All Features
NIST
The net-zero energy test house at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in suburban Washington, D.C., not only absorbed winter’s best shot, it also came out on top, reaching its one-year anniversary on July 1, 2014, with enough surplus energy to power an electric car for about…
Taran March @ Quality Digest
Once upon a time, about 70 years ago, entrepreneurs rolled up their sleeves, looked around, and said, “Right. World War II is over. Antitrust laws have our backs. Let’s get out there and make some money.” And like homesteaders at the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889, they sprinted into their chosen…
Jack Dunigan
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n my previous two columns, I discussed eight traits of intelligence, four traits in each. If you are just joining the series, you can read part one here and part two here. Today I will discuss the final four.
The general study and analysis of the traits of intelligence are ongoing. Many minds…
MIT Management Executive Education
Lean production, high -performance work systems, virtual communications, and collaboration applications are all examples of the latest tools, technology, and processes executives are encouraged to implement to improve productivity and efficiency. But why are there more useful tools and processes…
Jack Dunigan
Born in the village of Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, Lincolnshire, England, in 1643 (by today’s calendar), the only son of prosperous farmer Isaac Newton, this baby of the same name was premature, tiny, weak, and not expected to live.
But he did. His father had died three months before he was born…
Tim Lozier
This article is the fourth installment of a six-part series on common business challenges and the quality management system (QMS) tools that can help alleviate those challenges. We started with corrective action in Part 1, then moved onto document control in Part 2, and risk evaluation last time,…
Cathy Rozanski McNamara
During the Great Recession of December 2007—June 2009, employment and production in the manufacturing industry declined sharply. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, during the 24-month period between December 2007 and December 2009, the manufacturing industry lost 2 million employees…
Abdallah Samaha
Lin Engineering is a California-based manufacturer of hybrid step motors that was founded in 1987 as a consulting company specializing in step-motor applications. Today, Lin Engineering is the largest manufacturer of 0.9-degree step motors in the motion control industry. As the quality and custom-…
Jesse Lyn Stoner
What can you do as a team member to help your team achieve The 6 Benchmarks of High Performance Teams? There are 12 team behaviors that directly affect the quality of your team’s results, the ability to make smart decisions, and the commitment to implement them.
Task behaviors focus on what is…
Jack Dunigan
He was the tenth son of a Boston soap maker. His father intended for him to enter the ministry but had only enough money for one year of schooling, and the profession required many. He therefore apprenticed the young man to another son, James, a printer.
The apprenticeship did not go all that…
Davis Balestracci
Author's note: To my non-U.S. readers, I apologize for using the sport of baseball to make my points today—and during the World Cup, no less! It’s a perfect context, however, and I hope you will be able to understand the main points.
In my last column, I talked about the different types of control…
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.
A special meeting of the TRIZ executive committee had been called…
MIT News
Classically, negotiations are thought to be about playing one’s hand well at the bargaining table: The right combination of resolve, nerve, and polish can get you what you want.
But a new book from an MIT professor brings a different message: It’s what happens both before and after parties meet…
Kevin Meyer
I’ve always been interested in technology—its uses, advantages, and disadvantages. Regular readers know that I often advocate for manual solutions first, like whiteboards to run factories and a handwritten notebook for notes.
Some believe that I’m against technology, but nothing could be further…
Peter J. Sherman
Who says business luncheons are a waste of time? Recently, I enjoyed one of the most productive business luncheons of my career. In February, I was dining with two senior-level professionals at an IT staffing firm. After the usual chitchat about the recent snowstorms and traffic snarls, we started…
Matthew E. May
Except... it’s not a bar. And it’s three economists, not one.
Three economists on a road trip to Maine after an academic conference in Boston wandered into a local shoe store looking to kill some time. Little did they know it would spark a nationwide trek in search of Main Street business lessons…
Knowledge at Wharton
Should a car be treated like a piece of software? That is essentially what Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, has done. The billionaire, who made his fortune by co-founding and selling PayPal, recently dropped a bombshell on the automotive industry: In the spirit of the “open source” movement, he…
Donald J. Wheeler
One of the common tools of quality assurance is acceptance sampling. Acceptance sampling uses the observed properties of a sample drawn from a lot or batch to make a decision about whether to accept or reject that lot or batch. Textbooks are full of complex descriptions of various acceptance…
Most of us, at one point or another, have been faced with making a decision to purchase a software application. Whether a simple application to manage your schedule or a more complex quality management software, the challenge is the same: How do you decide if a software application meets your…
Paul Naysmith
From where I sit, flying high in the air, I can see the deep royal blue of the Atlantic. White waves are cresting around an island below, outlining the green and brown blob that, without a map, is nameless and unknown to me. I’m on my way to one of the islands off the east coast of Canada, an…
MIT News
Plastic is becoming a major problem worldwide: In 2012, the United States alone produced roughly 32 million tons of plastic waste, while recycling only about 9 percent of its plastic, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
This is because of the growing use of “nonrecycled” plastics,…
John Keyser
I recently conducted a few exit interviews for clients, asking people about their reasons for leaving. What did they value about the organization? What advice would they offer that could benefit the organization? What would they like to see changed, if they were to come back? I asked these and…
Michael Causey
If someone out in there in the wild wonderful world of the web takes a potshot at your drug or device, the first thing to do is take a deep breath and think. Any crisis communications executive worth her salt will tell you it’s often best to let the attacker eat silence rather than draw more…
Jack Dunigan
If efficiency is the economic use of human, psychological, and material resources, what is effectiveness? Go ahead and think about it. I’ll wait…
Like many of you, I find the online Business Dictionary to be a useful resource. Here’s how they define effectiveness:
The degree to which objectives…
NIST
Particles of soot floating through the air and comets hurtling through space have at least one thing in common: 0.36. That, reports a research group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is the measure of how dense they will get under normal conditions, and it’s a value…
