All Features
Mark Rosenthal
AToyota kata is not a list of stuff to do. To help people understand this, I often ask, “What obstacles do you think are preventing you from reaching the target?” I also like to insert the word “now” in there sometimes for emphasis. The intent (as I interpret it) is for the improver or learner to…
Paul Sloane
I give workshops on creative leadership for major organizations around the world. I always ask delegates, “What is impeding innovation in your business?” The answers often involve cultural issues such as aversion to risk, complacency, or lack of motivation to experiment.
When I gave a workshop in…
NIST
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a laser-based imaging system that creates high-definition 3D maps of surfaces from as far away as 10.5 meters. The method may be useful in diverse fields, including precision machining and assembly, as well…
Jim Benson
If you’re already using Personal Kanban or another kanban system, you are likely at least thinking about limiting your work in progress (WIP). You’re probably finding that challenging.
We know that the more work we take on, the more our brains’ resources are taxed. That tax limits our ability to…
Paul Naysmith
I have four clocks hanging on my office wall, each one individually set for a strange and different time zone somewhere on this planet. I need to know these various times, as I am sure to engage with someone somewhere else at some point during the day.
From clock to clock, each second ticks…
Bruno Scibilia
Using statistical techniques to optimize manufacturing processes is quite common now, but using the same approach on social topics is still an innovative approach. For example, if our objective is to improve student academic performances, should we increase teachers’ wages, or would it be better…
Jacqueline Graham
A critical aspect of managing processes is the ability to measure well. Confidence in the integrity of collected data is imperative to ensure that appropriate decisions are made about acceptable product and process changes. It is possible that products declared “out of specification” may be the…
Mark R. Hamel
A multinational manufacturer was implementing a lean management system in a phased manner within one of its facilities. The target facility operated four comprehensive value streams. The lean management system implementation for the pilot value stream was incremental; its elements included daily,…
Barry Plunkett
Leadership at healthcare organizations is being tested like never before. The move away from a fee-for-service model to a patient-outcome-based model means management has to get clinical-care teams collaborating in a whole new way.
Your leadership style and the culture you help create within your…
Matthew Barsalou
W. Edwards Deming was a frequent critic of quotas. One of his famous 14 points presented in Out of the Crisis (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1982) is “Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.” There is little room to misinterpret this point, but…
Bill Kalmar
We live in a world where virtually nothing is private anymore. There are Internet search engines that allow people to determine our addresses, our home and cell phone numbers, our marital statuses, our employment records, our credit ratings, and the types of cars we drive. Recently, there was an…
Davis Balestracci
There has been an explosion in new technology for acquiring, storing, and processing data. The “big data” movement (and its resulting sub-industry, data mining) is becoming more prevalent and having major effects on how quality professionals and statisticians do their jobs.
Big data are a…
Jesse Lyn Stoner
Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone thanked you at the end of the meeting and told you how glad they were to have been there? How likely is that to happen?
A recent study found that for the second year in a row, workers reported meetings as “the biggest distraction and waste of time presented by the…
Arun Hariharan
In a previous column, I talked about three types of CEOs—the honeymooner, the cost-cutter, and the institution-builder. I don’t presume to preach to senior management, but having worked with a number of leaders in several companies over the years, I’ve observed that institution-builders are able…
Michael Causey
Well, boys and girls, Halloween is approaching. Although it’s fun to don a Dracula (or Miley Cyrus) costume and get some yucks faux-scaring folks, the FDA is acting like a responsible parent by setting up a medical-device cybersecurity public workshop, “Collaborative Approaches for Medical Device…
David Maloney
Each year, it is estimated that at least 23 percent of all car accidents are caused by or related to driver distraction. In 2012, 3,328 people were killed and 421,000 were injured in distraction-related crashes.
Increased efforts to decrease driver distraction by stopping texting-while-driving…
Cadenas
Considering the vast number of components in an average manufacturer’s parts library and the number of people who access it, it’s no wonder that problems with parts management arise. For most companies, the solution seems straightforward: create a simple classification system based on the parts’…
Michelle LaBrosse
Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, and Patrick Ewing were members of the 1992 U.S. Olympic basketball team, also known as the original “Dream Team,” which won gold. Years later, we still remember and admire this team. So why don’t we love the star-filled 2004 team, which…
Quality Digest
In October 2001, an international team led by Lockheed Martin was awarded the contract to build the next-generation Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft, which resulted in the development of the F-35 Lightning. The requirements for the new aircraft were complex, demanding new heights of lethality…
The QA Pharm
Oftentimes pharma has a split personality. One personality loathes firefighting, and the other needs a burning platform to justify doing anything that requires spending money.
Go figure.
This becomes evident in our industry when some companies can’t part with a pittance of their billion-dollar…
Steinbichler
Ford Motor Co.’s Nondestructive Evaluation Laboratory (NDE) in Livonia, Michigan, is a leading facility for quality test inspection and failure analysis of automotive components. Historically, many of the automaker’s manufacturing programs depended heavily on coordinate measuring machines (CMMs)…
Tamar June
The landmark Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) just keeps getting more and more important. Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) unveiled four proposed amendments that will likely make a tough law even tougher.
The FSMA, signed into law in January 2011, is designed to…
Mehul Shah
Over the past several years, the LNS Research analyst team has been enjoying front-row seats to the quality management arena. We’ve collected data from more than 1,000 different quality management leaders, and have personally spoken to a good portion of them. Our analysis is showing many different…
Donald J. Wheeler
Much of modern statistics is concerned with creating models which contain parameters that need to be estimated. In many cases these estimates can be severely affected by unusual or extreme values in the data. For this reason students are often taught to polish up the data by removing the outliers…
Mike Micklewright
You and your spouse go out to dinner to your favorite restaurant, on a “date” no less, to celebrate a big anniversary. You have been looking forward to this evening all week, and after a long, hard day at work, you’re famished and excited to eat your favorite meal. As you order dinner, the waiter…
