All Features
Tripp Babbitt
While doing some research for my book on W. Edwards Deming’s activities during World War II, I came across some fascinating information, particularly in Nancy R. Mann’s book, The Keys to Excellence (Mercury Business Books, 1989). I wrote this column based on my research notes and excerpts from…
MIT News
Since 2011, MIT faculty from several disciplines have collaborated on a unique research project, Production in the Innovation Economy (PIE); the aim is to see how U.S. strengths in innovation can be turned into new production capabilities, to spur growth and new jobs.
MITnews spoke with Suzanne…
Michel Dechape
Editor’s note: This is the first in a three-part series on air gauging. Engineer and inventor Michel Dechape has updated the seminal work on the subject by V. R. Burrows.
The basic principle of blowing a jet of air or liquid from a nozzle against the surface of a workpiece to be measured is…
Lean Math With Mark Hamel
From my experience, there are a handful of pull-system design steps. This column seeks to “simply” outline those steps and some of the math that should be considered. However, don’t let the brevity mislead you. It isn’t necessarily simple.
1. Understand and segment customer (internal or external…
Stacey Jarrett Wagner
England, during the 1760s, was the birthplace of the western world’s Industrial Revolution, initiated by a group of men who made “manufacturing” the purview of the inventive. Called The Lunar Society of Birmingham because the group met during the full moon, these inventors were amateur scientists…
ASA
The number of students earning bachelor’s degrees in statistical science has more than doubled during the last five years, topping 1,000 for the first time in 2012, says Marie Davidian, president of the American Statistical Association (ASA).
Additionally, master’s and doctorate degrees…
Kevin Meyer
On the long series of flights back home from Bhutan and Nepal last weekend, I came across an article on CNN Tech, “Mark Zuckerberg’s Bizarre New Self-Improvement Goal.” I haven’t really been a fan of the arrogant wunderkind, and the article didn’t sway me much, but this particular aspect of…
Bruce Hamilton
Many managers ask me, “How can I accelerate my company’s lean transformation?” My answer is twofold: First get the direction right, and then get everyone rowing in that direction.
One of my columns on this topic from about three years ago (worth reading for context if you don’t remember it),…
Mike Roberts
My colleagues and I at LNS Research have spoken to numerous companies during the past several years that have done an admirable job of building compliance into production processes. However, there are still many companies, particularly in the manufacturing sector, that struggle to meet product and…
Shaun Wissner
Last month, we started talking about data with the focus mainly on data management (aka data analysis) and only referencing data collection for a bit of context. Now I want to turn to data collection. Data collection is mostly about uncertainty (in this case “measurement uncertainty”) and more…
Margaret A. Hamburg
There are many good reasons to go to Arkansas in September: to visit Little Rock, America’s No. 1 most livable city; or attend the annual Eureka Springs Antique Automobile Festival, to name two. But neither of these reasons are why more than 100 scientists, researchers, government regulators, and…
Sometimes we all need a pick-me-up. It’s so easy to become bogged down in our everyday routines. Maybe all you need is a little inspiration, something to make you feel enthusiastic again about that project you’ve been working on. No matter how much we like our jobs or believe in what we do, we all…
Patrick Runkel
Defects can cause a lot of pain to your customer. They can also cause a lot of pain inside your body.
The picture below shows my broken right clavicle. Ouch! You might think of it as the defective output from my bicycling process, which needs improvement.
Sitting around all summer cinched up in…
Paul Naysmith
Arecent call with an old colleague from Europe got me wondering about a question that few are conscious of: Who is the customer of your quality document? Oh boy, did we have an interesting discussion about quality systems.
My friend was developing and reinvigorating his employer’s quality system,…
Juliana dos Reis Derceli, Juliana Jendiroba Faraoni-Romano, Regina Guenka Palma-Dibb
D ental erosion, a process that can cause demineralization and damage on dental substrate, is widely studied due to its high incidence within all age groups. Several techniques are used to analyze erosive lesions, including roughness measurement, profilometry, and morphological analysis of the…
Matthew E. May
As Napoleon once said, a picture is worth a thousand words. This isn’t just a trite cliché. Visual thinking is an invaluable skill, if not a leadership art.
In his book Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership (Basic Books, 1996), Howard Gardner makes the point that visionary leaders rally people…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
When I was a boy, I heard a story about a hot-dog stand owner, who would put on a clown costume, then stand on the sidewalk every day and wave motorists into his business. He was so successful he was able to send his son to college. Upon graduating , the son, now worldly and sophisticated, was…
Dawn Bailey
A recent article in The Washington Post, “Company Town’s Decline Reflects New Mantra: Shareholders First,” got me thinking. The article begins with a look at Endicott, New York, where, during the 1980s, 10,000 IBM workers kept the upstate town thriving. Today, after years of layoffs and jobs…
Miriam Boudreaux
If your company is ISO-certified or thinking about becoming so, you may already know that meeting customer requirements and achieving customer satisfaction is paramount to the certification. However, it’s not always clear who should be in charge of determining whether customer satisfaction has been…
Dennis Payton
Given the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) increased findings for companies that must comply to CFR 21 Part 820—“Quality system,” it’s curious that the oversight body has not offered much guidance about product design control, particularly concerning sections 820.30 and 820.40 of the…
William Fetter
Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, has revealed his Hyperloop transportation system concept, a sort of pneumatic tube that promises to deliver passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 35 minutes at speeds up to 760 mph.
While listening to the technical explanation of how the…
Kyle Toppazzini
Before my first book, Maximizing Lean Six Sigma (West Bow Press, 2013), was published, I’d begun work on a second book, which details a new approach to lean Six Sigma called FUSE—for formulate, understand, synthesize, and execute. It’s an approach that enables organizations to maximize enterprise…
Lean Math With Mark Hamel
The time observation form, also known as a process study form, is a basic and often-used tool for lean practitioners. Note that here we are talking about applying the continuous time-observation method and not the work-sampling method.
The form, in combination with a stopwatch, serves multiple…
U.S. Department of Energy
Anew Critical Materials Hub led by Ames Laboratory, located in Ames, Iowa, is the latest of the U.S. Department of Energy’s five innovation hubs—which combine basic and applied research with engineering to accelerate scientific discovery in critical energy areas.
Many of the fastest growing clean…
NASA
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft officially is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. The 36-year-old probe is about 12 billion miles (19 billion km) from our sun.
New and unexpected data indicate Voyager 1 has been traveling for about one year through plasma, or ionized gas,…
