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As the skills gap widens and more employees retire, decades of experience and company investment is predicted to walk out the door. With nearly 10,000 people turning retirement age daily, manufacturers will need to look to proactive solutions to capture tribal knowledge and transfer it to the…
The outbreak of the Covid-19 virus in China and the railway disruptions across Canada represent two different yet similar classic case studies. They remind us that nations and global economies are becoming increasingly interconnected. Incidents thousands of kilometers away are being felt locally.…
The Manufacturing Institute estimated that 2.4 million job openings in manufacturing—accounting for half of all open positions—will go unfilled between 2018 and 2028 as a direct consequence of the skills gap. This isn’t a future problem.
The challenges of the skills gap and a shifting workforce…
In a recent article I discussed the traditional 5S audit, shared a set of reservations, and offered some remedies—“The Five Tweaks,” as I called them. Remedies are important because most of you have a vested interest in continuing regular audits but want them to be successful and more valued. The…
Shop floor scheduling is a huge headache for many manufacturers. You can’t operate without it, but operating with it presents a host of challenges. In particular, scheduling systems struggle to account for the many variables present in a typical high-mix, low-volume shop.
Each of the following…
A couple weeks ago a consultant friend of mine, who coincidentally focuses his practice on lean in healthcare, was complaining about issues with his healthcare providers. It’s a story we hear often: doctors running late, very short and often superficial consultations, a rush to diagnosis, and a…
(The L.S. Starrett Company: Athol, MA) -- The L.S. Starrett Company, a global manufacturer of precision hand tools and gages, metrology systems and more, has recently expanded the horizontal X-axis travel on its HB400 Benchtop Optical Comparator from 12 in. to 16 in. (300 mm to 400 mm), providing…
Have you ever wondered why the sales and marketing departments walk out of the boardroom with a bag full of money after they made their pitch, but board members only see you and your quality unit presentation as the bearer of bad news?
I have seen it too many times to count. The quality unit has a…
The Chinese character for “crisis” means danger and opportunity. The coronavirus, aka Covid-19, outbreak has already wreaked havoc in the global economy, curtailed international and even domestic travel, and caused roughly 7,146 fatalities to date around the world.1 The reaction to this outbreak,…
A large portion of a digital project manager’s job is making sure the right parts of the project are being worked on. Projects need to be prioritized. Tasks within projects need to be prioritized, too.
Plan View’s Project and Portfolio Management Landscape Report found that prioritization was…
Each article in this series presents new tools for increasing return on investment (ROI), enhancing customer satisfaction, creating process excellence, and driving risk from an ISO 9001:2015-based quality management system (QMS). They will help implementers evolve quality management to overall…
Each new year brings about a period of reflection, where one can think back on the path that the previous year took us on. 2020 represents an even larger opportunity for reflection as the world enters a new decade. Reflection provides an opportunity to learn and improve, and extends beyond just an…
For those in the manufacturing and industrial sector, what’s commonly known as the skills gap is a well-documented issue. As a growing number of Americans retire, they take their decades of experience with them, resulting in a noticeable skills shortage.
The problem is poised to hit businesses…
When the definition of power includes the “ability to exert influence,” then you’re also describing an element of leadership: knowledge. Take, for example, Ann Landers.
Ann Landers is a pen name invented by Chicago Times columnist Ruth Crowley in 1943 and taken over by Eppie Lederer in 1955. For…
If you’re a medical device company manufacturing Class II or Class III devices, you can expect to have the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) turning up for an inspection. It’s what happens after that inspection that we’re concerned with in this article.
The unfortunate truth of the matter is…
Analytical balance scales are a part of many laboratories. If you use them regularly, you need to keep the analytical scales well-maintained. They are extremely sensitive, and factors like dust, vibration, and air drafts will throw off the accuracy of the scales. This is why it is important to…
Imagine you’re a fossil hunter. You spend months in the heat of Arizona digging up bones only to find that what you’ve uncovered is from a previously discovered dinosaur.
That’s how the search for antibiotics has panned out recently. The relatively few antibiotic hunters out there keep finding…
We are currently living in the digital age and are drowning in an ocean of data. Organizations have a large number of data entities and data elements, and a large volume of data corresponding to the same, and they continue to amass more and more data with each passing day. With the large amount of…
Do layered process audits drive real improvement in your organization? Or are they just another hoop to jump through for customers like General Motors and Fiat Chrysler?
A layered process audit (LPA) is composed of quick checks of high-risk processes. LPAs can prevent defects by identifying when…
Additive manufacturing (AM, aka 3D printing) is increasingly accepted as an end-product manufacturing method, rather than just for prototyping. However, ensuring the final quality of parts for use in critical applications such as medical, and particularly aerospace, can still be a labor- and cost-…
Let’s talk about the 5S audit, a mechanism many companies use as their major means to stimulate employee creativity and trigger continuous improvement.
There are three fundamentals of the 5S audit.
First: It is an audit and therefore has limited capability for stimulating anything but compliance…
The seven basic tools of quality are a standard set of graphical methods for improving quality. They can help with understanding variation and determining the root cause of errors in processes. The seven basic tools are most commonly used within lean manufacturing. All of the tools are graphical…
Recently, I spoke to a CEO who had commissioned a survey on his organization’s health. To his great surprise—and that of his executive team—more than 80 percent of the respondents said that they were reluctant to speak their mind. They felt unsafe to express their opinions, doubts, or frustrations…
When the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics was announced, it was an exceptional moment because in addition to celebrating contributions to economic science, a methodology was also recognized. The laureates Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer are known for their work in randomized…
A recent study showing that data entry is one the most redundant and hated workplace tasks raises questions about why, in the age of artificial intelligence, data mining, and smart technologies, this task is still being done manually.
Is there any way it could be less despised?
My ongoing…