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It used to be that restaurant goers who were impressed by a particularly attentive waiter or waitress could praise that person to the manager or leave a generous tip. This kind of transaction is still available in many places of business, but increasingly the feedback loop has become more tangled…
If betting wasn’t allowed on horse racing, the Kentucky Derby, which this year saw California Chrome gallop to the finish line, would likely be a little-known event of interest just to a small group of horse racing enthusiasts. But like the Tour de France, the World Cup, and the Masters Tournament…
To keep hospitalized patients safer, University of Arizona (UA) researchers are working on new technology that involves a small, wearable sensor that measures a patient’s activity, heart rate, wakefulness, and other biometrics—data that can predict a fall before it happens.
More than 500,000…
Ihave been traveling a bit lately and, as a result, have had the chance to catch up on some long-overdue reading. The book I just finished is The Four Agreements (Amber-Allen Publishing, 2011 reprint) by Don Miguel Ruiz, a shaman who writes about how those agreements can help you achieve personal…
Do you find yourself trying to solve the same problems over and over again? Do you treat the symptom but not the source of problems? Do you get unintended consequences from “solutions” in your organization?
In the book, Idealized Design (FT Press, 2006), author Russell Ackoff discusses four ways…
Editor’s note: Read part one of this series here.
The Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati (MSDGC) serves 800,000 customers and has approximately 600 employees who work at facilities located throughout Ohio’s Hamilton County. When the MSD Wastewater Treatment Division decided to…
While many companies are perfectly satisfied with the performance of their outsourced predictive maintenance (PdM) programs, some don’t get the desired results for the time and money spent. Others recognize that they have a pool of in-house talent that could do the job given enough time and…
Last month I, along with millions of other people around the world, celebrated Easter. For myself, a religious observance, for others a celebration of seasonal renewal. I think for most people, Easter is a time that elicits reflection on what matters most in the world. The state of the global…
A few years ago I wrote about the difficulties that can ensue when you’re trying to get started on a lean Six Sigma or quality improvement initiative. What can be especially difficult is having many potential projects and you aren’t sure which one will give the most bang for your buck.
When it…
(Hexagon: North Kingstown, RI) -- Hexagon Metrology has announced the launch of the latest generation of the successful Leica T-Scan. More than 15 times faster compared to the previous model, the Leica T-Scan 5 has almost double the stand-off distance, which results in more efficient data capture,…
MSA, the often-used abbreviation for measurement system analysis, refers to the use of analysis to predict the statistical properties of measurement systems. In the realm of calibration management, this analysis can apply to gauges and other measurement equipment, calibration procedures, or other…
(QSI: Houston, TX) -- Get trained at “Qualified Specialists” directly by the experts who developed the official course.
The API Spec. Q1, 9th Edition Training Course is a three-day course that frames the management system requirements from a managerial and business prospective and will provide you…
Your grand strategy seems airtight on paper. You’ve arrived at a winning aspiration. You’ve homed in on an open and attractive segment in which to play. You've identified the competitive advantages that will enable you to win in your chosen spaces. You’ve got the capabilities and systems to…
What do bus schedules have to do with a lean management system? Quite a bit, even though, obviously, the notion of a bus schedule is more metaphor (or is that analogy?) than reality.
Effective lean management systems are largely constituted by “mechanics” and lean leadership behaviors. The…
Next year will mark the 70th anniversary of the general public’s exposure—via the very unfortunate atomic bombing of Hiroshima—to relativity theories. This year, perhaps, global carriers and forwarding companies will have realized that logistics is much more than simply moving merchandise from one…
Designer and architect Skylar Tibbits was constructing a massive museum installation with thousands of pieces when he had an epiphany. “Imagine yourself facing months on end assembling this thing, thinking there’s got to be a better way,” he says. “With all this information that was used to design…
Football is one of life’s mysteries for me. Despite a lifetime of passing television screens where blockish humanoids coalesce and separate against a green background, I can’t get past my shallow impression of huddle and muddle.
However, this has given me at least a rudimentary understanding of…
When listening to people new to ISO 9001, one of the main stumbling blocks preventing them from starting is the belief that they simply don’t have the time. With so much on their plates, they argue, how could they possibly take on something as fundamental as ISO 9001?
At such times I like to…
For many years I worked for a manufacturer of pressure and temperature switches, a small company with a very big product selection. In our product catalog there were roughly three dozen distinct product families with hundreds of standard products, each available with thousands of optional…
A leader’s daily decision checklist is daunting: From hiring or firing to major business changes, every judgment call carries with it some level of risk. A bad choice could result in a toxic hire or a new product launch that crashes and burns. Perhaps more frightening, one poor decision could scar…
In my column, “The Universal Process Flowchart × Four,” I challenged you to look at the everyday use of data as a huge source of hidden waste. I suggested looking at a sample of any routine meeting’s raw data and asking eight questions, the last of which could be the most important of all: Does a…
You would think that the corrective and preventive action (CAPA) system would be a business enabler—a disciplined approach to permanently resolving problems once and for all. Unfortunately, the way most CAPA systems are designed and used, it is more of a stumbling block. The system gets so chock…
When you need an address, definition, or information about anything on Earth, friends will tell you to “Google it.” However, what if your smart device or robot needs to look something up? As part of the Internet of Things, it may well have to. For them, “googling” may help narrow some choices, but…
I’ve entered a phase I think of as “app fatigue.” I now use my smart phone mainly as, well, a phone. Sure, I take advantage of the handy tools like messaging, maps, Internet, weather, music, and LinkedIn, but I can’t recall the last time I crawled around iTunes looking for some new time-saving or…
Have you sometimes wondered if that “wild caught” salmon actually came from an aqua farm? Or if the “U.S. catfish” in the display case might have been born and raised in Vietnam? Is that “red snapper” actually red snapper and worth the premium price?
Scientists at the U.S. Food and Drug…
