All Features
Shobhendu Prabhakar
Why do we waste our time and effort completing checklist after checklist for tasks that we can complete even when half awake? Do we not have better things to do than complete checklists?
Good question! And the answer is simple: If there is a checklist, it exists for a reason, and we need to follow…
Stephen Fankhauser, Matt Ebbatson
The world is running out of experienced pilots. Supply is not keeping up with the growing demand for air travel. In Australia, the effects are already starting to bite. Even flagship carrier Qantas is having problems. In recent months it has had to perform a very nimble tap dance to crew its vast…
Peter Dizikes
Should business leaders spend more time asking questions? Hal Gregersen has a firm answer to that: Yes. Gregersen, the executive director of the MIT Leadership Center and a senior lecturer on leadership and innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management, has been studying executives for decades.…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Who’s more clever, engineers or designers? Alexa-connected toilet, anyone? How do you promote rigorous thinking? We discussed all of that and more during this week’s QDL.
“CES brings you... the Alexa-connected toilet!’ Just when you thought that nothing crazier than your clothes dryer could be…
Davis Balestracci
“People think that if you collect enormous amounts of data you are bound to get the right answer. You are not bound to get the right answer unless you are enormously smart.” —Bradley Efron
There has been an explosion in new technology for acquiring, storing, and processing data. The “big data”…
Richard Harpster
On Oct. 13, 2018, the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) sponsored a webinar on the status of the AIAG Core Tools Software (AIAG CTS). John Cachat, AIAG project manager for the AIAG CTS project, was the presenter for the webinar. The presentation provided information on why the AIAG was…
Donald J. Wheeler
Story update 1/15/2019: Thanks to the sharp eye of Dr. Stan Alekman, who spotted an inconsistent value in figure 2, I discovered an error in the program used to construct the table of critical values for the prediction ratio. I have now corrected that problem and updated the entries in the table…
Mike Richman
Happy New Year one and all! For our first QDL of 2019, we were pleased to present some thought-provoking content on the benefits of compromise, the dangers of rhetorical trickery, and the meaning of Chekhov’s gun. Let’s take a closer look:
Ripped from the headlines Can’t anyone here get along?…
Wes Kao
If you’re a leader, you got to where you are because you think strategically and are killer at execution. You simply can’t get far without being good at both.
Now that you’re in charge of people, though, your ability to increase impact depends on how well you manage other people. You need your…
David Currie
This is part three of a three-part series. Read about good metrics in part one and bad metrics in part two.
Have you ever had occasion to dread a metric reviewed month after month, where the metric defies logic, and any action taken does not seem to reflect in the metric? It is most likely a bad…
Kelsey Rzepecki
As the global economy grows, it’s more necessary than ever to stay on top of efficiency. Keep up with increasing production demands by implementing a continuous improvement method to streamline the workflow.
Continuous improvement is an ongoing effort to improve products, services, and processes.…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
In this episode we look at bioethics, next-gen manufacturing employees, and the death of Le Grand K.
What happens if customers want designer babies? We discuss the latest news about a Chinese researcher who claims to have edited the genes of two babies. Should society draw a line in the sand?
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Aytekin Tank
A giant engine in a factory fails. Concerned, the factory owners call in technicians, who arrive with bulging toolkits. None of them can work out what the problem is. The issue persists.
One day, an old man shows up who’s been fixing engines his whole life. After inspecting it for a minute, he…
Davis Balestracci
I always enjoy my fellow columnist Arun Hariharan’s musings. He has worked in the field of quality for more than 30 years and, like me, has obtained reasonable results. But he has also made his share of the inevitable growing-pain mistakes—lessons we both had to learn the hard way in an environment…
U.S. Department of Education
In June 2017, President Trump signed an Executive Order titled “Expanding Apprenticeships in America.” It calls for the creation of a special task force to identify strategies and proposals to promote apprenticeships in the United States. To meet this challenge, Department of Labor Secretary Alex…
Ariana Tantillo
The ability to program computers is crucial to almost all modern scientific experiments, which often involve extremely complex calculations and massive amounts of data. However, scientists typically have not been formally trained in science-specific programming to develop customized computational…
Megan Ray Nichols
There is rising enthusiasm all over the country and the world when it comes to apprenticeships. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, from 2013 to 2017, the number of those participating in apprenticeship programs grew from 375,000 to almost 534,000, an increase of about 42 percent. In 2017…
William A. Levinson
Chad Kymal1 gave an excellent overview of the ISO 45001 occupational health and safety (OHS) standard that was released in March 2018. I purchased a copy of the standard, and it provides an excellent framework, modeled on Annex SL, which defines the structure of all the new ISO standards, for an…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
Last year I was invited to give a lecture on critical thinking to the U.S. Navy. I opened my presentation with a story I’d read in Reader’s Digest magazine as a child. It’s an old story you may have heard before, but it’s a perfect introduction to the importance of critical thinking. Here’s how it…
Mike Richman
Our industry embodies many aspects, but “Big Q” quality generally involves issues affecting management, measurement, and methodologies. This week on QDL, we covered all of them, and more. Let’s look closer:
“Ripped from the Headlines: Tariff Fallout” U.S. manufacturers are currently dealing with…
Minitab LLC
Choosing the correct linear regression model can be difficult. Trying to model it with only a sample doesn’t make it any easier. Let’s review some common statistical methods for selecting models, complications you may face, and look at some practical advice for choosing the best regression model.…
Jason Furness
All organizations are looking to increase the competency of their employees and, hopefully, of themselves. Looking at this from the base level up, in a practical sense our competency evolves with experience, expertise, and possibly, time.
1. Unknowing
We begin by not knowing about a skill, issue,…
Mike Richman
Leaders lead. Those two simple words conceal the complicated fact that being a change agent means confronting the failures of the past and confidently facing the promise of the future. Stories addressing these facts, along with hot takes on current news and a preview of an exciting upcoming webinar…
Sylvie Couture
In 2012, CMP Advanced Mechanical Solutions, a leader in the design and manufacture of sheet metal enclosures, mechanical assemblies, and machined systems, burst onto the Industry 4.0 scene with its avant-garde use of the visual work instruction software VKS. This software allowed the company to…
Mike Richman
One of the highlights on our calendar each year is the first Friday in October, which is Manufacturing Day here in the United States. This event offers us the perfect opportunity to celebrate the centrality of manufacturing as a driver of the economy, innovation, automation, education, and lots…
