All Features
Bruce Hamilton
Twenty years ago, I was introduced to a graphical method for, as it was put to me, “sharing what you see” with others. It was referred to as a material and information flow diagram, or M&I for short.
Brian S., a consultant from TSSC who was assisting my factory, pointed to a diagram he had…
ESI International
ESI International’s top 10 trends in project management highlight the need for leadership within projects, whether Agile or Waterfall. They also discuss the challenges associated with finding qualified project managers, and finding the right balance of project management approaches in this…
FARO
Today’s new 3D metrology technology is making an impact on the design of championship Indy race cars. Andretti Autosport uses 3D metrology and laser scanning technology for applications in design, reverse engineering, and quality assurance. Advancement in, and simplification of, technologies such…
Arun Hariharan
A couple weeks ago, I needed to withdraw some money from a mutual fund that I’m invested in. Some mutual funds charge a small withdrawal fee to the investor, called an “exit load.” This is typically 1 percent if the investor withdraws his money within a year of investing it. When my money was…
Michael Causey
Given the fact that the FDA probably doesn’t know what it plans to do in 2014, predicting their actions is challenging, to put it mildly.
With that slightly weasel-like caveat, it’s worth noting three events in 2013 that will almost certainly impact 2014.
CDRH’s Office of Compliance…
Matthew E. May
Just before the holiday break, I broached the subject of systems. Given the current management rage focusing on the power of distinctive corporate culture as the key enabler of constant innovation, it’s worthwhile to think about how systems and culture intertwine.
My friend Michael Shrage likes…
Peter Dizikes
A kidney transplant is a lifesaving operation—and yet every year in the United States, about 10 percent of donated kidneys go unused, after being rejected by multiple potential recipients.
Why is this? According to Juanjuan Zhang, an associate professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, the…
Christine Schaefer
Last month in Missouri, the Governor’s Conference on Baldrige in Education kicked off a large-scale improvement initiative that has the backing of key education groups in the state. With a mission to “facilitate school districts’ deployment of the leadership and management principles that have…
Jim Benson
I’ll bet you have a lot of things to do. Of course you do. We all do. A personal kanban anti-pattern I’m seeing is that people are filling their kanbans with things to do, and then... doing them. They are becoming productivity machines. And that’s really bad.
Look, there’s a limitless amount of…
William A. Levinson
The adage that the only bad publicity is no publicity may apply to celebrities, but this article will show how the wrong kind of fascination can be enormously destructive to businesses that actually deliver products or services.
My last column, “Propaganda, Fascination, and Quality,” discussed…
Tripp Babbitt
W. Edwards Deming is often given as the source for the following quote: “Managing a business on historical data is like driving a car while looking in the rearview mirror.” Deming actually borrowed the quote from Myron Tribus. The idea is that management should be looking ahead and not behind.…
Donald J. Wheeler
You have spent good money obtaining your experimental results, and now the time has come to communicate those results to those who need to take action. This column will describe how to cut through the complexities of your analysis and communicate the results quickly and easily.
You have 30…
Dan Nelson
Paul Batalden, M.D., professor at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, once said, “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” This idea seems applicable to any system of human design. Phrased slightly differently using ISO 9001 parlance, “Every…
Jack Dunigan
Let’s say for the purpose of this article that you have a position open and a slate of applicants who possess approximately the same list of qualifications. What do you do?
You start by looking at qualities. Certain qualities are important in almost any job, but particularly critical when working…
Davis Balestracci
For all the talk about the power of control charts, I can empathize when audiences taking mandated courses on quality tools are left puzzled. When I look at training materials or books, their tendency is to bog down heavily in the mechanics of construction without offering a clue about…
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.
Last week’s executive council meeting ran long, but there were no…
Mike Figliuolo
You have to admit, Han Solo could definitely pull off that leather vest. On top of that, he can teach all of us a thing or three about informal leadership.
We’ve all been in a role at one time or another where we weren’t the “formal” leader of the team. We were just another team member trying to…
Arun Hariharan
Last week, I accompanied my father to an eye hospital to get his eye examined for a suspected cataract. The hospital examined his eye and confirmed the presence of a cataract. They recommended surgically implanting an artificial lens in his eye—a fairly common procedure these days for cataract…
Rob Fenn
So, you’ve decided that you really need to embark upon ISO 9001 registration. Perhaps it’s being requested by a client, or you’ve worked at a company before that had implemented it to great effect. Or maybe you’ve just been convinced by the numerous studies that have elucidated the strong benefits…
MIT Management Executive Education
In his book, Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup (Wiley, 2013), Bill Aulet, managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, goes beyond theory to outline the steps anyone can take to become a successful entrepreneur.
In the first article in this…
Shimadzu
International standards ISO 6892 and JIS Z2241 for tensile testing of metallic materials have been revised with the addition of another test item: strain rate control.
When strain is measured with an extensometer, strain rate control has been added as a test item to the current stress rate…
MIT Management Executive Education
One of the most common mistakes new entrepreneurs make is trying to be everything to everyone in the hopes of increasing their market share. In the beginning, many entrepreneurs take an “act now, plan later” approach to get a jump on the competition. This can be a recipe for failure.
But the…
Harry Hertz
The words used in the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence have been selected by design, i.e., in general there is a deliberate intent behind the words used and the order in which they are presented. Although that intent is clear to the Criteria’s authors, it’s not always obvious to users…
John Ayers
Let’s assume you work for a small company that wants to grow the business by soliciting subcontracts from a major prime contractor. What unknown risks might be in store for your company in pursuing this path? Here are some of those risks, along with a personal example and eight suggestions for…
Jim Frost
Ihave written a number of blog posts about regression analysis, and I think it would be helpful to collect them in this post to create a regression tutorial. I’ll supplement my own posts with some from my colleagues.
This tutorial covers many aspects of regression analysis, including choosing the…
