All Features
Bruce Hamilton
June 11, 2015, marked the fourth anniversary of the passing of someone who, although not typically credited as a “lean” thinker, nevertheless had a profound effect on many lean implementers. Eliyahu Goldratt, or Eli, was an Israeli physicist whose Ph.D. thesis on queuing theory led him and many…
John Shook
We need to think about redefining work. Until we—anyone who wishes to bring about organizational change—redefine the actual value-creating work of the business, we haven’t made any changes that are meaningful.
You may be able to create wealth through a variety of business models or ways of…
Ulrich Wegner
The new ISO 9001, scheduled for publication in late 2015, introduces the term “knowledge.” As knowledge was not addressed by the previous version of ISO 9001, the depth of this topic and the approach to it are new.
The international standard ISO/DIS 9001:2015—“Quality management systems—…
Matthew Barsalou
I know that the customer should be involved when performing a root cause analysis (RCA) as the result of a complaint. However, in a meeting, the manager of problem resolution and statistical methods told our team that we should view customer-related problem resolution as a “shared journey of…
Jesse Lyn Stoner
Great leadership quotes inspire and guide us. They become part of our mainstream language and are instilled into our culture. We accept them as a reflection of the ideal, aspire to live them, and use them when teaching others about leadership.
But sometimes a quote takes root that sends us in the…
Philip Hewitt
Editor’s note: This week, Quality Digest Daily will be looking at some of the key technologies on display at the Coordinate Metrology Society’s annual conference (CMSC). The CMSC, taking place this year July 20–24 in Hollywood, Florida, is the gathering place for users, service providers, and…
Alan Nicol
Almost every conversation I’ve had with colleagues lately on the topic of process improvement or business performance improvement has centered on organizing working meetings or events to address and solve problems. “Events” seem to be growing in popularity. The problem is, they don’t work.
People…
Donald J. Wheeler
While the computations for a process behavior chart are completely general and very robust, the secret to using a process behavior chart effectively lies in the art of rational sampling and rational subgrouping. Rational subgrouping was the topic of last month’s column. Here we shall look at the…
Matthew E. May
No, this isn’t an opinion piece or in any way a critique. It’s more like a public service announcement for business professionals in the job market, looking for a strategy position with a market leader.
Like most regular users of LinkedIn, I constantly get pushed notices about “jobs I might be…
Clive Fraser
Editor’s note: This week, Quality Digest Daily will be looking at some of the key technologies on display at the Coordinate Metrology Society's annual conference (CMSC). The CMSC, taking place this year July 20–24 in Hollywood, Florida, is the gathering place for users, service providers, and…
Kelly Graves
Most everyone has read the maxim, “Plan your work and work your plan.” This is simple and effective advice—when it’s followed. Unfortunately, it can also be overwhelming when it comes to ensuring that everyone in the organization knows what the strategic plan is and how they can directly support…
Edward Herceg
Position feedback sensors for hydraulic or pneumatic cylinders have used one of three traditional technologies: magnetostrictive, variable resistance, and variable inductance sensors. Occasionally other sensor technologies have been used successfully in this application, but the focus of this…
Mike Richman
Editor's note: This week, Quality Digest Daily will be looking at some of the key technologies on display at the Coordinate Metrology Society's annual conference (CMSC). The CMSC, taking place this year July 20–24 in Hollywood, Florida, is the gathering place for users, service providers, and…
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
“If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.”
—Margaret Mead
This month’s article comes from the…
Gary Confalone
Editor’s note: This week, Quality Digest Daily will be looking at some of the key technologies on display at the Coordinate Metrology Society's annual conference (CMSC). The CMSC, taking place this year July 20-24 at the Diplomat Hotel in Hollywood, Florida, is the gathering place for users,…
Brian Maskell
T here are three ways in which a standard costing system is typically used in a manufacturing company:
1. Performance measurement 2. Decision making 3. Inventory valuation
From an accounting perspective, performance measurement and decision making are part of a company’s management accounting…
Annette Franz
How do we ensure that everyone in the organization is on the same page when it comes to customer experience?
I’m thinking about a quote I stumbled upon the other day from Edmund Wilson: “No two persons ever read the same book.”
Wow! Isn't that the truth?
Think about books you’ve read; think about…
Michael Causey
We, and others, like to take the FDA to task for missing deadlines or behaving in ways that are sometimes difficult to fathom. So it’s only fair to give equal space to something when they seem to get it right. Take the agency’s Unique Device Identification System (UDI).
Readers of this column…
Harry Hertz
Given the challenge, I can relate any three topics to each other. However, in the case of change management, social media, and CEOs, there’s a strong relationship that is reinforced by concepts in the Baldrige Excellence Framework. Two studies by Leslie Gaines-Roth et al. of Weber Shandwick, a…
John Flaig
The classic version of FMEA is an engineering tool for quality and reliability improvement through project prioritization. It was formally released by the U.S. government with MIL-P-1629 in 1949 and updated in 1980 as MIL-STD-1629A. The classic FMEA methodology has proven to be reasonably…
Brandon Henning
Today, consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers are under intense pressure to deliver quality products while keeping costs down. The push to globalize to meet customer demand, coupled with increasing mergers and acquisitions, makes it almost impossible for CPG companies to cost-effectively…
Mike Richman
3D printing. The Internet of Things. Big data. Outsourcing. Reshoring. A graying workforce. The skills gap. The wage gap. For manufacturers, these factors and countless others are creating a revolution, albeit a quiet one, whose effects are still not fully understood. They will, however, be felt…
Greg Goodwin
Regardless of where you look across manufacturing industries, you’re likely to see that the knob on operational speed has been steadily turned up during the past decade. As trends such as increased automation, mobility, cloud solutions, the Internet of Things (IoT), and enterprise manufacturing…
William A. Levinson
Engagement, according to the Mercer report “Engaging Employees to Drive Global Business Success,” is a decisive competitive advantage, “a psychological state in which employees feel a vested interest in the company’s success and are both willing and motivated to perform to levels that exceed the…
Fred Schenkelberg
Control charts provide an ongoing statistical test to determine if a recent reading or set of readings represents convincing evidence that a process has changed from an established stable average. The test also checks sample-to-sample variation to determine if the variation is within the…
