All Features
Ryan E. Day
Every year, Manufacturing Day brings attention to the career path that has financed millions of growing families throughout the decades—including mine. This attention also recalls the ongoing shortage of people to fill the thousands of available jobs in manufacturing. The same can be said for the…
Yen Duong, Knowable Magazine
If you think it’s hard to tell how you’re doing at your job, imagine being a hockey goalie. Let’s say you block every shot in a game. Was that performance due to your superior skills? Or maybe just to a lack of skill in your opponents?
Evaluating ice hockey players' performance is getting easier,…
Jim Benson
Editor’s note: Read episode two in the Respect for People series here.
I was standing in a back room of the Honolulu Museum of Art that was off limits to the public. In this one room, protected from bugs, humidity, and light, was the world’s largest collection of Japanese woodblock prints. (My…
Jody Muelaner
Attribute gauges are a type of measurement instrument or process that gives a binary pass/fail measurement result. Examples of attribute gauges include go/no-go plug gauges, feeler gauges, and many other types of special-purpose hard gauges. Many visual-inspection processes may also be considered…
Jody Muelaner
I’ve written a lot about how to evaluate the uncertainty measurements. My articles have ranged from basic introductions to metrology and uncertainty budgets, to more advanced topics such as sensitivity coefficients and Monte Carlo simulation. To date, all of the examples I’ve used have been for…
Dylan Walsh
In principle, the mountaineer’s work is simple: “To win the game he has first to reach the mountain’s summit,” said George Mallory, who took part in Britain’s first three attempts on Everest during the 1920s. “But, further, he has to descend in safety.”
The tension between these two goals—…
Harish Jose
One of my favorite equations from Factory Physics, by Wallace Hopp and Mark Spearman (Waveland Press, third edition, 2011) is Kingman’s formula, usually represented as “VUT.”
The VUT equation is named after Sir John Kingman, a British mathematician:
The first factor represents variability and is…
Gwendolyn Galsworth
More often than not, an effective implementation of operator-led visuality produces a 15- to 30-percent increase in productivity on the cell or departmental level, beginning with the implementation of the “visual where” (or, as our trainers like to call it, 5S on steroids). But that effectiveness…
Chad Kymal
Organizations in the automotive and related industries such as steel, plastics, and semiconductors have been heavily influenced by automotive industry standards and practices like IATF 16949, advanced product quality planning (APQP), failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), and production parts…
David Midgley
Ask any manager at a large organization why the purchasing department matters, and the first factor he will mention will probably be costs. But cost control, though a core competency, is far from the only way purchasing affects firm performance.Every contract signed with a supplier represents a…
Bruce Hamilton
Reflecting on Douglas McGregor’s X and Y theories of human motivation, Shigeo Shingo took the position that each of us by nature has a dual tendency: sometimes lazy and self-interested, and other times motivated and generous. Which of these behaviors dominates is directly related to the environment…
Bill Kraus
Continuous improvement is generally considered to be a journey in pursuit of perfection and is regularly associated with the concept of lean manufacturing. In early 1990, reflecting on the Toyota Production System, the National Institute of Standards and Technology Manufacturing Extension…
Rachel Ehrenberg, Knowable Magazine
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
If you’re lucky, you’ve tasted a perfectly ripe fruit—a sublime peach, perhaps, or a buttery avocado. But odds are most of the fruit you’ve eaten tastes more like wet cardboard. Although plant breeders have mastered growing large, perfect-…
Ryan E. Day
For more than 50 years, Tri-State Plastics has been honing its skills in thermoforming, CNC machining, die cutting, assembly, and fabricating plastic parts for government and military applications. A restructuring of company ownership saw the organization pivot toward the lucrative but challenging…
Phanish Puranam, Agustin Chevez
Flying sharks, waterfalls in the lobby, in-house top chefs, and dogs in the workplace. These are just a few tangible examples of experience design reimagining organizations beyond the traditional scope of organization design.
Organization design is concerned with how to shape interactions among…
Ryan E. Day
The pressure of global commerce has forced manufacturers to provide higher quality products at lower prices. Investing wisely in industrial inspection solutions has never been more crucial. Quality control, once perceived as a cost-center, has matured into a tool to improve profit margins. “…
Harry Hertz
What are the key attributes and behaviors for a role model, visionary leader? About six years ago, a task force of Baldrige-community senior executives under the leadership of Kathy Herald-Marlowe was charged with drafting a set of senior leader attributes and behaviors consistent with the Baldrige…
DNV GL
Workplace safety is a complex issue, addressing everything from rules for operating heavy machinery to guidelines for respecting your fellow employees. For many of these issues we, as a business community, have developed and applied a variety of best practices and global standards—such as ISO 45001…
Paul Foster
When Deloitte wanted to get people excited about employee training, the company decided to adopt a gamification strategy for its online training portal. Using elements like achievement badges, missions, and leaderboards, they achieved a 37-percent increase in participation.
And when Ford Canada…
Sébastien Breteau
Whether it be a move forced by the U.S.-China tariff turmoil, or a sourcing strategy long in the works, the exodus from China is a reality for a host of businesses, from small to medium-sized enterprises to multinationals.
While the departure is widespread, it isn’t universal—some major players,…
Krystle Morrison
From carrying food in from the field, to shipping processed products, to assembling a supermarket display, packaging matters. As a follow-up to our exploration of emerging trends in food packaging, we’re taking a look at several innovative technologies that could change the future of packaging.…
Jon Speer
Medical device manufacturers must implement and maintain a quality management system to ensure they are producing safe and effective medical devices. Created and maintained by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), standard 13485 outlines the guidelines for medical device quality…
Bruce Hamilton
A daisy rising from my brick walkway reminded me this morning, that even in the worst environment, there is a chance for growth. But this kind of individual heroism does not portend success for lean transformation. As an organization with the slogan “Everybody Everyday,” GBMP places high value on…
Jill Barshay, Sasha Aslanian
When Keenan Robinson started college in 2017, he knew the career he wanted. He’d gone to high school in a small town outside Atlanta. His parents had never finished college, and they always encouraged Robinson and his two older siblings to earn degrees. Robinson’s older brother was the first in the…
Ekim Saribardak
Transporting cargo over long distances has always been a logistical nightmare, but when the goods are of a delicate nature, the whole operation becomes significantly more challenging. Perishable foods, chemicals, pharmaceutical products, and other delicate goods all need special treatment during…
