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Sometimes work is terrifying. We’re asked to do something that we know, or at least strongly suspect, won’t work. Maybe we’re asked to do several things, some of which are are simple, but one or two make us uncomfortable. We might even place a hard estimate on a task (“It’ll take six hours!”), but…
A friend of mine, a key leader with a major insurance company, regularly comes around her desk when one of her team members comes to speak with her. She feels that sitting side by side rather than across a desk leads to a better discussion. Why? Because she is putting that person at ease,…
The phrase “elephant in the living room” refers to a major problem that everybody knows is there, but nobody wants to acknowledge. Acknowledging and defining the problem is, of course, the first part of any closed-loop corrective action process. “Problem notification” and “problem identification”…
(NSF: Ann Arbor, MI) --Sustainable Minds has partnered with NSF Sustainability, a division of global public health organization NSF International, to provide life cycle assessment (LCA) verification and report certification for Sustainable Minds Transparency Reports.
Sustainable Minds (SM), a…
During a break in the meeting, Dan pulled me aside and whispered, “No more ‘p’ words, please.”
“What are ‘p’ words?” I asked.
“You know,” he replied, “Words like process, perspective, and paradigm.”
Dan is results-driven. There were way too many “p” words in this meeting for his comfort: planning…
You know what really gets on my nerves? A lot of things.
That slow, slinky way that cats walk by. Grrrr.
The rude, abrupt arrival of delivery persons in their obnoxiously loud trucks. (Why do they always pull up just as I'm settling down for a nap?) Grrrr.
Total strangers who reach…
How often have you heard someone say they were good at “multitasking?” You may have even seen this listed as a desired skill in a job posting. Although multitasking may seem to allow for greater productivity and efficiency, the reality is that this approach to work doesn’t allow you to become…
Founded in 1968 and headquartered in Istanbul, TOFAS (Türk Otomobil Fabrikası A.S.) manufactures cars, taxis, and vans in Turkey for international sale. Products are offered under several brands, including Fiat (which jointly owns the company), Peugeot, Citroen, and Opel. The TOFAS-built Fiat…
For the 11th consecutive year, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has released complementary reports that assess the U.S. healthcare system’s performance in the areas of healthcare quality, access, and disparities in care.
The two reports—the 2013 National Healthcare Quality Report and…
There are plenty of places to rent tools and equipment in any town, anywhere. When people need to rent a post-hole auger or a trencher, many go to the local family-owned equipment rental shop—mostly because of past experience. It's not a sparkling clean place. In fact, it looks a bit like a…
At Pasta Montana, the focus on quality permeates every activity at every step of the manufacturing process. One shining example of this dedication is the company’s recent decision to be the first pasta manufacturer in the United States to install a digital sorter that ejects foreign material (FM)…
One of my all-time favorite quotes is from UK-based urban designer Ben Hamilton-Baillie, a master of designing shared space intersections: “If we observed first, designed second, we wouldn’t need most of the things we build.”
The Japanese phrase for what Hamilton-Baillie is talking about is "…
When looking at any existing process, people often have a hard time visualizing the enormous amount of delay, waste, and nonvalue-added work involved. That’s where a time value map comes in; it makes the invisible waste visible. A time value map shows value-added and nonvalue-added activities and…
ISO 14001 is the world’s best-known environmental management system standard, and it provides a systematic framework to help organizations protect the environment through balanced socio-economic means.
In conjunction with an updated ISO 9001, a new version of ISO 14001 is being released in the…
Superior quality goods and services will result in sustainable financial results because they are more salable than those of the competition. This universal principle continually drives revenue and maintains lower costs, leading to greater profitability. In this way, the strategic pursuit of…
Sometimes interpreting ISO 9001 or API Q1/API Q2 requirements seems to force us to agree to things we won’t be able to do, or to sustain for more than a few months, let alone days. So how do we write our policies and procedures to explain our approach while avoiding being boxed in by our own words…
Organizations and their products constantly change. Quality professionals embrace the change process through continuous improvement, a method to anticipate, plan, and replan. We talk in terms of improvements, controls, processes, outputs, and outcomes, but we seldom call it “change.” We must…
(Fluke: Everret, WA) -- Maintenance technicians make better, faster decisions when they have field access to maintenance records and when they can review measurements in real time with team members and supervisors. Yet records are usually kept back in the office and team members are rarely in the…
Story update 6/18/2014: In an earlier version of this article the editors changed ISO/DIS 9001:2014 to ISO/DIS 9001:2015. The error was ours, not the author's. The correct name of the document is ISO/DIS 9001:2014, as now shown.
The publication of the draft international standard (DIS) of the…
The World Health Assembly is the decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO), attended every year by leading government health officials from its 194 member nations. Recently, I was pleased to participate as a member of the U.S. delegation in the 67th meeting of this important…
Join David P. Langford for a two-day interactive session and discover the true potential and future of education in our country. Shatter existing beliefs with this proven approach to improving the quality of learning and leading the next generation of students in flexible learning environments…
Our first and second articles in this series have focused primarily on Bob Pozen’s tips for improving your productivity as an individual. Below, we suggest approaches to improving productivity within an organization through the proactive management of relationships at work.
Managing your team
“To…
The following may seem difficult to believe, but it can be true. Among the definitions of the word “efficient,” we find the following: “achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense.” Although this is great for busy executives and companies, it is terrible for projects,…
Editor's note: This is part one of a serios about customer-centric quality management systems. Read part two here.
A document review is supposed to be conducted as part of stage one of the ISO certification process. For the uninitiated looking into certification—maybe you—that statement often…
Remember The Little Engine That Could, the children’s story about self-confidence in the face of huge challenges? In it, a train engine keeps telling itself, “I think I can” while carrying a very heavy load up a big mountain. Next thing you know, the little engine has done it, but until that…
