All Features
Chuck Reaves
“For every person who will say yes, there are 20 who will say no. For a positive response, you must find the 21st person.”—The Theory of 21
The CEO of an electronics company had an idea. He was a solid businessperson but was not as well-versed in electronics as some of his engineers. He came up…
Howard Sklamberg
Since July 9, 2012, when President Obama signed the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act (FDASIA), a group of colleagues and I have had an urgent mission: implement Title VII of the statute. This section gave the FDA new authority to better protect the global drug supply chain,…
Christine Schaefer
In the Baldrige Health Care Criteria for Performance Excellence, category three, concerning customer focus, asks how your organization engages its patients and other customers for long-term marketplace success. The related self-assessment questions cover how your organization listens to the voice…
Paul Naysmith
Recently I walked headlong into a conversation on quality costs, or the cost of poor quality (COPQ), or the cost of quality, or some other term I’ve forgotten from that discussion. I realized that this area is very well-developed in the world of quality, but perhaps not fully understood by…
Alexandre Alain
Editor's note: Quality Digest will be hosting a webinar with EtQ on this subject on July 29th, 11 a.m. Pacific/2 p.m. Eastern. Click here to register.
I went for a bike ride early one morning, one of those dawn rides when no one is typically around. My biggest issue was visibility. I was heading…
Michael Causey
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) won’t enforce compliance with regulatory controls that apply to medical device data systems (MDDS) and medical image communications devices, recognizing the “low risk” they pose to patient safety and the importance they play in advancing digital health…
Henrich Greve
Quirky is actually the name of a company. It collects ideas on innovative products, allows “community members” on its list to vote and comment on them, and arranges to have some of them manufactured and sold. The idea is roughly similar to the wisdom of crowds, with many people being smarter than…
Richard J. Bryan
Frank was ex-Special Forces with a fine arts degree—an unusual mix. He achieved a lot in his business career by following five simple principles that he was able to apply to any business, and many have achieved a lot by learning to do the same.
If you can apply these same principles consistently…
Jim Benson
Years ago, William Rowden and I owned a business. In that business we wanted to build amazing software for our clients, and we adopted several practices to help us do this.
One of the central practices we employed was test-driven development—a practice that essentially instructs you to write…
Ryan E. Day
What would you do if you were a young startup entrepreneur, and one day, out of the blue, you found a message on your phone from someone claiming to be a rep of the nation’s largest retail chain—which wanted to do business with you? If you were Yosef “Joe” Martin, founder and president of…
Dawn Bailey
Much has been discussed about the value of tomorrow’s leaders learning about the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence while still in school. As an example, I remember listening to a presentation by Bruce Kintz, president of Concordia Publishing House, a 2011 Baldrige Award recipient, about…
Michelle LaBrosse
With the summer in full swing, it’s easy to find yourself daydreaming about where you would rather be. Do you see yourself on a sunny beach, digging your toes into the sand? Or perhaps hosting a barbecue in the backyard? Most likely, these daydreams have nothing to do with your job, but are rather…
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
I recently noticed that Starbucks initiated a College Achievement Plan. Starbucks’ partners (employees) who pursue a college degree at Arizona State University (ASU) will receive some combination of tuition reimbursement, scholarships, and other financial aid from the company to help them graduate…
Trey Kirkpatrick
The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) held its 2014 energy conference in New York at the end of June. The topics this year included addressing the nation’s aging infrastructure, grid modernization, distributed resources, and fuel diversity. The panelists were a mix of industry experts…
Tripp Babbitt
Delivering better products or services to customers is the undisputed aim of any organization. They just don’t always act that way. Manufacturing organizations have circled the wagons since the 1950s, when Japanese competitors began capturing market share from the rest of the world.
Looking back…
Maria Lazarte
Everyone has a passion, whether it involves biking the toughest roads or collecting Star Wars figurines. Mine is travel.
My love of travel has taken me far and wide. I have been thrown into a river by an elephant in Malaysia and attended a four-day traditional wedding in Sudan. I have swum with…
Jim Clifton
American businesses are among the best run in the world, but Fortune 1000 leaders still haven’t mastered organic growth. They talk a good game about growing their customer base, but then they go back to their offices, shut their doors, and either acquire competitors or—worse yet—cut their prices…
MIT Sloan School of Management
Shirley Leung, business columnist for The Boston Globe, has written extensively—and frequently—about the dearth of women on corporate boards. In her piece, “Across Health Care Board Rooms, That’s Madam Chairman to You,” she discusses the growing role of women on healthcare boards (nearly one-third…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
What happened to the good old show-me-the-money capitalistic down-and-dirty business I grew up with? Where’s the cutthroat competition? What happened to “we’re big, you’re not, we’re doing it our way” partnerships?
Something happened when I was wasn’t looking because business is all so touchy-…
Annette Franz
I was recently reminded of that famous quote by Indiana Jones from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Recall that he absolutely hates snakes; they're not exactly my favorite creature, either. When I came across Jim Barksdale’s post, “Three Rules of Business,” I laughed with that movie quote in mind;…
Dan Nelson
Editor's note: This is part two of a series about customer-centric quality management systems. Read part one here.
Bob’s Machine Shop has been satisfying customers with good parts delivered on time for more than 20 years. Bob has satisfying customers down pat—it doesn’t happen day in and day out…
Bruce Hamilton
I learned recently of the passing earlier this year of a person I worked with 20 years ago at my last job in manufacturing. Manny S. was a “lesser god,” a term which is meant neither to canonize nor demean him. He wasn’t perfect—not by a long shot—but, boy, could he get things done!
If you asked…
MIT News
From the increasing information transmitted through telecommunications systems to that analyzed by financial institutions or gathered by search engines and social networks, so-called “big data” is becoming a huge feature of modern life.
But to analyze all of this incoming data, we need to be able…
Teresa Tarwater
At one time or another, after getting snarled in some confounding internal procedure, almost every employee has muttered in frustration, “Why is it sooo hard to get anything done around here?” Even simple tasks like shipping a package, logging on to the network, getting a purchase order signed, or…
Umberto Tunesi
They say that Italians’ primary passion is soccer; the second is food. There must be some truth in this commonplace, although despite the alleged passion, the multimillionaire Italian team didn’t score so well during the World Cup this year. They did so poorly, in fact, that the team’s coach…
