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(Lean Frontiers: Indianapolis) -- What is it? It might not be Shark Week, but it’ll be just as exciting! Lean Leadership Week is made up of three events, taking place Oct. 5–9, 2015, near Jacksonville, Florida. The Summit on Lean Leadership is a stand-alone event held at One Oceans Resort, on…
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have come up with a way to shrink a research instrument generally associated with large machines down to a pinpoint-precision probe.
This electron spin resonance probe employs a large-scale technique used for decades as a…
Verifying the effectiveness of corrective and preventive actions (CAPAs) closes the loop between identifying a problem and completing the actions to solve it. It’s reasonable to assume that if a problem is worth solving, it’s also worth verifying that the solution worked. However, given the wide…
I don’t like the taste of crow, which is a shame, because I’m about to eat a huge helping of it.
I’m going to tell you how I messed up an analysis. But in the process, I learned some new lessons and was reminded of some older ones I should remember to apply more carefully.
This failure starts in…
Crystal may be clear, but crystal balls, at least metaphorically, are certainly not. The late, great political columnist David Broder of The Washington Post used to run a column at the end of the year tallying up where he had guessed correctly—and where he’d missed the mark. Not many columnists…
What happens when a product lasts too long? How long is good enough? Every product is different, and our ability to define what’s “long enough” is fraught with uncertainty. If it wears out prematurely, your customers will go elsewhere. If it lasts too long, they won’t need to come back.
In “The…
(Manufacturship: Green Hills, New South Wales) -- Despite popular opinion, manufacturing in Australia is far from doomed, but it does need help. One way to address the issue, as academic studies report, is to spend more money on educating a workforce that is better suited to meet today’s…
Delegating is often one of the hardest things for a manager to do. You give away your authority to make decisions but are still responsible for the outcome if something goes wrong.
Often managers don’t delegate because they hold one or more of these beliefs. Do any sound familiar?
“If you want…
When it comes to data management, I don’t think there’s any debate on where industrial businesses collectively sit right now. The landscape of our world is changing rapidly, especially with the emergence of the Internet of Things, or as GE calls it, the Industrial Internet.
There are a lot of…
(Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: Berkeley, CA) -- A major automaker came to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory recently wanting to better understand battery degradation. After many months of intense collaborative research with a Berkeley Lab battery scientist, the automaker gleaned some…
Last week, I heard a sermon at church that resonated within me. In the Gospel, Jesus said to his disciples, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.”
The message was not that we can be the salt and the light; rather, we are the salt and the light. This is transformative. As…
If you’re like most savvy manufacturers, you know to watch out for changes in labor laws that could affect you in countries where you have factories or where you sell your products. We’ve all seen examples of how manufacturers were held accountable for the safety of workers and consumers alike.…
(Humantech: Ann Arbor, MI) -- Humantech CEO and founder Franz Schneider is among one of the presenters at TEDx Saginaw Valley State University on Aug. 1, 2015. “You Hired an Employee, but a Human Being Showed Up Instead,” will focus on the criteria every organization must embrace to close the gap…
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- Lebanon, Missouri’s population is a few hundred people more than 14,000. To put that number in perspective, 1,120,000 people ride the commuter train on the average New York weekday. In Lebanon, people welcome you with open arms, parents interact one on one with school…
One of the arguments against journey mapping I often hear is that it’s an exercise in futility. You map. You put it on the wall. Nothing changes. To that I answer, “You’re doing it all wrong.”
You map because you need to understand the customer experience; you know that you can’t transform…
One of my regular readers and harshest critics, my wife, complained that my recent posts have been too pedagogical and lacked my storytelling instincts. So this post is for her.
Have you seen the recent commercial about buying a used car? It compares the experience to a dinner out and asks…
Convenience stores are located on most street corners the world over. These small enterprises offer customers a wide variety of items and often have gas pumps outside as well. Considering how long convenience stores have been around and the quantity of items they carry, you’d expect them to use…
(ISO: Geneva) -- Management system standard ISO 9001 has reached the final stage of the revision process. ISO member countries have two months to form a national position and vote on the latest draft of the standard before the Sept. 9, 2015, deadline.
An earlier vote on the draft international…
Watching the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team take the World Cup on July 5, 2015, caused me to reminisce about my short-term coaching stint of a U12 soccer team.
Before becoming a coach, I hadn’t played soccer or even watched a game, but there weren’t enough coaches in our town league, so I…
A few days ago, as I waited for an item I purchased at the local Apple store to be brought to me from the back of the store, I had the opportunity to observe Apple’s frontline strategy. It involved another floor associate assisting a gentleman considering the purchase of an Apple watch.
Now, you…
What are the challenges of incorporating—and maintaining—process excellence in an organization’s culture?
The Process Excellence (PEX) Network, a division of the International Quality and Productivity Center, recently released its 12 Days of PEX-MAS with the top challenges and strategies to…
I recently watched a high school state track and field championship. At the beginning of the evening, the excitement among the athletes was palpable. Each athlete and team had such determination and grit—but, of course, not all of them were going to win their events or the meet.
At the end of the…
How well your brain works is affected by how you relate to other people. When doing the research for Cheetah’s “Happy Aging Project” program, we synthesized two important bodies of knowledge from leading research on brain health and performance.
In his book, Buddha’s Brain (New Harbinger…
(OSHA: Washington, D.C.) -- In November 2014, a worker was overcome at a DuPont chemical manufacturing facility when a supply line unexpectedly released more than 20,000 lb of methyl mercaptan, a deadly chemical. Three co-workers came to the worker’s aid in an attempted rescue, but all four were…
Competitive pressures affecting bottom-line profit margins have risen dramatically in today’s global economy. As a result, an increasing number of U.S. companies have turned to outsourcing of goods and services to reduce manufacturing and operational costs.
Although international supply chain…
