All Features
Ron Rode
“So what’s the weather gonna do today?” I am sure that we have all been asked that after answering the first question (about what we do for a living) with: “Metrology.”
Metrology or meteorology? Both are studies of a particular science but are two words that are easily mistaken or misinterpreted…
NASA
Thanks to NASA’s Kepler and Spitzer Space Telescopes, scientists have made the most precise measurement ever of the radius of a planet outside our solar system. The size of the exoplanet, dubbed Kepler-93b, is now known to an uncertainty of just 74 miles (119 km) on either side of the planetary…
Bruce Hamilton
While I am an unabashed proponent of learning by doing, I have a list of books that have been essential to me over the years as a framework for experiential learning.
Most of these books were written before 1990, and one of the most insightful, Managerial Engineering (Productivity Press, 1983) by…
Jesse Lyn Stoner
Today begins my last week as executive director of the Berrett-Koehler Foundation. This is the second time I’ve done this with an organization—served as executive director during the startup phase—and I’ve learned many lessons along the way.
My involvement began two years ago when Steve Piersanti…
Mike Figliuolo
Repeat after me: “No.”
Try it again. This time with conviction: “NO.”
Strategy is inherently about saying no. It’s about the choices we make, and the ones we don’t make. I’ve seen plenty of strategies completely derailed due to an inability to say no to that incremental initiative that’s kind of…
Harry Hertz
‘It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a new system.” This quote is not taken from the words of a modern-day CEO, although he or she might have said it, but from Niccolò Machiavelli in the…
Akhilesh Gulati
Editor’s note: This article continues the series exploring structured innovation using the TRIZ methodology, a problem solving, analysis, and forecasting tool derived from studying patterns of invention found in global patent data.
The TRIZ executive council group had taken a break during summer…
Davis Balestracci
In my last column, I showed the power of process-oriented thinking with a safety scenario. A simple run chart demonstrated that, despite meeting an aggressive 25-percent reduction goal (i.e., 45 accidents during the first year, and 32 the following year), the process that produced the 32 was no…
Michelle LaBrosse
Are you feeling stuck in your job? Although an all-out career change may be a good choice for some, you don’t need to make such a drastic move to breathe new life into your current position.
Developing skills in project management, even if you’re not a project manager, empowers you to make the…
MIT News
Materials that are firmly bonded together with epoxy and other tough adhesives are ubiquitous in modern life—from crowns on teeth to modern composites used in construction. Yet it has proved remarkably difficult to study how these bonds fracture and fail, and how to make them more resistant to…
Matthew E. May
A new strategy requires that some conclusions be made about the old one. The old strategy must be reframed as a choice between at least two mutually exclusive choices, from which some initial possibilities can be considered through focused, facilitated brainstorming.
(Side rant to all the…
Gerry Sandusky
Standing on the football field in the fall of 2011, hours before a Baltimore Ravens game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, I reached out to shake the hand of former NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol and introduced myself. “Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m Gerry Sandusky.”
He snatched his hand back…
Carly Barry
Via Christi Health, the largest provider of healthcare in Kansas, operates a Center for Clinical Excellence that’s made up of a team of quality practitioners; all have had lean and Six Sigma training. I recently had the opportunity to talk with the team about the types of projects they’re working…
Arun Hariharan
Here is the story of two companies from the same industry. Let’s call them Company A and Company B. Both have a similar history, started in business at around the same time, are among the big players in the industry, and operate in the same markets. They even have approximately the same number of…
Dan Miklovic
The Internet of things (IoT), is dominating the media these days. Some say IoT itself is probably a misnomer. For instance, futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil says it really ought to be called the “Internet of everything” (IoE). Whenever we hear IoT, the first thing many start talking about is M2M…
The QA Pharm
After nearly 20 years helping the biopharmaceutical industry to regulatory enforcement by implementing an operational and sustainable quality management system, I have come to the conclusion—at the most fundamental level—that there are three quintessential elements required for success. I call…
Mark Murphy
There’s no better litmus test of job ad effectiveness than asking: “How many other companies are saying the identical thing our company is saying?”
In a recent search of a major job board for programmer jobs, nearly every single job ad said it had “dedicated passionate co-workers,” “tremendous…
Patrick Runkel
If you teach statistics or quality statistics, you’re probably already familiar with the cuckoo egg data set.
The common cuckoo has decided that raising baby chicks is a stressful, thankless job. It has better things to do than fill the screeching, gaping maws of cuckoo chicks, day in and day out…
Stacey Jarrett Wagner
‘There is most likely some interplay between the weak capital spending numbers and the weak job market of the last few years; there is less incentive to spend money on productivity-enhancing equipment when labor is cheap.” This recent musing by Neil Irwin of The New York Times was his reflection…
Mark R. Hamel
I am halfway through reading what I consider (thus far) an important lean book. Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder’s The Idea-Driven Organization: Unlocking the Power in Bottom-Up Ideas (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2014) is a thoughtful, practical book on the topic of employee engagement and daily…
NIST
To support the fair sale of gaseous hydrogen as a vehicle fuel, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a prototype field test standard to test the accuracy of hydrogen fuel dispensers. Once the standard is field tested, it will serve as a model for…
Annette Franz
After my recent column, “19 Signs Customers Are Just Not That Into You,” which sounded an awful lot like the romantic comedy, He’s Just Not That Into You, I was inspired to write this piece by the title of another rom-com, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.
When we engage with customers (or when they…
Davis Balestracci
In my last column, I showed how hidden special causes can sometimes create the appearance of common cause, but the purpose of common-cause strategies is to deal with this and smoke them out. When there's an underlying structure to how these data were collected, or when one can somehow code each…
William A. Levinson
Quality Digest’s readers are quite familiar with the deficiencies of the U.S. airline industry, whether through articles in the media, personal experience, or both. Relatively minor issues involve inefficient boarding processes, fees for the first piece of checked luggage, and uncomfortable…
Gary Phillips
For decades now, the measurement systems analysis (MSA) approach has been the predominant method for evaluating measurement systems capability. Although this method is widely considered to be an acceptable and comprehensive approach throughout most of the world, a growing number of specialized…
