All Features
Davis Balestracci
My last column, “Can We Please Stop the Guru Wars?” made the case that the various improvement approaches are all pretty much the same. To recap, there are seven sources of problems with a process. The first three sources help frame the situation.
They are: Source No. 1. Inadequate knowledge of…
Joel Smith
You take 10 parts and have three operators measure each part two times. This standard approach to a gauge (or gage, if you prefer) repeatability and reproducibility (GR&R) experiment is so common, so accepted, so ubiquitous that few people ever question whether it is effective.
Obviously one…
Bruce Hamilton
Across a large swath of the United States, the winter has been especially cold, snowy, and dreary this year. So here’s a post with a link to a cheery video at the end, just to pick my spirits up—and maybe yours, too.
The English language can be confounding. For example, the word “turkey” is slang…
Michael Levin
March is National Ideas Month. Hey, whose bright idea was that?
As a best-selling author, I’ve experienced creative blocks when writing under deadline pressure and the pressure of my own high expectations. Over time, I’ve developed several tricks to stimulate my creative muscle and help me come…
Carl Nothnagel
When Henry Ford’s assembly line started rolling 100 years ago, it set the stage for controlling quality by using standardized components that virtually eliminated the manual fitting and reshaping of auto parts. Quality assurance in mass production has come a long way since then, but it remains an…
Margaret A. Hamburg
As my busy and productive trip to India drew to a close, I had the opportunity for one final meeting and one last memory with a group of some of the country’s most extraordinary women. The occasion was a women’s roundtable in Mumbai, organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
It…
Matthew Littlefield
For years, LNS Research has been advising industry executives on the enterprise quality management software (EQMS) selection process. And for years, each executive that we speak with typically asks some form of this question: Which solution is best for my company?
In reality, there’s no one-size-…
Kevin Meyer
Rules are funny things. We like some of them because they make us feel protected, aligned, and perhaps operating on a fair playing field. We dislike them because they can protect us to the point of being smothering, align us to the point of being constraining, and fair to the point of being unfair…
Tamar June
The Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) will focus on encouraging medical device innovation and speeding clinical trials in the coming years, according to its 2014–2015 Strategic Priorities report released Feb. 5, 2014. To help encourage that innovation, CDRH says it’s going to work…
Tab Wilkins
Has robotics as a technology reached maturity and affordability for smaller manufacturers? It seems the answer is yes and no. Years ago future trends in manufacturing frequently imagined completely automated environments, and while that hasn’t entirely happened yet, last year the President’s…
Michael Rapaport
T his four-part series of articles is intended to guide your organization toward a truly holistic and integrated quality management system (QMS), and covers how to prepare it for quick capital approval.
The operational synergies enabled by an integrated QMS are well-known from a quality…
Jim Benson
How do you know when to clean up your kanban’s Done column? When it’s full.
When we showed our board to people in classes and on consulting engagements, the Done column showed that we were really, really productive. It was huge. It went on forever. Hundreds of completed tasks.
So, how do we clean…
Annette Franz
I named my blog CX Journey for a reason: to convey that the customer experience is just that, a journey.
What does that mean? It means that, although it’s important to look at the individual touchpoints, moments of truth, interactions, and channels, it’s more important to remember the whole…
Paul Naysmith
It’s Saturday morning and Mrs. N. has a project for me: assembling her new bicycle. It has arrived in an imposing brown box, and I’m attempting to interpret the instructions. Looking over the variety of nuts, bolts, screws, and connectors in a little plastic bag, I’m performing a mental inventory…
Bob Emiliani
As an engineer, my natural tendency is to look at things from the perspective of how something failed rather than why it worked (though in my writings about lean, I do both). However, the factors that cause failure are merely the antithesis of why things worked.
With that in mind, I offer you…
Donald J. Wheeler
Students typically encounter many obstacles while learning statistics. In 44 years of teaching I have discovered some distinctions that help students overcome these obstacles. This article will remove some sources of confusion concerning the relationship between statistical process control (SPC)…
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
I was reminded recently of the passing of Thomas Berry, one of the most eminent cultural historians of our time. His work and insight have been touchstones for me for the last 30 years.
For me, the story starts in 1993 when my wife, Carole, and I were invited to help the folks in the North Simcoe…
ISO
From friendly Wall-E and helpful R2-D2 to the dystopian worlds of The Matrix and The Terminator, robots have captured our imagination and visions of the future for generations. But the time is fast approaching where interactions between humans and artificial intelligence become part and parcel of…
Michelle LaBrosse, Kristen Medina
I continued to pantomime my intent as the Italian grocery clerk looked at me in complete confusion. My inability to communicate with this person was beginning to frustrate me. I mean, this is me, the person who was voted Queen of Charades by friends and family alike. How could he not understand I…
Jim Benson
Yes, finishing feels good. When we complete tasks, we feel better than when we have a pile of incompletes just lying around. Incompletion creeps up on us, overloads us, and crushes us. The more we fail to complete our work or realize our goals, the more susceptible we are to hopelessness, doubt,…
Jay Arthur—The KnowWare Man
Let’s face it: Everyone isn’t cut out to be a belted Six Sigma guru, but everyone should know how to use key tools in the right order to solve the problems facing businesses. And they can’t wait months or years to get results; the marketplace moves too quickly.
During the early 1990s, I attended…
Mark R. Hamel
Larry Loucka, a close friend and colleague, recently pointed me to a Feb. 16, 2014, article in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Now, before you roll your eyes and give me the WSJ-isn’t known-for-getting-the-lean-thing-right look, hear me out. What the journal published is really, really good stuff—…
Sonal Sinha
Last year, as organizations grappled with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s conflict minerals rule, they focused on risks associated with supply-chain governance, big data and social media, and the costly due diligence required to ensure compliance with the rule. This year the focus will…
Bill Kalmar
Many of us, I’m sure, have subscribed to the National Do Not Call Registry. Having done so we’re not supposed to receive calls from telemarketers. Unfortunately, the registry still allows calls from politicians, charities, survey companies, and organizations we may have done business with in the…
Bob Emiliani
Let’s get rid of value stream maps. I can hear it now: “Why would you say such a thing? Value stream maps are great. We can’t see waste without them.”
Precisely.
Value stream maps have developed an outsized importance in relation to other types of basic information that one gathers when trying to…
