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In part one of this series, I looked at how adequate a sampling of 10 parts is for a gauge repeatability and reproducibility (GR&R) study and provided some advice based on the results.
Now I want to turn my attention to the other two factors in the standard gage (or gauge, if you prefer)…
(RAND: Santa Monica, CA) -- After a decade of experimentation with reforms that give health providers financial incentives to improve performance, relatively little is known about how to best execute such strategies or judge their success, according to a new report from RAND Corp.
A comprehensive…
Editor's note: Dan Nelson will be a guest on Quality Digest LIVE Friday March 14, 2014, at 11 a.m. Pacific.
Bill Cosby once did a routine about a funny aspect of human nature: How we all seem to have a hard time believing the obvious.
So Cosby pulls some milk out of the fridge. He sniffs it. It’s…
My last column, “Can We Please Stop the Guru Wars?” made the case that the various improvement approaches are all pretty much the same. To recap, there are seven sources of problems with a process. The first three sources help frame the situation.
They are: Source No. 1. Inadequate knowledge of…
You take 10 parts and have three operators measure each part two times. This standard approach to a gauge (or gage, if you prefer) repeatability and reproducibility (GR&R) experiment is so common, so accepted, so ubiquitous that few people ever question whether it is effective.
Obviously one…
Across a large swath of the United States, the winter has been especially cold, snowy, and dreary this year. So here’s a post with a link to a cheery video at the end, just to pick my spirits up—and maybe yours, too.
The English language can be confounding. For example, the word “turkey” is slang…
March is National Ideas Month. Hey, whose bright idea was that?
As a best-selling author, I’ve experienced creative blocks when writing under deadline pressure and the pressure of my own high expectations. Over time, I’ve developed several tricks to stimulate my creative muscle and help me come…
When Henry Ford’s assembly line started rolling 100 years ago, it set the stage for controlling quality by using standardized components that virtually eliminated the manual fitting and reshaping of auto parts. Quality assurance in mass production has come a long way since then, but it remains an…
As my busy and productive trip to India drew to a close, I had the opportunity for one final meeting and one last memory with a group of some of the country’s most extraordinary women. The occasion was a women’s roundtable in Mumbai, organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
It…
For years, LNS Research has been advising industry executives on the enterprise quality management software (EQMS) selection process. And for years, each executive that we speak with typically asks some form of this question: Which solution is best for my company?
In reality, there’s no one-size-…
Rules are funny things. We like some of them because they make us feel protected, aligned, and perhaps operating on a fair playing field. We dislike them because they can protect us to the point of being smothering, align us to the point of being constraining, and fair to the point of being unfair…
The Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) will focus on encouraging medical device innovation and speeding clinical trials in the coming years, according to its 2014–2015 Strategic Priorities report released Feb. 5, 2014. To help encourage that innovation, CDRH says it’s going to work…
Has robotics as a technology reached maturity and affordability for smaller manufacturers? It seems the answer is yes and no. Years ago future trends in manufacturing frequently imagined completely automated environments, and while that hasn’t entirely happened yet, last year the President’s…
T his four-part series of articles is intended to guide your organization toward a truly holistic and integrated quality management system (QMS), and covers how to prepare it for quick capital approval.
The operational synergies enabled by an integrated QMS are well-known from a quality…
(University of Colorado: Boulder, CO) -- The University of Colorado, Boulder, is looking for someone interested in a full-time position, with the passion to give back to the academic community and drive to be in on the ground floor of a game-changing initiative in public higher education.
The…
How do you know when to clean up your kanban’s Done column? When it’s full.
When we showed our board to people in classes and on consulting engagements, the Done column showed that we were really, really productive. It was huge. It went on forever. Hundreds of completed tasks.
So, how do we clean…
I named my blog CX Journey for a reason: to convey that the customer experience is just that, a journey.
What does that mean? It means that, although it’s important to look at the individual touchpoints, moments of truth, interactions, and channels, it’s more important to remember the whole…
It’s Saturday morning and Mrs. N. has a project for me: assembling her new bicycle. It has arrived in an imposing brown box, and I’m attempting to interpret the instructions. Looking over the variety of nuts, bolts, screws, and connectors in a little plastic bag, I’m performing a mental inventory…
(inTEST Thermal: Mansfield, MA) -- A temperature control system for high-speed and high-temperature testing of components, sensors, and PCBs has been introduced by inTEST Thermal. The Thermostream ATS-750 delivers clean dry air from -90 to 300°C to support growing demands for testing electronics…
As an engineer, my natural tendency is to look at things from the perspective of how something failed rather than why it worked (though in my writings about lean, I do both). However, the factors that cause failure are merely the antithesis of why things worked.
With that in mind, I offer you…
Students typically encounter many obstacles while learning statistics. In 44 years of teaching I have discovered some distinctions that help students overcome these obstacles. This article will remove some sources of confusion concerning the relationship between statistical process control (SPC)…
I was reminded recently of the passing of Thomas Berry, one of the most eminent cultural historians of our time. His work and insight have been touchstones for me for the last 30 years.
For me, the story starts in 1993 when my wife, Carole, and I were invited to help the folks in the North Simcoe…
From friendly Wall-E and helpful R2-D2 to the dystopian worlds of The Matrix and The Terminator, robots have captured our imagination and visions of the future for generations. But the time is fast approaching where interactions between humans and artificial intelligence become part and parcel of…
I continued to pantomime my intent as the Italian grocery clerk looked at me in complete confusion. My inability to communicate with this person was beginning to frustrate me. I mean, this is me, the person who was voted Queen of Charades by friends and family alike. How could he not understand I…
I continued to pantomime my intent as the Italian grocery clerk looked at me in complete confusion. My inability to communicate with this person was beginning to frustrate me. I mean, this is me, the person who was voted Queen of Charades by friends and family alike. How could he not understand I…
