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In many ways, visual controls are a 24/7 mirror of leadership’s competency and credibility. That’s pretty scary if you think about it. It’s like voluntarily living in a fishbowl, not that everyone truly understands the gravity of that.
It reminds me of the Spider-Man quote (allegedly borrowed from…
The saying, “The devil is in the details” is true in all organizational and business environments. Often when leaders take the time to empower their employees and teams to handle minor details and problems, major problems are avoided or at least minimized.
The process of transformation and change…
During a debate with then-President Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan famously asked Americans if they were better off than they were four years previously. It worked for Reagan, so we’re going to try a variation of it here.
Is the Food and Drug administration (FDA) better off than it was four or five…
Another transformation initiative has been announced in your organization and you think to yourself, “How much change are we expected to undertake?” In a lean Six Sigma engagement, it is imperative to take into consideration the number of ongoing and past change initiatives. This article explains…
I recently bought myself an almost-latest-version smartphone. It was intended to celebrate my 62nd birthday; replace my present, obsolete portable phone; and be reliable and not too expensive.
Well, its “Quick Reference Guide” consists of 34 pages, three of which are blank, five give generic,…
(Teledyne: Waterloo, Ontario) -- Teledyne DALSA, developer and manufacturer of machine vision technology, is continuing its advanced CMOS sensor deployment by launching the Piranha4 8k color CMOS line-scan camera with 8k resolution and a 7 µm × 7 µm pixel size for optimized optical design. The…
After recently returning to the world of process improvement consulting, I began to ponder where U.S. manufacturing stands with regard to worldwide competitiveness after so many decades of highs and lows. Globally, we have U.S. manufacturing to thank for leading the way out of the great recession,…
Twelve U.S. organizations have reached the next step on the road to possibly achieving a silver anniversary Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The Baldrige Award is the nation’s highest recognition for organizational performance excellence. The Baldrige panel of judges has selected one…
There are two key aspects of the normal distribution that make it the central probability model in statistics. However, students seldom hear about these important aspects, and as a result they end up making many unnecessary mistakes. Read on to learn what it means when we say the normal…
“Quality is not free, but it has a pretty darn good ROI.”
So said James Rooney, chair of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), and keynote speaker at this year’s National Conference of Standards Laboratories International (NCSLI) conference in Sacramento, California. The comment got a good round…
(Olympus) -- Olympus will put its expertise in industrial microscopes, videoscopes, and imaging devices on full display in Booth E-5291 at IMTS 2012 from September 10-15. In-booth talks from a variety of speakers will review topics in non-destructive testing, including visual inspection and motion…
T he International Organization for Standardization (ISO) develops and publishes more than 19,200 voluntary international standards that bring benefits for businesses, governments, and society. But how do the standards contribute to the economic returns of countries and companies? What is the…
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced nearly $2 million in Phase I and Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards to 12 U.S. businesses. These awards provide funding to help companies develop technologies that could lead to commercial and public…
I recently had the chance to talk to Brett Warland, global director of process improvement at PolyOne Corp. The word “global” is often present in the titles of many organizations’ process improvement programs and employee job titles that deal with quality. This can convey not only an international…
(ASQ: Milwaukee) -- Through the use of quality improvement initiatives, the city of Milwaukee is improving services and increasing efficiencies citywide.
From boosting the number of children immunized from 45 percent to 78 percent, to reducing the number of worker compensation claims from 3,097 to…
I’ve written before about General Motors (GM) and its closed-loop quality management strengths in the product life-cycle management space, specifically with dimensional planning and validation. I believe the automaker has strong quality management capabilities and was surprised to hear the recent…
Everyone knows that pension plans, both public and private, are in trouble. But on closer examination, this isn’t the apocalypse many people think it is. Most pensions will pay most beneficiaries most of what they are owed, and government pension-protection agencies have various techniques for…
Quality control is an evolving science, but a sea change is on the horizon that will force a revolution and arm quality professionals with orders of magnitude more data, finer controls, and ultimately result in a better overall process and finished product. At Skinit I sit in a unique position to…
When you open a can of creamed corn soup, your expectation is that you can consume it without fear of getting sick. We rely on commercially sterile foods, such as canned foods and other shelf-stable vacuum packaged foods for everyday meals, as well as for emergency situations. In all of these…
From all Gallup’s data, which have been gathered from asking the whole world questions on virtually everything, the most profound finding is this: The primary will of the world is no longer about peace or freedom or even democracy; it is not about having a family, and it is neither about God nor…
(SAE: Warrendale, PA) -- SAE International’s Americas Aerospace Quality Standards Committee has completed Standard AS9003—“Inspection and Test Quality Systems—Requirements for Aviation, Space, and Defense Organization,” and it is now available for purchase.
This quality standard is designed for…
What do the Broadway musical Spider-Man, the Indianapolis Colts, and Domino’s Pizza have in common? They all used the same process to turn around a losing team.
Sports psychologists and Washington Post columnists Joe Frontiera and Daniel Leidl reveal that process, distilled from five years of…
To borrow a phrase that was borrowed by Pope Benedict XVI for his (in)famous 2006 Regensburg lecture, “There is no compulsion in lean.” OK, the pontiff didn’t really use the word “lean” (rather, it was “religion”), but the underlying sentiment is much the same.
How so?
Well, you can’t force…
Barry was excited about the journey he was to embark on. He had just contracted a professional organization in his industry that would help his company implement lean practices. These professionals understood Barry’s challenges: “Making it” isn’t easy in U.S. manufacturing, especially with…
(Mahr Federal: Providence, RI) -- Mahr Federal has added a MarConnect Integrated Wireless data transmission system to its family of MarCator Digital Indicators at prices that compete with typical wired systems. Low-power data transmission technology has allowed the transmitter to be built into the…
