All Features
Mike Figliuolo
This article is an excerpt from the cutting room floor. It was in an early draft of my book One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2011; order your copy here). It covers how to lead through guidelines rather than leading through rules.
We need…
Bruce Hamilton
I was asked to lead a workshop in the sales order department of a manufacturer that we had helped with process improvement on the factory floor. Those efforts had positively reverberated across the company in the form of fewer late and expedited orders. Still, sales order employees were wondering…
Mike Figliuolo
Sometimes the key to getting a lot done is to actually do nothing at all.
I’ve been dreading writing this post. Massive writer’s block. “I have nothing to say,” says the tired little voice in my head (no comments from the peanut gallery).
Normally, I write on Sundays. Writing is relaxing for me.…
Morehouse Instrument Co.
In the healthcare sector, precision isn’t just a requirement. It’s a necessity where the margins for error are perilously thin, and the consequences of inaccuracy can be grave. At the heart of this precision lies the unassuming yet critical load cell, a device whose reliability is foundational to…
Dawn Bailey
The Center for Organ Recovery & Education (CORE), a 2019 Baldrige Award recipient, is a nonprofit organ procurement organization (OPO) in Pittsburgh with a federally designated service area encompassing a population of 5.5 million in western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and one county in New…
Laurie Locascio
Growing up as a scientist, I didn’t see role models who looked like me. I grew up in a small town where my father was a physicist—and my role model. He nurtured me to be a scientist, just like him. I’m so grateful he didn’t have different expectations for my brothers and me. He always told me that…
James Chan
Management of change (MOC) is a defined process that organizations establish and follow to ensure health, safety, and reduction of risk during periods of change. MOC systems and policies are essential for companies that undergo significant updates to their facilities, personnel, equipment, or…
Mike Figliuolo
Pay. It’s the topic we love to avoid. We don’t discuss it with friends or family. It’s verboten at cocktail parties. Heck, we discuss cancer, religion, and abortion at dinner parties more easily than we talk about our paychecks. We don’t even like to discuss compensation with the person whose pay…
Lee Simmons
Investors and business leaders are always on the lookout for the next big thing, the paradigm shift that will upend industries and change the world. The hope is to get in early and ride the wave—or at least avoid getting flattened by it. But where should they be looking?
“There’s a huge literature…
Lawrence Bernard
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have determined how to avoid costly and potentially irreparable damage to large metallic parts fabricated through additive manufacturing (AM), also known as 3D printing, caused by residual stress in the material.…
Douglas C. Fair, Scott A. Hindle
In less than two months we will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the invention of the control chart, a tool most often associated with statistical process control (SPC). Considering SPC from our modern perspective made us ask, “Is SPC still relevant?”
It’s a question asked within the purview of…
Mark Hembree
Everyone knows customer service is increasingly automated and impersonal—that’s a “dog bites man” story. It’s not news because it happens all the time. When a man bites a dog, that’s news.
But what if you’re bitten by a chatbot or AI? Aside from newsworthiness, is the owner responsible? Where does…
Donald J. Wheeler
When presented with a collection of data from operations or production, many will start their analysis by computing descriptive statistics and fitting a probability model to the data. But before you do this, there’s an easy test that you need to perform.
This test will quantify the chances that…
Adam Zewe
If a robot traveling to a destination has just two possible paths, it only needs to compare the routes’ travel time and probability of success. But if the robot is traversing a complex environment with many possible paths, choosing the best route amid so much uncertainty can quickly become an…
Mike Figliuolo
If you have kids, you know the nauseating feeling of one of them going down for the count and having to rush them to the emergency room. I had that grim experience recently. What I learned from that ER visit is businesses can make very strong statements about how little they care about their…
Jennifer King
The cost of poor quality can be devastating to business: Failed quality control costs manufacturers anywhere between 15–20% of their total profits on average, and as much as 40% for some, the ASQ reveals. Businesses with successful quality programs, on the other hand, can benefit from increased…
Alonso Diaz, Maria DiBari
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) emphasizes the importance of being prepared for device recalls.
FDA product recalls are on the rise in the post-pandemic era. There has been a clear upward trend from 2021 through 2023, and medical devices ranked the highest of all product types. (See…
Mike Figliuolo
Organizations that use “stay bonuses” as a retention tool could be making a huge mistake. Instead of letting poor performers go, they pay tons of money to keep them.
It’s been a rough year in the market. Let’s hit rewind and explore some underlying axioms about business. Sure, many of these are…
Alissa Greenberg
Calls for cultural transformation have become ubiquitous in the past few years, encompassing everything from advancing racial justice and questioning gender roles to rethinking the American workplace. Hazel Rose Markus recalls the summer of 2020 as a watershed for those conversations. “Everybody…
Stephanie Ojeda
Implementing an automated compliance management solution is a mammoth undertaking with high stakes and potentially high returns for those who navigate the process successfully.
Get it right and you could save thousands of labor hours, avoid millions of dollars in compliance issues, and free up…
Mike Figliuolo
It’s important to have customer-friendly policies if you want to have a great customer service culture. Your policies drive team behaviors, so be sure they’re consistent with the brand you want to put forward.
I’m going to hark back to my recent post, “$325 Equals $210? The Math of Customer-…
William A. Levinson
In his Quality Digest article published in February 2023, Michael Mills1 reported that the next version of ISO 9001 will add to clause 4.1, “Understanding the organization and its context” the words, “the organization shall determine whether climate change is a relevant issue.”
Although nothing in…
James Chan
Tracking work orders is an essential aspect of work order management, and it becomes immensely more efficient with the help of tracking software.
Work orders are the centerpiece of an effective maintenance program. Once a work order request is initiated, it triggers a set of tasks and workflows…
Roman Davydov
In 2024, operating in the automotive market has become increasingly difficult. Global and local supply chain disruptions, product quality issues, and ongoing talent shortages are some of the greatest challenges automotive businesses face globally.
The majority of automotive companies already…
Adam Sutter
In the dynamic and ever-evolving landscape of business, the concept of transformation often conjures images of monumental overhauls and radical shifts. However, for some enterprises, effective transformation takes a different, more nuanced form—one that involves strategic adjustments rather than…
