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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…
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…
Machine-tool manufacturer Cincinnati Inc. has a heritage of building quality products and surviving great challenges. Founded in 1898, and based in the United States, Cincinnati has survived both the Great Depression and Great Recession. Cincinnati’s forward-looking attitude has been a key factor…
Due dates. Whether it’s building a house or implementing an enterprise quality management software (QMS) solution, everyone has them, everyone wants them. What does home construction have to do with going live with a new QMS solution? There are actually quite a few similarities.
Create realistic…
“Although there’s an assumption that stress and pressure push employees to perform more, better, and faster, what cutthroat organizations fail to recognize is the hidden costs incurred.” —“Proof that Positive Cultures are More Productive,” Harvard Business Review
The timeworn industry standard is…
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.…
Experts say that the cost of quality totals roughly 10 percent in the average organization, with some companies facing quality costs of up to 40 percent. If your plant is on the middle to upper end of these estimates, it’s likely company leadership considers your plant in need of immediate…
I recently wrote an article about innovation during 2018, and in it I made some disparaging remarks about Apple, which may or may not have caused it to lose a tremendous amount of market capitalization. Or perhaps the stock was overvalued, and Apple has become more interested in margin than in…
During the last few decades, studies in neuroscience have shown that you can literally physically rewire your brain. You can change the “default network” you were born with, the one that ensured the survival of our primitive ancestors who lived in a very different world.
Our “fight-flight”…
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…
“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”…
(Marposs: Auburn Hills, MI) -- Marposs has announced the availability of its new Duo premium compact electronic display unit. Similar in size to a smart phone, Duo is extremely small and powerful, featuring a 4.3 in. touchscreen unit for display and storage of measuring data acquired through one or…
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…
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…
(Wiley: Hoboken, NJ) -- The book, Unlocking Creativity: How to Solve Any Problem and Make the Best Decisions (Wiley, 2019), is an exploration of the creative process and how organizations can clear the way for innovation.
In many organizations, creative individuals face stubborn resistance to new…
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a method for evaluating and selecting optimal antenna designs for future fifth-generation (5G) cellphones, other wireless devices and base stations.
The new NIST method could boost 5G wireless network capacity…
Are engineers more creative than designers? Both answers (“Yes they are!” and, “No they are not!”) are naïve. It’s foolish to compare massive groups of people against each other, especially around a sloppy word like creativity.
Assuming you work making products of some kind, we all likely know…
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?…
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…
One of my favorite things to do when I learn new and interesting information is to apply it to a different area to see if I can gain further insight. Here, I am looking at the principle, “Chekhov’s gun,” named after the famous Russian author, Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), and how it relates to gemba…
We tied up last year in a neat little bow, talking about how stories define ourselves and our work; waste is waste, no matter your political leanings; and putting numbers from the news in context.
“The Gift of Being Small” This article by Quality Digest’s Taran March wonderfully illustrates how we…
A few years ago I wrote about a Facebook exchange between two friends of mine that upset me because one of my friends resorted to name-calling instead of addressing the other friend’s arguments. In retrospect, that was mild. More recently I’ve been shocked by some disturbingly excessive name-…
It’s no wonder people are scared of process. When we have a large project or goal, we assume that the process to complete that work must be equally large. That is daunting. We’d rather just do it.
When we have taken the time to build a process for a large project, we’ve all witnessed what a large…
I still love to hold and read physical books (as opposed to audible or Kindle). I don’t know how many books I added to my library this year, but it was a lot. I thought I’d share some good ones that I’d recommend you add to your reading list for 2019.
These books are not customer experience books…
Back in January 2009, I wrote an article for Quality Digest titled “ISO 9001 Documentation Is Like a Box of Chocolates.” Here we are, almost 10 years later, all of the ISO 9001 and related standards have been updated, yet companies still misunderstand what to document, how to document, or why to…
