All Features
Brooke Pierce
Think back to your last car, truck, or SUV purchase. What did you want to know before spending so much money?
More than likely, you first wanted to know the price range of the type of car you were considering. You might have also wanted to know what features were standard on the various makes and…
Swapnil Srivastav
Mandatory reporting requirements for regulations such as Europe’s REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals) and RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) legislation have increased the focus on environmental compliance and ethical sourcing across the globe.…
Eston Martz
A recent post at Ben Orlin’s always amusing mathwithbaddrawings.com blog nicely encapsulates why so many people feel wary about anything related to statistics and data analysis. Take a moment to check it out; it’s a fast read.
In all the scenarios Orlin offers in his post, the statistical…
Jim Benson
Prioritization is stressful. We find ourselves prematurely making value decisions about what to pull and when (right now!).
Recently a client asked, “How can I prioritize my work when there is no clear priority? Everything seems equally important.”
This is a deeper issue than simply being…
I thought the job of a leader was to be directive, i.e., to tell your staff what to do. I loved my staff. I wanted the very best for them. I wanted to do everything I could to help them win. My strategy for their development as leaders was for them to hang around me. I frequently said, “A lot more…
Ironically, when managers think they have all the answers, strategy can turn into fantasy. Many organizations have an obsession with certainty, a must-know attitude to strategic initiatives. Senior managers often demand teams put forward plans that give the feeling everyone knows exactly how an…
Donald J. Wheeler
The question “Is this batch like the others?” is asked all over the world on a daily basis. It turns out that the process behavior chart provides a very effective answer for questions about the homogeneity of the product stream.
In World War II, Gen. Leslie Simon used the process behavior chart…
Scott A. Hindle
A t the end of part three of this four-part series on process capability, Alan was ready to identify a contact at the factory who could assist in providing some context around the collected data and the overall production process.
Discussion with Joe
Joe, working on the production team, was the…
InfinityQS
What do you feel when you imagine your next regulatory audit? Stress? Anxiety? Overwhelming dread? The average recall can cost a manufacturer as much as $10 million, making compliance important to your brand as well as your bottom line.
As you manage the daily ins and outs of your quality…
Annette Franz
Last month, I wrote about the concept of lean management and what that means not only for your company but also for your customers.
If company leadership wants to transform the culture of the organization and become a lean company, they’ve first got to understand what comprises lean leadership,…
Morten Bennedsen
In January 2009, when Toyota’s supervisory board named Akio Toyoda president of Toyota Motor Co., the multinational car manufacturer was in crisis. After 14 years of strong sales and record profits, Toyota had found itself at the center of a perfect storm.
Oil prices were spiking, sending the…
Scott A. Hindle
Part two of this four-part series on process capability concluded with Alan just about to meet Sarah for a second time. He thought he was making good progress with his analysis of Product 874 data until he was asked to assess process capability, even though it can’t be assessed for an unstable…
James Warren
Creating a new material has long been either an accident or a matter of trial and error. Steel, for instance, was developed over hundreds of years by people who didn’t know why what they were doing worked (or didn’t work). Generations of blacksmiths observed that iron forged in charcoal was…
British Assessment Bureau BAB
There are hundreds of security breaches that happen every day but in the end, they fall into three main groups: malicious, intentional, or criminal; system glitches; and human error.
The IBM “2015 Cost of Security Breach Survey” conducted by Ponemon Research, catalogs 49 percent of the breaches…
John Maxwell
Have you ever considered the time investment required of some of the world’s greatest achievements?
• It took 26 months to build the Eiffel Tower. • It took Da Vinci four years to paint the Mona Lisa. • It took Michelangelo four years to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. • It took Leo…
Scott A. Hindle
In part one of this four-part series, we considered the basics of process capability, as witnessed through the learning curve of Alan in his quest to determine the product characteristics of the powder, Product 874. We pick up with Alan here as he prepares for his second meeting with his colleague…
Harish Jose
Uncertainty is all around us. A lean leader’s main purpose is to develop people so they can tackle uncertainty. There are two ways to tackle uncertainty: One is genchi genbutsu (go and see, or seeing for yourself), and the other is to employ the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle, a method for…
Gensler’s U.S. Workplace Survey 2016 is the latest in a series that builds on more than a decade of research. The company, an integrated architecture, design, planning and consulting firm, started that journey in 2005 by uncovering a link between a better-designed work environment and performance…
Scott A. Hindle
In my August 2015 article, “Process Capability: How Many Data?” I discussed whether 30 data were the “right” number in an analysis of process capability. In this four-part series, the focus is on understanding what process capability is and the pitfalls associated with it, along with how it can…
Thinh Nguyen, Rachel E. Sherman
One question that product sponsors often ask the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is whether their medical product will be regulated as a drug, a device, a biologic, or as a combination product—and in the case of the latter, which FDA component will regulate it.
One way sponsors may…
Barbara A. Cleary
In a rapidly changing business environment, it’s sometimes hard just to keep up with everyday demands—never mind having time to develop new and better approaches to changing requirements, needs, or markets. Staying ahead of the curve sounds as if it might demand working longer hours, hiring more…
William A. Levinson
ISO 9001:2015 clause 4.2—“Understanding the needs and expectations of interested parties” requires the organization to determine the “requirements of these interested parties that are relevant to the quality management system.” The recent two-day conflict that Facebook lost to F.B. (Fluff Busting…
François Leclerc
Color is a big differentiator in the world of 3D scanning, but when it comes to inspection or reverse engineering, it’s usually not mandatory and sometimes not even important. However, color is paramount in applications such as heritage preservation, which is the 3D scanning and digitization of…
Marlene Chism
The world needs leadership, and there’s no better way to lead than to listen. A leader who listens controls the conversation, and has the power to build bridges instead of barriers.
Listening requires you to be present, to set aside your own agenda, to use discernment.
When someone says, “Black…
Bill Kalmar
T
hose of you at a certain age (meaning old) will no doubt remember the song, “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour?” It was a single released in 1959 and sung by Lonnie Donegan. It’s an irritating song but not as irritating as the thousands of people who prefer to leave their chewing gum at the…
