All News
Last spring my dog, Buddy, started chasing chipmunks. They would quickly escape into one of their holes in the ground, where he would dig for a few minutes, then give up. Then one day a chipmunk ran into the mouth of the corrugated plastic pipe that carries excess rainwater away from my backyard…
Years ago I had the good fortune to work at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. I had been hired by John Porretto, the executive vice president for finance and administration, to support and further the university’s continuous improvement efforts.
John was one of the most…
As Thomas Edison said, “Genius is 1-percent inspiration and 99-percent perspiration.” Perspiration may be boring, but it gets you results.
I don’t know about you, but I have come across numerous senior executives who were are all fired up during the intellectual phase of a new quality initiative…
In a recent article published by Manufacturing Business Technology, Luis Calingo, a veteran Baldrige examiner and current president of Woodbury University, spoke of the great benefits of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence to the manufacturing sector today. In a follow-up interview,…
Editor’s note: Tim Lozier will be a guest on Quality Digest Live this Friday, Oct. 18, 2013, at 11 a.m. Pacific
During the past few years, risk management continues to be a topic of interest. There are plenty of benchmarking trends that point to risk. We see it in enterprise strategic initiatives…
First published Oct. 1, 2013, on the CERM Risk Insights blog. © Umberto Tunesi and CERM Risk Insights.
It isn’t Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. I wish it were. It’s the committee draft (CD) of ISO 9001:2015, or model No. 5, if you prefer. No connection whatsoever to that lady-loved scent, Chanel No. 5…
Little’s Law, named after John D. C. Little and his 1960 queuing proof, characterizes the dynamic relationship between work-in-process inventory (WIP), throughput rate, and lead time within a reasonably stable system. The “system” can be that of a process, cell, or line and can extend to one or…
In part one and part two of this series, I've outlined some reasons why a lean Six Sigma project might have been deemed a failure. We’ve gathered many of these reasons from surveying and talking with our customers. I'd like to present a few more reasons and then share some advice from Minitab…
I have thought much about the need to engage people, not just empower them. A man I admire and have known for years served as a volunteer in a leadership capacity in the church to which I belong. I had the opportunity to hear this successful businessperson speak many times, but one message in…
Tablet sales showed their first sequential decline ever during the second quarter of this year, according to the research firm IDC. Apple sold fewer iPads than expected in its most recent quarter. Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader sales fell 20 percent in the fiscal first quarter ended August 20…
“He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.”—Francis Bacon
You can get to the top of our profession and game by being conniving,…
Has anyone else noticed how every pricey light bulb now has a life-span estimate? From a marketing perspective, I do love the concept: Invest more up front, but save on energy and materials costs over the long run. Seems like a win-win situation. But is it really?
When one of our kitchen ceiling…
It is the end of summer. The golden sun filters through clouds and reflects on a pond, a glimmering silver. Above me, Spanish moss hangs like a wizard’s beard from a giant oak stooping over me, centuries old. The green cathedral canopy against the blue sky has been an unfamiliar sight of late. I…
In the lean Six Sigma framework, we normally define what is called the critical-to-quality (CTQ) characteristics. A CTQ characteristic is any feature or product that is important to the customer. However, in the FUSE framework, which stands for formulate, understand, synthesize, and execute, we…
For owners of delivery truck fleets who may be trying to decide between electric or diesel vehicles, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are offering some advice: comparisons of the energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and total cost of ownership for the medium-duty vehicles…
A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology finds that older and younger people have varying preferences about what they would want a personal robot to look like. And they change their minds based on what the robot is supposed to do.
Participants were shown a series of photos portraying…
The process capacity sheet, aka a table of production capacity by process, or production capacity chart, or process capacity table, is one of the three basic tools for establishing a standard operation. The other two tools are the standard work combination sheet and standard work sheet. All three…
A hat tip to Mark Graban for pointing out this article on a problem the Fairbanks airport has been experiencing with Apple Maps. It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious. (OK, it’s still funny.)
“There’s a way to get to the Fairbanks Airport, just don’t ask your iPhone for help. Apple has…
I just got through looking at an expensive 186-page quarterly summary of (alleged) customer satisfaction data for a hospital. My head was spinning by page 28.
There were lots of bar graphs, “trending,” correlation analysis, and “top box” and percentile rankings on every—and I do mean every—aspect…
The second principle for understanding data is that some data contain signals; however, all data contain noise. Therefore, before you can detect the signals you will have to filter out the noise. This act of filtration is the essence of all data analysis techniques. It is the foundation for our…
We’ve all undoubtedly had the notion of respect for people drilled into our heads. Of course, it’s easy to speak about such a principle. Much harder to live it. In any event, let me humbly add another recipient of our deserved respect: Process.
First, a distinction. It’s not the process, meaning…
The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) “Food Police” will be in full force to secure budget funds for food safety initiatives for FY 2014 as mandated by Congress. More than half of the operating funds will be earmarked for food work.
International food inspections will surely be a focus area…
The AFM Option for the ZEISS MERLIN series combines a high-end, atomic force microscope (AFM) with a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to produce in situ, high-resolution AFM measurements in the SEM. The combination opens up new possibilities for characterizing nanostructures.
With the AFM,…
The AFM Option for the ZEISS MERLIN series combines a high-end, atomic force microscope (AFM) with a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to produce in situ, high-resolution AFM measurements in the SEM. The combination opens up new possibilities for characterizing nanostructures.
With the AFM,…
The AFM Option for the ZEISS MERLIN series combines a high-end, atomic force microscope (AFM) with a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to produce in situ, high-resolution AFM measurements in the SEM. The combination opens up new possibilities for characterizing nanostructures.
With the AFM,…