All Features
Jesse Lyn Stoner
When applied to people’s intelligence, the theory behind the bell curve says that most people will be average, with a small percent being top performers and a small percent being losers. But when it comes to performance, the truth is the bell curve only exists if you believe it does.
Robert…
NIST
Manufacturers, robot suppliers, and researchers, here’s your chance to get in on the ground floor of an upcoming national competition intended to help make robots more handy and nimble on the factory floor.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is launching the Agile Robotics…
Michael Webb
This month Quality Digest Daily welcomes Michael Webb, a noted author and consultant who writes about how the quality and productivity sciences improve sales and marketing departments.
How well does your company benefit from quality improvement and productivity? For instance, how well do you…
Joe Humm
While contemplating the teachings of Edwards Deming, who is widely known for being vocal on the topics of quality and statistical analysis, I thought I’d delve into a few areas where he was a little less known, but just as passionate and to a certain extent influential: leadership and innovation…
Mary Ann Pacelli
In part one of this series, we discussed the importance of providing formal skills training and having open communication. Without further ado, here are two more workforce tips, one about cross-training, and the other about employee engagement.
Implement cross-training initiatives
Cross-training…
Davis Balestracci
As I was preparing this column, one of my resources referred to chapter 48 of the 2,500-year-old Tao te Ching (quoted below), which, as some of you know, is one of my favorite sources of wisdom. It really tied today’s message together, and I hope you can apply its wisdom to your improvement…
Niranjan Deodhar
As process improvement practitioners, we get hired to drive waste and variation out of our clients’ businesses. But what if we hired ourselves, provided frank advice, and then listened to it to drive waste out of our own business or process?
Could we then drive down the cost of organizational …
Beamex
For more than a century, Salt River Project (SRP) has produced power and delivered water to meet the needs of its customers in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area. Today, as one of the nation’s largest public power utilities, SRP provides reliable electricity and water to more than 1 million…
Quy Huy
I
t’s no longer a secret that most companies struggle with strategy execution. McKinsey research tells us, for example, that 70 percent of change efforts fall short of desired results. The financial losses implied by statistics like these are massive, and corporate leaders have taken notice.…
Christine Schaefer
A question for devotees of the Baldrige Excellence Framework: Do people who passionately promote continuous improvement within organizations also tend to make New Year’s resolutions to improve their own well-being?
Seriously, I’m wondering if those who fully appreciate the framework’s value in…
Bruce Hamilton
This is an article inspired by the glut of recent football weekends. Lou Holtz, the legendary college and pro football coach, offers the following advice to coaches everywhere: “I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.”
Top managers often lament their employees’…
Douglas C. Fair
When a consumer goes to purchase a new car, the first thing they’ll notice is the vehicle’s make. Yes, the car may say “Toyota” or “Ford” on the outside, but what’s on the inside? In reality, the car’s components—from the tires to the transmission—are typically manufactured by third-party vendors…
Mike Micklewright
I’ve made the point many times that the quality function and the lean/continuous improvement/kaizen function within an enterprise are really one and the same. Treating them as separate value streams with their own documentation, procedures, and goals is wasteful, short-sighted, and disrespectful…
Arun Hariharan
I don’t claim to be qualified to advise other quality professionals. However, having had an opportunity to work for many years in this field with reasonable results and also having made my share of mistakes, I’ve observed that certain qualities help make a successful quality professional. I didn’t…
Randy Long
A study conducted by the Laboratory Accreditation Bureau of noncompliances during accreditation assessments to ISO/IEC 17025—“General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories” found that the most cited clauses were found in section 5.4—“Methods and method validation…
George Huang
You import promotional goods from China. You're sitting at your desk, staring down at the balance sheet, burning the midnight oil again. You have an order of 20,000 pens currently in production and scheduled to leave the factory in less than a week. You have a choice to make.
Do you save some…
Jordy Byrd
You’re only as strong as your weakest link. Although trite, the phrase embodies what manufacturing plants and processing facilities have worked to overcome for years: How do you plan for and prevent broken equipment in your lean production culture?
Another trite phrase hints at the answer: The…
Luk Van Wassenhove
Establishing a clear and consistent focus, and knowing when to change it, is the essence of manufacturing agility. Factories don’t just make things. Viewed properly, they are where the rubber of corporate strategy meets the road of the marketplace.
Ideally, then, a factory should operate in…
Michelle LaBrosse
What habits do you need to develop to become a more effective project manager? Maybe you need to get more organized with your paperwork, or change how you spend your time each day to stay on track with your projects, or shift how you respond to stressful situations.
Regardless of the kind of…
Harry Hertz
During my 25 years with the Baldrige program, I have never come across an organization that couldn’t improve its communication, no matter how good it already is. The importance of effective communication is demonstrated by the many articles and books written on the subject; as examples, Inc.,…
Mike Micklewright
To many people, the relationship between daily kaizen and statistical process control (SPC) might seem as remote as the relationship between a kangaroo and the past iconic American TV series Friends. And yet, a kangaroo and Friends have a commonality in that each contains a “Joey.” Daily kaizen…
Jack Dunigan
Whenever I hire a new employee, as part of his orientation I am always careful to emphasize that it would be wrong to mistake my forbearance for indifference, that while I am long-suffering and will give him time to learn the ropes, there are standards to be reached and maintained.
One of the…
Gilles Hilary, Arnaud Lagarde
Eric (not his real name) was under pressure from his sales department. He was hesitant to close a large financing deal with a Chinese corporation but had little beyond his intuition to back up his position.
The company’s stock price had gained a whopping 600 percent in one year. Nevertheless,…
Dawn Bailey
Losing can actually have its benefits. For Baldrige users, however, it’s a common saying that everyone is a winner who takes that first step.
The most important reason for using the Baldrige Excellence Framework is not to win an award but to improve financial and business performance, says Joseph…
Bruce Hamilton
A piece of popular lore, provided by Shigeo Shingo, is that the original name for mistake-proofing (poka-yoke) was actually fool-proofing (baka-yoke). Shingo chided managers at Panasonic for using the latter term, as it disrespected workers by essentially calling them fools.
Shingo substituted…
