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Automobiles were once high-maintenance luxuries that only the wealthy could afford. Renewable energy, such as that from photovoltaic sources, also is a luxury among whose sole redeeming qualities are its uninterruptable nature—at least during the daytime. Government efforts to compel its use, e.g…
Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto—a significant Catholic pilgrimage site in Lourdes, France, visited by nearly 6 million people each year—was digitally documented on Jan. 29, 2013, by CyArk, a nonprofit organization in Oakland, California, whose mission is to preserve cultural heritage, and Organization…
Cutting waste-to-landfill at Ford Motor Co.’s Van Dyke Transmission Plant has always been important to workers there, but they weren’t satisfied until last fall, when a small, diligent local committee played a major role in solving a nagging 10-ton problem.
The solution, which keeps 10 tons’…
In my experience, if you ask senior leaders if they would fire a sales manager whose team missed quota three years in a row, they usually say yes. If you ask them if they would fire a plant manager whose facility had a poor safety record for three consecutive years, they would say yes. But ask if…
“Check on your customers every 10 minutes or so,” instructs the typical restaurant manager. And Deming turns in his grave again because the manager’s objective is arbirtrary. It’s not based on the capabilities of a process or the needs of the customer. But wait—there’s a new service quality…
(AQSENSE: Girona, Spain) -- AQSENSE has incorporated into 3DExpress a new functionality to configure, with a single click, the “one camera—multiple lasers system,” which avoids capturing occlusions.
3DExpress software was presented November 2012 at the VISION show with the slogan, “3D Machine…
If the title of this post made you think you’d be reading about Abraham Lincoln and Tyra Banks, you’re only half right.
A few weeks ago, statistician and journalist Nate Silver published an interesting post on how U.S. presidents are ranked by historians. Silver showed that the percentage of…
The full-page ad in a Sunday edition of The New York Times stated boldly that $60 million was received during 2012—more than $1 million a week—by a variety of recognized charities and community causes. The ad was not from a charity or fund-raising organization. It was from one of America’s largest…
Last night I went to the theater. Actor and satirist Marco Paolini was performing his favorite monologue about Galileo Galilei. Not an easy task, when you consider the man and his place in history. Paolini was juggling religion, the Inquisition, mathematics, astronomy, astrology—and Galileo’s…
With the evolution of quality management, there has been a shift away from manual and paper-based solutions. Organizations are now leveraging the power of automation and integration across the value chain to improve the quality of products and processes. This progression has materialized directly…
A good friend of mine recently recommended a wonderful documentary to me: Jiro Dreams of Sushi. I now recommend it to you. It’s a phenomenal and fascinating study of a man who embodies the disciplined pursuit of perfection.
The 85-year-old Jiro Ono owns Sukiyabashi Jiro, a 10-seat, $300-per-meal…
One of the most poorly understood concepts in the use of statistics is the idea of assumptions. You’ve probably encountered many of these assumptions, such as “data normality is an assumption of the one-sample t-test.” But if you read that statement and believe normality is a requirement of the…
Iran across an old but interesting article by Mara Lee on the Hartford Courant website: “Big Exports From Connecticut: Corn, Wheat, Soybeans, Oil; Feds Can’t Explain It.” The article provides a wonderful example of just how far one’s concept of reality can become skewed by not following the basic…
I assume many readers are either engineers or interested in engineering and its effects on society, so what I am about to say may surprise you. It is simply this: Engineers are playing a role in American society that may end American society as we have known it up to now. Let me explain.
George…
Apersonal kanban is considered a productivity tool because it gives us the power to produce more. It’s also said to increase our efficiency by limiting work in progress (WIP) and increasing focus, which means we expend less energy to get results. This in turn boosts our effectiveness by providing…
This winter has presented folks in my clime with a perpetual blanket of snow that hides most of the welcome signs of an approaching spring. There is one early bloomer, however, that blossoms each February, even as temperatures fall to the single digits as they did last week. The small yellow and…
Last month I looked at "The Secret of Process Adjustment." This column will review the history and purpose of specifications and look at two common ways that specifications are used in practice. Using simple examples I will illustrate the right and wrong ways to use specifications.
The voice of…
For millennia, warriors have taken war trophies to commemorate their victories. They range from the souvenir to war reparations to the just plain gory.
We’ve got flags and weapons and things like seagoing vessels, such as the U.S. Coast Guard’s tall ship Eagle—courtesy of the defeated Nazi navy…
Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.—Carl Bernstein
Every form of media inundates us with information, most of it misinformation, scams, lies, and foolishness. The quality industry is by no means exempt from the flood. In this column we will attempt to expose the foolishness…
The national customer satisfaction benchmark improved during the fourth quarter of 2012, rising 0.5 percent to an American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) score of 76.3 on a scale of 0 to 100. Although most of the gain is due to improvements in the public sector—satisfaction rose for both…
If you’re like most business owners, you probably assume your client relationships are pretty good. After all, you have enough clients to still be in business. But it’s possible you’re merely surviving instead of thriving because you’ve only scratched the surface of what it means to truly put the…
Tests have detected the presence of horse DNA in European meat products that were supposed to be beef. So far, many food products, from hamburgers in the United Kingdom to frozen lasagna in Germany, have been affected. The problem is believed to have been going on for six months and involves…
What kinds of industrial production can bring innovation to the American economy? An intensive, long-term study by a group of MIT scholars suggests that a renewed commitment to research and development in manufacturing, sometimes through creative new forms of collaboration, can spur innovation and…
China will become the global economic leader sometime during the next 10 to 25 years, according to many economists. This means China—and not the United States—will have the largest gross domestic product (GDP) in the world, which will, of course, be a global game changer.
But China faces some…
Ok, we have to admit it. We are busy—too busy.
There are meetings to prepare for and participate in. There are reports to write, read, review, comment upon, and process. The day’s schedule is often controlled by someone else or at the very least, torpedoed by unplanned activity. In my time-…
