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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…
(SAKOR: Okemos, MI) -- SAKOR Technologies Inc., developer and manufacturer of automated test instrumentation, systems integration, and hybrid drivetrain testing, has designed and installed a complete turnkey hybrid and electric vehicle test system for UQM Technologies Inc., a developer and…
Mistakes are a fact of life. No matter how much you try, you can’t completely avoid making them. And they can actually help to improve your company’s effectiveness and reputation if you handle them well.
It seems our society has turned dodging responsibility into an art form. From celebrities who…
Mistakes are a fact of life. No matter how much you try, you can’t completely avoid making them. And they can actually help to improve your company’s effectiveness and reputation if you handle them well.
It seems our society has turned dodging responsibility into an art form. From celebrities who…
I’ve been thinking of innovation these days, and how it’s being given as a password, and passport, to sustain economies, especially in the Old and New Worlds—that is, us. And how—and why—we are given rules to innovate. It’s odd to me that anyone should be told how to create.
I’m aware that…
As I titled this column, I was reminded that W. Edwards Deming liked to say, “The most important numbers are unknown and unknowable.” But some numbers are important, and most managers do not know how to manage them. I don’t want to sound like a complainer, but this issue has been close to my heart…
Some people are really good at procrastination: government bureaucrats, politicians, and kids, especially when it’s time for chores or bed. In a professional setting, the most common effect of procrastination is missed deadlines, which raises costs to the employer or client. For people who are self…
(Verisurf: Anaheim, CA) -- Verisurf Software Inc., developer of CAD, reverse engineering, and 3-D model-based inspection software, introduces complete manual coordinate measuring machine (CMM) retrofits that transform any manual CMM into a high performance 3D-model-based inspection system by adding…
Editor’s note: This is the third of a three-part series on effective, focused data analysis. Part one discussed helping management deal with common cause; the first common cause strategy—stratification—was discussed in part two.
In my last column, I introduced some aspects of common cause…
(NVision: Coppell, TX) -- Purdue University’s Formula SAE team is utilizing NVision’s HandHeld laser scanner to pursue its goal of taking home a first-place trophy in the annual Formula SAE Competition. The team anticipates that reverse engineering data obtained by the HandHeld scanner will allow…
(InfinityQS: Chantilly, VA) -- InfinityQS International Inc., which develops and provides products and services on manufacturing intelligence and real-time enterprise quality, has released ProFicient 5, the latest version of its enterprise quality hub. ProFicient 5 is designed to deliver real-time…
(Siemens: Plano, TX) -- Siemens PLM Software has significantly expanded its long-standing software license agreement with Bentley Systems Inc., a provider of software solutions for sustaining infrastructure. The expanded agreement, which adds licensing for two new software component products,…
When a medical institution aspires toward excellence and patient safety, quality enhancement proves to be a key factor essential to the process.
It goes without saying that there are countless risks in the healthcare system, and that it is always a priority to minimize these. There is nothing new…
(3DX-RAY: Loughborough, UK) -- 3DX-RAY has launched its MDXi-200 X-ray inspection system, expanding its industrial inspection product portfolio. The new MDXi-200 has a compact footprint that delivers a cost reduction while increasing the effectiveness of process control for organizations performing…
Many companies’ internal quality audit systems suffer from a reputation of being mildly effective to completely ineffective or just nonvalue-added. Often, it’s viewed as a policing department from which one’s dirty laundry must be hidden. Also, the audit system itself is not viewed as a true “…
This is a story that, as far as I know, has never appeared in print before. It’s not exactly hot news—the incident happened in 1970—but it exemplifies Henry Petroski’s dictum that engineers often learn more from failure than success.
One of the big tourist attractions of Texas during the 1960s was…
As you all know, the influence of W. Edwards Deming on my career and thinking has been profound. A criticism always leveled at him was that he was short on specifics—but he would always growl at someone who alluded to this, “Examples without theory teach nothing!”
Enter Joseph Juran, the other…
