printers came out a few years ago, their capabilities have radically expanded. At first, they could only print little things out of plastic, but now people have begun to print working cars and even bridges. People are actively experimenting with how to print with…
Jim Benson
Focusing on our most important work (so that we can get it out the door and create value) is hard. It’s harder still when work suddenly picks up, is unfamiliar, or arrives with immediate deadlines when we are already busy.
The tyranny of the urgent often distracts us from what is truly important…
Steven Brand
Quality management in manufacturing significantly contributes to a manufacturer's brand and bottom line. However, persistent challenges to quality management continue to trouble small and medium-sized manufacturing companies alike. The issues, of course, vary depending on the existing management…
GBMP
American Rheinmetall Systems (ARS) LLC, formerly Vingtech, is located in Biddeford, Maine. Established in January 2007, as part of a Norwegian company that had received a supplier contract for the U.S. Army’s CROWS remote weapon station program, the company was acquired by the Rheinmetall Group in…
Ryan E. Day
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Headquartered in the little Hamlet of Deming, Washington, Canyon Hydro builds hydroelectric systems producing anywhere from 10 kilowatts up to 25 megawatts. In business for more than 40 years, Canyon Hydro has gained wide recognition with public and independent power producers…
William Hang, Zihua Liu, Kevin Yang
It seems to happen to every company, big or small, newcomer or seasoned expert. You ship a product design off to a manufacturer, and something goes wrong on the manufacturer’s side. The problem crops up in the design, production, or packaging, and leads to a bad apple in a batch of otherwise great…
Joe Bollard
As of Sept. 14, 2018, ISO/TS 16949 certificates are longer valid, which means automotive suppliers must certify to the new version, IATF 16949. Transition audits are underway and will continue into next year, but many companies still have a long way to go to prepare.
Let’s look at some of the…
Christopher Martin
It’s said that the first five years of children’s lives are important to their future development and growth. Most of that is spent at home with parents and loved ones, before children are thrust into the first stage of their next 13 years of development: kindergarten. Being a parent of two…
Davis Balestracci
I have reached one of those life landmarks (receiving my Medicare card) and have been reflecting back... a lot. I will remain every bit as passionate about improvement and don’t think I will ever formally retire, but I also doubt I will have W. Edwards Deming’s tenacity to keep at it until I (…
Steve McKee
Back in the day, when the battery died in my Datsun 210 hatchback, all I needed was a steep hill or a couple of friends willing to give me a push
It’s a metaphor that comes back to me each time my firm consults with a struggling company. Today, of course, it’s difficult to find a standard-…
Kelly Graves
In general, people hate confrontation and will do just about anything to distance themselves from it, but a manager owes it to her employees to overcome this fear and address problems directly and honestly. The key is knowing how to handle problems with employees, and knowing what will happen…
Chip Bell
A reputable B2B company recently received feedback indicating widespread customer concern it was not helping its customers remain on the cutting edge of their own industries. The company was so focused on trying to sell that it lost sight of helping its customers stay informed about their new…
Mary Drotar
A recent article in MIT Sloan Management Review, “Using Scenario Planning to Reshape Strategy,” indicated a resurgence of scenario planning that initially gained recognition during the 1960s and ’70s. Royal Dutch/Shell has been the “poster child” of success ever since it used scenario planning to…
Olympus
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Coatings play an essential role in the product development cycle, whether for corrosion resistance, protection against moisture intrusion, or simply to beautify a product. Since over- or under-application can lead to poor performance or product failure, thickness measurement is…
