All Features
Georgia Institute of Technology
For owners of delivery truck fleets who may be trying to decide between electric or diesel vehicles, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are offering some advice: comparisons of the energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and total cost of ownership for the medium-duty vehicles…
Georgia Institute of Technology
A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology finds that older and younger people have varying preferences about what they would want a personal robot to look like. And they change their minds based on what the robot is supposed to do.
Participants were shown a series of photos portraying…
Lean Math With Mark Hamel
The process capacity sheet, aka a table of production capacity by process, or production capacity chart, or process capacity table, is one of the three basic tools for establishing a standard operation. The other two tools are the standard work combination sheet and standard work sheet. All three…
Kevin Meyer
A hat tip to Mark Graban for pointing out this article on a problem the Fairbanks airport has been experiencing with Apple Maps. It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious. (OK, it’s still funny.)
“There’s a way to get to the Fairbanks Airport, just don’t ask your iPhone for help. Apple has…
Davis Balestracci
I just got through looking at an expensive 186-page quarterly summary of (alleged) customer satisfaction data for a hospital. My head was spinning by page 28.
There were lots of bar graphs, “trending,” correlation analysis, and “top box” and percentile rankings on every—and I do mean every—aspect…
Donald J. Wheeler
The second principle for understanding data is that some data contain signals; however, all data contain noise. Therefore, before you can detect the signals you will have to filter out the noise. This act of filtration is the essence of all data analysis techniques. It is the foundation for our…
Mark R. Hamel
We’ve all undoubtedly had the notion of respect for people drilled into our heads. Of course, it’s easy to speak about such a principle. Much harder to live it. In any event, let me humbly add another recipient of our deserved respect: Process.
First, a distinction. It’s not the process, meaning…
Patrick Stone
The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) “Food Police” will be in full force to secure budget funds for food safety initiatives for FY 2014 as mandated by Congress. More than half of the operating funds will be earmarked for food work.
International food inspections will surely be a focus area…
Frank Hitzel, Nils Anspach, Endré Majorovits, Fabian Peréz-Willard
The AFM Option for the ZEISS MERLIN series combines a high-end, atomic force microscope (AFM) with a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to produce in situ, high-resolution AFM measurements in the SEM. The combination opens up new possibilities for characterizing nanostructures.
With the AFM,…
Denise Robitaille
As ISO 9001 wends its way through the revision process, there have been dozens of articles, webinars, forums, and discussions anticipating what the final product will look like. Pundits and experts, consultants and gurus are all weighing in on what’s going to happen. The prognosticators have made…
Jim Verzino
In our earliest days of schooling, our parents got report cards that reported things like “gets along well with others.” Then, somewhere between third and sixth grade, we were instructed to do the opposite.
We were essentially asked to stop cooperating and do our own work, share little or nothing…
Stewart Anderson
A recent news story here in Ontario detailed how health officials were reviewing the results of 3,500 CT scans and mammograms at two Toronto-area hospitals because of potential errors caused by a radiologist’s “performance issue.” Although the results of that review are still pending, the story…
Jeff Dewar
“We have 50,000 moments of truth every day.” —Jan Carlzon, CEO, Scandinavian Airways (SAS), 1989
I am watching icebergs float by as we navigate Alaska’s Tracy Arm Fjord, at the end of which lies the spectacular Sawyer Glacier. The wonders outside, however, are equaled by those onboard the ship.…
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.
After last month’s meeting, a few councilmembers stayed late to…
Trevor Wilson
How many employees roll their eyes during meetings when it’s time to discuss new initiatives? How often do they scramble to complete a task not because they love it, but because they’re afraid of the consequences if they don’t? How many mutter “not in my job description” when asked to assume a new…
Michel Dechape
Editor’s note: This is the third in a three-part series on air gauging. Engineer and inventor Michele Dechape has updated the seminal work on the subject by V. R. Burrows. Read part one here, and part two here.
Currently, and for many years, the terms air electric or air electronic converters have…
Knowledge at Wharton
The Chinese government’s actions against foreign drug makers emerged like a late-summer Beijing storm: heavy drops slapping slowly at first, then all at once becoming a disorienting deluge, pounding down in every direction.
The turmoil began on July 2, 2013, with an announcement from the National…
Jim Verzino
When I work with customers, I see all kinds of quality management systems. The performance of an environmental or quality system is consistently driven by people’s ability to make good decisions. Any good quality management system is the sum of the decisions made within it.
Each time we choose to…
Umberto Tunesi
Let’s imagine that, because we move to a different city to keep our job, we want to buy or rent a small flat, and that the landlord is astute enough to put us to a test. If we pass it, the sales price or the rent rate will be discounted by 10 percent; if we don’t pass, the flat will remain at…
Tom Kadala
As PayPal continues to reinvent itself, expect the mother-of-all disruptions: a global currency comprised of cash and data. Similar to how voice and data coexist over the same copper wire today, PayPal’s next move will commingle cash and data over a shared platform.
Instead of bits to sound bytes…
Michel Dechape
Editor’s note: This is the second in a three-part series on air gauging. Engineer and inventor Michele Dechape has updated the seminal work on the subject by V. R. Burrows. Read part one here.
The circuit shown in figure 7a is a differential back-pressure circuit in which accuracy is maintained…
Carly Barry
In part one, I discussed how to avoid a lean Six Sigma project failure, specifically if the reason behind the failure is that the project solution never gets implemented. Now let’s discuss a few other project roadblocks that prevent teams from completing projects and some suggestions for…
Gallup
Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces couldn't make things more challenging for itself if it tried. Hospitality is always a tough industry, but in addition to running more than 100 hotels around the world, Taj rents luxury jets, provides travel services, and has an air catering business.
Maintaining a…
Mark Moore
It’s a tale as old as project management itself. Somebody works up a very detailed project schedule and even assigns specific resources to tasks. This person even manages to do some basic allocation so Jake from engineering isn’t working 120-hour weeks for the next five years.
But in all the…
Davis Balestracci
As improvement professionals, part of our learning curve is the experience of facilitating project teams that fail miserably. Then, despite the necessary lessons learned, there still remain some very real dangers lurking in any project, but it goes beyond organizing and facilitating a team. What…
