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Editor’s note: In response to Kyle Toppazzini’s article, “Lean Without Six Sigma May Be a Failing Proposition,” published in the Sept. 27, 2012, issue of Quality Digest Daily, Rip Stauffer left the following observant comment.
I started my career in quality when the consulting world hadn’t yet…
Advancing the organization and achieving business success require developing new products, finding new markets, and building enabling systems and infrastructure. Keeping execution aligned with the strategy to accomplish these objectives has always been a difficult challenge in running a business.…
Electronic applications typically have challenging surfaces, angles, steps, and structures that must be measured during development. Whether it is circuit-board flatness or microstructures on the board itself, precise measurement is crucial. Components continue to shrink in size, and surfaces…
I’m a customer. One morning last week, I visited my bank for a small requirement that should have taken about two minutes. However, there was a big line and 27 people were ahead of me. This was my fourth visit to this bank for the same requirement. My work remained on hold until I could resolve…
You know the famous proverb: "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime." It's especially true when you're casting your line for statistics.
When I first started using Minitab Statistical Software, it was daunting trying to learn all of its…
(eQuality Tech: Shelby Township, MI) -- eQuality Tech, the exclusive distributor for Solutionix in the Americas, announces the immediate availability of Rexcan CS+, the first fully automated 3D scanner to integrate a turntable with four degrees of freedom for simpler setup and more comprehensive…
The overarching principle behind organizational development is that all employees have a wealth of knowledge and experience that can be harnessed and tapped into, which enables the organization to grow. Managers are the organization’s primary facilitators of knowledge and experience at their…
(Visual Workplace: Byron Center, MI) -- Visual Workplace Inc. introduces Gauge Marking Label—a simple and cost-effective means for machine operators to quickly identify gauge and inspection parameters and specifications.
Gauge Marking Label is perfect for error-proofing Go-No-Go gauges, pressure/…
Terry had been using lean techniques to improve his company for quite a while now. He’d held kaizen events, reduced inventory, provided training for his employees, and was quite pleased with the progress his organization had made.
However, he felt it was time move beyond this type of…
When an organization’s employees aren’t happy, it’s unlikely they’ll be providing the kind of quality service that leads to happy customers. One of the fastest ways to create internal strife is to let “difficult” people go unchecked. The best way to handle these personalities is to help resolve the…
(Jossey-Bass: San Francisco) -- Rapid and disruptive change threatens the adaptive capacity of organizations, along with the individuals and teams leading them. Based on more than a decade of global research and consulting, Joseph E. McCann and John W. Selsky outline five capabilities highly agile…
The global economy has turned the rules of leadership upside down and shaken them vigorously for good measure. Where there was once a fairly defined hierarchy—Boss A tells Worker B what to do, and Worker B does it—there’s now a flat landscape where everyone is expected to take the reins as needed.…
The global economy has turned the rules of leadership upside down and shaken them vigorously for good measure. Where there was once a fairly defined hierarchy—Boss A tells Worker B what to do, and Worker B does it—there’s now a flat landscape where everyone is expected to take the reins as needed.…
We’ve all heard the flight attendant’s compulsory safety announcement regarding oxygen masks. Personally, I’ve grown pretty numb to the whole safety monologue. Not a good thing.
During a relatively recent trip on a Southwest flight there was a refreshing twist to the typically sober announcement.…
No matter how much effort we put into meeting a quality standard’s requirements for continual improvement, there are times when we are not sure whether to call for a corrective action. Although there is no instrument that points to yes or no and determines when a corrective action is needed, I have…
In part one, “Overall Equipment Effectiveness,” (OEE) I gave a detailed explanation of how LNS Research thinks the OEE Formula is best applied to a given asset or production line to both maximize local production efficiency and overall supply chain performance. In this article, I’ll go through a…
Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is an important metric for many companies' initiatives in operational excellence. As of Sept. 5, 2012, we have now benchmarked more than 350 different companies across a number of different strategic objectives, metrics, and operational excellence capabilities…
I went into my local Barnes & Noble looking for a book and decided to check if they carried my book, Lean Six Sigma Demystified. There were four rows of business books on management, leadership, sales, and so on. The “quality” section, consisting of about 15 titles, was on the bottom shelf of…
In 1862, the bloodiest battle in American history was fought on Sept. 17, and 23,000 soldiers from the North and South were killed in about 12 hours of fighting. This military “victory” for the North paved the way for Abraham Lincoln to issue the emancipation proclamation a few months later. Not 10…
In 1995, Qualityworld magazine published a case study that examined how the 1993 European Quality Award (EQA) was scored by 175 participants who had undertaken assessor training for it. Three findings stood out: • Assessors who spoke English as their primary language gave lower scores in all nine…
In a Harvard Business Review article Tom Davenport writes, “I hope that when companies start getting excited again about process improvement, they resist one method for doing so. A hybrid, combined approach is really the only approach that makes any sense. In religion many people worship only one…
The traditional control charts for nonconformances (np and p) and defects (c and u) date back to the 1920s, and they rely on the normal approximation to the binomial and Poisson distributions, respectively. This approximation works best when the expected number of events is 4 to 6, or even greater…
In their constant quest to improve results, managers are overwhelmed and burdened with many tasks and responsibilities. It is easy for them to ignore the challenges that confront them while hoping that issues will resolve themselves. However, rather than disappear, unmet challenges create a new set…
Nick Sarillo is the founder of Nick’s Pizza & Pub, the sixth busiest independent pizza company in per-store sales in the United States. It boasts margins nearly twice those of the average pizza restaurant and an impressive employee retention rate of 80 percent, in an industry where the average…
The events that have transpired since the onset of the current recessionary cycle underscore the turbulent times all organizations face. Although uncertainty is troubling, the time of greatest organizational opportunity is found when the business environment is experiencing its greatest turbulence…
