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‘It’s all about the process,” says MIT professor Warren Seering. He’s referring to his product design and development class (identified as Course 2.739), but he could easily be talking about product development itself.
“We want 2.739 students to leave with a set of methods readily available to…
I am an introvert; INTJ for those who admire Myers-Briggs indicators. I remember being particularly pleased a few years ago when I read a Harvard Business Review article that extolled the virtues of introverts as effective leaders. The article stated conventional wisdom and a decade of academic…
Toward the end of summer, I was part of an assembled mass of governors and manufacturers at a Walmart-led summit in Florida. My boss, the Secretary of Commerce (or most accurately, my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss) was there, too.
There we all were, attending a summit designed to revitalize,…
I was working with a group of mixed-age volunteers to decide on the type of advertising they should use for their charity. Because broadcast media was one option, we needed to know the radio stations that typical users of their services would likely listen to. The target audience would most likely…
As ISO/FDIS 55001—“Asset management—Management systems—Requirements” (now in the final draft international standard stage) moves toward its formal publication around the end of this year, organizations that use and depend on a wide range of assets would benefit from spending some time reviewing…
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… well, 10 years ago in The Midlands of England, I was introduced to the “Hawthorne Effect.” I remember sitting in the Black Belt class being taught about improvement projects. The course tutor, a wise old man with absolutely no physical resemblance to Obi-…
Some of the [ISO 9001: 2015] requirements are relatively clear; others are more “euphemisms,” and you don’t know how to react… —James Lamprecht, author of ISO 9000: Preparing for Certification (CRC Press, 1992) and former member of ISO/TC 176
During an Aug, 16, 2013, interview on Quality Digest’s…
(Instron: Norwood, MA) -- Instron, a leading provider of testing equipment designed to evaluate mechanical properties of materials and components, has launched its Digital Image Correlation (DIC) Software. This new combination of hardware and software is designed to optically detect strain and…
Recently I took a day to volunteer at my children’s elementary school. It was their annual field day where students get to spend half of the school day outdoors, on the game field, participating in a rotation of team-building and fitness events. It’s a great deal of fun.
I was one of a great many…
In the “flying geese paradigm,” Japanese economist Kaname Akamatsu explains that companies restructure to find the cheapest labor costs by moving low-value activities to nearby less-developed countries. Today that story rings truer than ever as global value chains (GVCs) reach a critical turning…
From metal-fitting factories that keep machinery calibrated manually to high-tech companies whose production systems use self-diagnosing analytics, every manufacturer is continually working to improve shop-floor performance using analytics.
The best manufacturers I’ve worked with continually…
Scene: corporate retreat for senior leaders of a Fortune 100 company. Theme: creativity. Agenda item: purpose. I have placed a solitary Zen stone in the center of each table.
The group members eye the rocks suspiciously. “Speak your mind, one and all,” I urge.
“Why is there a rock here?” pipes up…
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a novel method for measuring laser power by reflecting the light off a mirrored scale, which behaves as a force detector.
Although it may sound odd, the technique is promising as a simpler, faster, less…
I
met with a client yesterday who had an all-too-common complaint. She asked for Gallup’s ideas on creating a stronger leadership development program, and we obliged by sharing some practices we’ve seen work well in other organizations.
Our client gave us a wry smile and said that her company has…
There is no substitute for knowledge... —W. Edwards Deming
The W. Edwards Deming Institute (deming.org) and Purdue University held their 2013 Annual Fall Conference in West Lafayette, Indiana, last week, focusing on Deming’s ideas and their connection to the critical concept of sustainability.…
During Manufacturing Day on Oct. 4, 2013, our Evanston, Illinois, legislators endorsed the theory that there are many good factory jobs left unfilled for want of qualified applicants.
But, as I indicated in a previous column, there’s not much evidence that this “skills gap” exists. Accepting the…
Last week I started a discussion post in the lean Six Sigma LinkedIn group about Gemba Academy’s latest featured video showing a morning stand-up meeting at my old company, Specialty Silicone Fabricators. I had started the morning meetings years ago. My successor has added some really interesting…
It was a result so unexpected that MIT researchers initially thought it must be a mistake: Under certain conditions, putting a cracked piece of metal under tension—that is, exerting a force that would be expected to pull it apart—has the reverse effect, causing the crack to close and its edges to…
I was once in a room full of people to whom a presentation was being made. The findings of a root cause analysis that had been done on a recent defect in the company’s product were being presented. A couple of young people were enthusiastically presenting how they had identified the root cause of…
(Quality Digest: Chico, CA) -- Are you passionate about quality? Do you want to lead tens of thousands of like-minded quality individuals? Then this job is for you.
The American Society for Quality (ASQ) is looking for a new CEO. According the job posting on ASQ's site:
"The next CEO will lead and…
Organizations today face unprecedented challenges to increase productivity and performance. Having an effective internal audit system is an important tool that allows organizations to determine where key strengths and weaknesses exist within their processes. Once identified they can build on their…
The second annual Manufacturing Day took place in Evanston, Illinois, last week. Although I attended last year, I skipped it this time around.
Manufacturing Day, I’d discovered, isn’t long on nuts-and-bolts realities or objective facts. Rather, it promotes a specific corporate agenda, with…
You've heard the expressions: "He lost his nerve," "He doesn't have the stomach for it," and "No guts." As it turns out, those expressions are anatomically accurate.
The nerve that you lose when you're afraid is the vagus nerve, which runs from the belly to the brain. It transmits messages about…
Ibex is another company that clearly understands its customers, or “tribe,” as Seth Godin would say. I discovered this Vermont-based wool clothing company a few years ago when I was looking for a better quality vest than the ones on display at REI.
My older brother put me onto Ibex. I not only…
Leadership is the ability to establish standards and manage a creative climate where people are self-motivated toward the mastery of long-term constructive goals, in a participatory environment of mutual respect, compatible with personal values. —Michael Vance
The four teenagers sat around the…
