All Features
Bruce Hamilton
A lthough I don’t wish to rub salt in the wounds of my beleaguered Red Sox, their meteoric rise from last place in 2012 to a World Series title in 2013 and subsequent plummet back to the cellar in 2014 underscores the problems with speculative production. Last week, celebrating a birthday, I was…
Annette Franz
What’s the difference between a customer experience life-cycle map and a customer journey map?
I thought it was worthwhile to clarify because the difference is in the details—literally.
The customer experience life-cycle map
The life-cycle map shows the phases of the customer’s relationship with…
Teresa Tarwater
In sports, an unforced error is a mistake or blunder that is entirely self-inflicted and occurs on an easy shot or in a non-pressure situation. Examples include dropping the ball on an easy toss to first base and letting the opposing team score, or tumbling and falling two feet from the end zone—…
Jack Dunigan
Chesley Burnett Sullenberger was born Jan. 23, 1951, in Dennison, Texas, to a dentist father and a schoolteacher mother. An exceptional student with a brilliant mind, he joined Mensa at the age of 12.
After graduating from high school, he entered the U.S. Air Force Academy. Already a competent…
Alexandra Brown
As a physician, I enjoy listening to nonphysicians tell me how to motivate doctors. I don’t mean this in a totally snarky way (well, maybe just a little). These conversations often highlight the chasm that exists between physicians and administration.
What’s the most common motivator people throw…
Harry Hertz
I am of course talking about feedback; you needn’t admit that you were thinking a different word.
Soon the first set of feedback reports will be sent to 2014 Baldrige Award applicants. So I thought this might be a good time to reflect on Baldrige feedback, and feedback in general.
I have always…
Davis Balestracci
My last article demonstrated a common incorrect technique—based in “traditional” statistics—for comparing performances based on percentage rates. This article will use the same data to show what should be done instead.
To quickly review the scenario: In an effort to reduce unnecessary expensive…
Georgia Manufacturing Extension Program
Justin and Michael Seibert knew that Athens, Georgia, was a place they wanted to lay down roots. After talking with a family friend who owned a sign manufacturing business, they determined their skill set and business outlook was a good match for the industry. So seven years ago they opened The…
Tamar June
In a previous column, Michael Causey looked at the FDA’s relatively ho-hum guidance on social media. Since then, the agency has issued an interesting warning letter to a Utah-based dietary supplement maker for, among other alleged infractions, “liking” off-label claims made about its product on…
Paula Oddy
Organizations pursue registration to international standards for a variety of reasons, but in the broadest possible sense most agree that the goal is to improve business operations and reap financial rewards, either by saving money through increased efficiencies or in making money by getting or…
Steve Moore
Up until a few years ago, I wasn’t a big fan of run charts. Why not just go ahead and construct a process behavior chart and move on? Well, sometimes a run chart is more appropriate for certain data structures.
For example, some data are “chunky”—see Donald Wheeler’s treatment of chunky data in…
William A. Levinson
Provision 4.2 of ISO 9001:2015 cites “Needs and Expectations of Interested Parties.” Interested parties include not only obvious stakeholders (customers, suppliers, employees, and owners), but also anybody who is affected, or perceives himself as being affected, by the product or service.
Not all…
Patrick Runkel
The word “kurtosis” sounds like a painful, festering disease of the gums. But the term actually describes the shape of a data distribution.
Frequently, you’ll see kurtosis defined as how sharply “peaked” the data are. The three main types of kurtosis are shown below.
Lepto means “thin” or “…
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
Shortly after the death of the brilliant comedian and actor Robin Williams, his daughter Zelda quit Twitter and Instagram following online harassment over his death. How sad. We seem to somehow like to see the dark side of the world.
Even my three tennis buddies seem unable to keep from trash…
Mark Murphy
Employees want feedback that is meaningful and relevant to them, but often what they hear sounds like it’s been taken verbatim from one of those phrase books using stock comments like, “Mary is a team player and consistently thinks of others.”
That statement could apply to Mary, or it could apply…
Russ King
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) medical device recalls are on the rise. An increasingly active FDA coupled with an increase of medical device software components is adding up to new challenges for manufacturers. It’s important to understand how the FDA uses IEC 62304, an international standard…
Alan Nicol
Connecting our information about customer desires with our designs is difficult. If it seems simple, we probably missed something. In the realm of product development, the most challenging and often the riskiest part of the design process is deciding precisely what features or functions our…
Brenda Percy
This is the fifth installment in our six-part series on how automating common business processes with enterprise quality management software (EQMS) can benefit your organization. In this installment, we’ll focus on the automated audit management process.
Manual systems often don’t provide the…
Mike Figliuolo
Along with an opposable thumb, we share one other trait with our hairy primate cousins: curiosity. We have an innate desire to understand “what happens if…” that begins in childhood. As we grow into adults, that natural curiosity dissipates, and we’re expected to have those answers (school, anyone…
Jim Frost
In a previous article, I showed why there is no R-squared for nonlinear regression. Anyone who uses nonlinear regression will also notice that there are no P values for the predictor variables. What’s going on?
Just like there are good reasons not to calculate R-squared for nonlinear regression,…
Lean Math With Mark Hamel
Full-time equivalent(s), commonly referred to as FTE(s), represents the number of equivalent employees working full time. One full-time equivalent is equal to one employee working full time. Typically, FTEs are measured to one or two decimal points.
FTEs are not people. Rather, FTEs are a ratio…
Arun Hariharan
Ihave worked with a number of CEOs during my many years of helping companies improve quality. Although all are different in their leadership styles, when it comes to their attitudes toward excellence, most top leaders fall into one of three categories.
The honeymoon CEO
The first is what I call…
Jack Dunigan
Rachel was a new employee at a retail outlet. She was given the requisite week in the training room and then sent out to the sales floor. Part of her job was to restock merchandise that had been returned. She had been on the job but a few days when an item was returned in a damaged box. She…
Davis Balestracci
I chatted about u-charts for rates last time, and this column was going to be about p-charts for percentage data. These are the two major charts for dealing with count data and are helpful for stratifying a stable section of process performance.
But something recently happened that saddens me and…
Annette Franz
I recently read an article about a new dress code being imposed on Walmart employees (effective later this month). The purpose of the new dress code is to help customers more easily identify employees. I don't have a problem with that; given my recent experiences in a few different stores, more…
