All Features
Jean-Noel Barrot
Operating a small business, the backbone of the U.S. economy, has always been tough. But small businesses have been disproportionately hurt by the Great Recession, losing 40 percent more jobs than the rest of the private sector combined. Interestingly, as my research with Harvard’s Ramana Nanda…
Mark Whitworth
Layered process auditing (LPA) is a quality management approach increasingly used by manufacturing and service companies alike to address a gap in traditional product-oriented approaches. When properly implemented, layered auditing is the most effective way to ensure that processes consistently…
Eston Martz
The language of statistics is a funny thing, but there usually isn’t much to laugh at in the consequences that can follow when misunderstandings occur between statisticians and nonstatisticians. We see these consequences frequently in the media, when new studies—that usually contradict previous…
Stefan Geib
While the fallout of the United Kingdom’s decision to exit the European Union has sent shockwaves throughout the political and economic world, Brexit is merely a footnote in the global supply chain risk story. According to the latest risk index from the Chartered Institute of Procurement &…
Chip Bell
When the circus ringmaster wails, “...and children of all ages,” he is speaking to me. I love the circus. When it came to my rural hometown when I was a boy, it was an all-consuming experience that embedded “circus” in my heart before it appeared and well beyond its departure.
Long before the…
Bruce Hamilton
Here is an article I wrote 10 years ago, recently resurrected from the lost letter file. I can’t remember why I wrote it or for whom. Originally titled, “What is Kaizen?” the article still resonates with me as I hope it will with you.
My study of TPS has been guided by book learning, tacit…
Jesse Lyn Stoner
Goal setting is powerful. No doubt about it. Research shows you are likely to perform at a higher level if you set smart goals. But how do you know what are the right goals to set?
Goals are milestones that mark the way on your journey. If you set the wrong goals, you will get sidetracked. Too…
Tim Lozier
When it comes to quality management, it’s not just about the requirements. As companies register to ISO 9001:2015, we see an additional shift. Not only are management system requirements changing to build an improved framework for the standard, but we also see an emphasis on an overall mindset…
Andy Henderson
This is the fourth part in a series about my perspective of what the future has in store for various aspects of manufacturing. I approached each aspect by imagining what is possible using what we know to be technically possible today. In part one I covered cutting tools for machining, in part two…
Ruth P. Stevens
Business marketers have much to gain from retention marketing. Business customers tend to be fewer in number, and each is more valuable—meaning you can’t afford to lose even one. But how do you keep your customers active and buying from you, vs. the competition? How do you prevent defection?
Let’s…
Paul Lachance
When it comes to asset management and facility management, everyone within an organization is affected by breakdowns and downtime. That means employees from the CFO to the environmental health and safety (EHS) director to the plant engineer should be involved in maintenance.
In the manufacturing…
Katherine Watts
While at the National MACRA MIPS/APM Summit in Washington, D.C., I heard much discussion centered on how to create and implement strategies that pay physicians fairly, while controlling spending in the Medicare program. It’s a question we’ve wrestled with for almost 20 years and a challenge we…
Jim Benson
If you are reading this, you are likely human. Congratulations; I’m human, too.
Everyday we all wake up and wonder what the day will bring. We wonder who we will meet, what conversations we will have, and what we will do.
We all want to do things
In business we have processes, we have…
Matthew Muller
I have been inspired to write this article after learning about Joseph Juran and understanding the effect he has had on our society. I started working at Juran Global about six months ago, and since then I’ve had several friends and past colleagues reach out to me with questions like, “What is…
Patrick Nelson
I love turnaround stories about teams that break down barriers to reach their full potential.
Case in point: 25 years ago a Major League Baseball team from a small market shocked the world by winning the World Series. That team, the Minnesota Twins, went from being the worst team in its division…
Davis Balestracci
In spite of the overwhelming odds against me, every new year I firmly resolve to reignite my relentless passion about creating a critical mass of colleagues committed to practicing improvement as “built-in” to cultural DNA using data sanity.
Will this be the year you join me?
Here is a …
Elisa K. Spain
Most of us who have been in leadership roles for awhile understand the importance of delegating. It’s simply a matter of leverage: The more we delegate, the more gets done. But sometimes we get confused. We think we are delegating, when in fact, we are abdicating. What’s the difference?
Delegate…
Ryan E. Day
Sponsored Content
Everything, it seems, has a vulnerability. For werewolves, it’s silver bullets. For Superman, it’s Kryptonite. For manufacturing—it’s rework. Rework means loss of throughput, which means loss of profit, which can mean death by a thousand rewelds. But, just as silver bullets can…
Eston Martz
A member of Minitab’s LinkedIn group asked how to create a chart to monitor change by month, specifically comparing last year’s data to this year’s data. My last post showed how to do this using an Individuals chart of the differences between this year’s and last year’s data. Here’s another…
Donald J. Wheeler
What can be done when a test is destructive? How do we characterize measurement error? How can we determine if a test method is adequate for a given product or application? How can we check for bias?
All of the techniques for assessing the quality of a measurement system require us to make…
Paul Naysmith
If you have ever used Maslow’s hierarchy of needs out of context, and especially as they relate to motivation in the workplace, I will track you down and tape you to a lamppost with a sign around your neck explaining your major error. Maslow’s theory dates back to ideas from the 1940s, and…
Dick Wooden
First of all, what does it mean to be orphaned by your customer relationship management (CRM) vendor? In short, it means that your CRM vendor sold you on a CRM product and for one reason or another forgot about you. Are you feeling left behind?
Of course, it’s no secret that choosing the right…
Jennifer Lynch
The process of alloy grade verification has advanced significantly with the development of portable and handheld devices that bring analytical capabilities traditionally found in the laboratory to anywhere rapid metals identification is needed. For years, handheld analysis technology has provided…
Fred Schenkelberg
If you have been a reliability engineer for a week or more, or worked with a reliability engineer for a day or more, someone has asked about testing planning. The questions often include, “How many samples?” and, “How long will the test take?” No doubt you’ve heard the sample-size question.
What…
Tannaz Mirchi
With airfares at their lowest point in seven years and airlines adding capacity, this year’s holiday air travel is slated to be 2.5 percent busier than last year. The system we use to coordinate all those flights, however, is decades old, and mostly depends on highly trained air traffic…
