All Features
NIST
American manufacturing is at a noteworthy and exciting convergence of three powerful trends that can provide an opportunity for growth in industry.
• Traditional manufacturing as we’ve known it may be fading, but there remains a legacy of innovation that can serve as a basis basis for future…
Lean Math With Mark Hamel
Work content (Wc) represents total operator cycle time or, if multiple operators are involved, the sum of operator cycle times to perform a specific process(es) or subprocess(es). The scope of human work, including both value-added and nonvalue-added activities, may encompass a complete value…
John Flaig
The claim is made and widely believed that C = 0 sampling plans are more cost effective than classic sampling plans such as ANSI/ASQ Z1.4. Below is a preliminary analysis of the cost difference between the two sampling plans using the hypergeometric probability distribution to compare a Squeglia C…
Sonal Sinha
Ever since the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires publicly listed companies to disclose their use of conflict minerals, reactions to the new rule have been mixed. Major industry groups have filed legal challenges against the SEC…
Donald J. Wheeler
I recently read about a technique for analyzing data called the "Tukey control chart." Since Professor John Tukey is no longer with us, it appears that someone without his brilliance has tried to adapt one of his techniques into an alternative type of control chart. To understand the…
Patrick Runkel
True confession: Nothing fires quickly from the top of my head—at least anything very lucid or useful.
To come up with a good idea, I have to dredge thoughts slowly from the thick sludge and sediment in my brain. It’s not always easy. There are deeply encrusted layers in my cerebral cortex that…
Mona K. Draper
Maersk Line is the largest container shipping company in the world. At any given time, its 500 vessels transport approximately 3 percent of the world's gross national product (GNP). In 2007, I walked into Maersk as a lean Six Sigma consultant looking for business and walked out with a job.
I saw…
Carly Barry
To promote ethical and moral responsibility in shaping its graduates, the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology created a sustainability initiative to reduce its own environmental footprint.
As part of that team’s efforts, Six Sigma students at Rose-Hulman conducted a project to reduce food waste…
Arun Hariharan
During the past dozen years, companies I have worked with have, between them, completed more than 1,000 lean Six Sigma (LSS) projects. Based on this experience, I’ve found that improvement projects can be broadly categorized into three types: quality-improvement, revenue-enhancing, and cost-saving…
NIST
Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new standard reference material (SRM), the first such measurement tool to enable hospitals to link important tissue density measurements made by CAT scans to international standards.
Computed tomography (CT…
Jack Dunigan
My friend Steve is a horse whisperer, was one long before Robert Redford made the label famous. Steve’s been a cowboy forever, a genuine, sure ’nuff, tall-in-the-saddle, hand-me-that-rope cowboy. He knows his way around a horse, knows how to care for them, and knows how to handle them. If you’re…
Rip Stauffer
In one recent online forum, a Six Sigma Black Belt asked a question about validating samples—how to ensure that when they are taken, they would reflect (i.e., represent) the population parameter. His purpose: to understand the baseline for a project. He said he had six months of data regarding…
Bruce Hamilton
For me, summertime is synonymous with a trip to the amusement park. I took my twins to Wonderland Park when they were just 4 years old, a déjà vu experience that transported me be back 50 years.
As my kids climbed onto the fire engine ride, I realized that this was the very same ride I had loved…
Margaret A. Hamburg
It’s a small world. Every day, there’s a good chance that some of the food you’re eating came from another country. Fifteen percent of the food we eat, including nearly 50 percent of the fresh fruit and 20 percent of vegetables, is imported each year.
That’s why it’s so important that we do…
Arun Hariharan
Detroit has become the largest city ever to go broke in the United States. Why? Because its industrial base withered in the face of global competition, and as the number of jobs dwindled, so did the city’s population.
This column isn’t about the specifics of the Detroit problem but about the role…
NIST
Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of North Carolina have demonstrated a new design for an instrument, a “instrumented nanoscale indenter,” that makes sensitive measurements of the mechanical properties of thin films—ranging from auto body…
Mark R. Hamel
Some folks may wonder what the heck I mean by “two types.” Within the context of a lean management system, we can make a distinction between visual process performance (VPP) and visual process adherence (VPA).
Visual process performance (VPP). These are typically metric-based visuals that provide…
Jim Benson
It’s hard to limit your work in progress (WIP) when your boss count exceeds your WIP limit.
If you have a WIP limit of three and 12 bosses, you may as well have one card permanently in your personal kanban that says, “Negotiate with bosses.” That sounds funny, but it’s true. Your bosses will…
Christine Tremblay
Most people are surprised to learn that more than half of small medical practices are still using handwritten paper charts to collect and store demographic and clinical information about patients. Although every medical office has computers, many doctors never touch them.
Other professions have…
Jamie Flinchbaugh
You might be in an organization that is all about the tactical. It’s a “what’s next?”, action-oriented, go-go-go culture. There are certainly benefits to this kind of environment. Inaction is avoided, and things get done. Your organization is generally pretty focused and performance-oriented.…
Alan Nicol
Today’s true tale was told to me by a close friend, and it contains at least two very important messages from which we can learn if we choose. Let me retell my friend’s experience this week, and then we can dig into what we might learn.
My friend’s employer was recently acquired by a large,…
Patrick Runkel
My Uncle Joe is always fantasizing about ways to outsmart Father Time. “Suppose you could reverse your aging process at some fixed point in your life,” he says to me, a crazed gleam in his eye. “So you could pick any age to turn the clock backwards and start aging in reverse. What age would you…
Knowledge at Wharton
Global companies struggle with decisions about how much to outsource. Too little means an organization may lose the pricing advantages that can come with using competitive providers worldwide. Too much—or the wrong kind of outsourcing—and quality and knowledge management can suffer.
A panel at a…
Denise Robitaille
What’s Happening With ISO 9001? Stakeholders have offered suggestions for the upcoming revision
Committee Draft of ISO 9001 Is OutChanges include genuine improvement; some will make implementation more difficult
Knowledge at Wharton
Microsoft’s recent reorganization of its operating structure is a big move. CEO Steve Ballmer says he wants to make the company more nimble and collaborative, and make it function as a single, cohesive entity rather than a collection of fragmented divisions.
Although Wharton experts acknowledge…
