All Features
Dawn Bailey
What do you do when revenues rapidly decline, banking and financial institutions pull back, and there’s a national workforce decline? For many business owners, it’s as if lightning has struck their organizations’ industries not once, but twice.
For integrated manufacturing service provider KARLEE…
Glenda Eoyang
Joe, a successful leader, is deeply frustrated. The strategic planning system that once served him well is failing. Regardless of his best-laid plans, other forces in the organization are overriding his strategies. His methods to motivate his staff no longer work. How can each day be such a…
Stacey Jarrett Wagner
There’s nothing I love as much as a paradox. So there’s a lot for me to get excited about with America’s current manufacturing paradox, which is whether U.S. manufacturing is the next big thing or a dying dinosaur. Should we steer our children from factory work, or should we embrace the…
Jim Clifton
During a recent interview with a big Los Angeles-area newspaper, a reporter asked me, “Is America now in permanent decline?” My answer was, “No.” Our country is not in permanent decline. But I’m concerned that our leadership is.
Actually, our leadership in Washington is failing miserably, and…
MIT News
Anyone who has seen pictures of the giant, red-hot cauldrons in which steel is made—fed by vast amounts of carbon, and belching flame and smoke—would not be surprised to learn that steelmaking is one of the world’s leading industrial sources of greenhouse gases. But remarkably, a new process…
Mark R. Hamel
As best as I can recall, I’ve never coined a phrase with any staying power. Until now. And, my phrase has been purposely captured on a T-shirt, by someone other than a close relative. It’s not quite like having my words recorded indelibly in marble and situated in the Parthenon, but I’ll take it…
Umberto Tunesi
Remember your Latin? In the Aeneid Virgil used the phrase notus calor to describe what Hephaestus felt when he embraced his wife, Aphrodite. Think you know what it is now?
It means “familiar warmth.” Not passion. Not animal lust, as one might suspect when describing the embrace of a goddess. But…
Davis Balestracci
“What if I were to tell you that one of the most important keys to your organization’s success can be found in a very unlikely place—a place many of you may consider to be complicated, inaccessible, and perhaps even downright boring? What if I were to tell you that this key to success is already…
Jack Dunigan
Editor’s note: This continues Jack Dunigan’s series about unsung heroes in the workplace, and the 16 traits they all share.
“You can buy a person’s hands but you can’t buy his heart. The heart is where enthusiasm and loyalty are.” —Anonymous
You can’t build a team without team players. Experience…
Knowledge at Wharton
How do you communicate with 5,000 employees across 17 countries in a simple yet effective and compelling way? This was a question that Jovina Ang had to answer back in 2010, when she joined Microsoft Services Asia as marketing communications director.
It was around that time that the organization…
Michael Causey
It’s no secret that Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspectors hone in on a medical device company’s corrective and preventive action (CAPA) program during an inspection. But a leading CAPA consultant says many companies may have overreacted and made things unnecessarily difficult for…
William A. Levinson
Henry Ford’s My Life and Work is the bible of Aldous Huxley’s dystopian Brave New World, which is an excellent example of hiding something in plain view. The people in Huxley's story essentially worship Henry Ford, with the sign of the T (Model T) replacing the Christian cross, and years recorded…
MIT News
We live in an age of increased specialization: physicians who treat just one ailment, scholars who study just one period, network administrators who know just one operating system. However, researchers at MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) have shown that, in a number of…
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.
T
he monthly innovation meeting commenced with Joyce, one of the…
MIT News
April’s factory collapse in Bangladesh, which killed more than 700 people, has renewed public debate over working conditions in the developing world: How can dangerous and debilitating factory work be improved?
For more than a decade, MIT political scientist Richard Locke has studied that…
Tom Kadala
Imagine for a moment that a friend followed you with a webcam and recorded every moment of your typical work day. What could you learn from so much data? Probably not much, unless you matched each video frame with a related task. Once you did, however, you could pinpoint areas for improvement by…
Matthew E. May
One of my favorite insights comes from Harvard’s David Garvin: “Learning will always remain something of an art, but even the best artists can improve their technique.” I like it because it quite subtly highlights two different yet intertwined activities, learning and training.
Most companies…
Jack Dunigan
Editor’s note: This continues Jack Dunigan’s series about unsung heroes in the workplace, and the 16 traits they all share.
You’ve encountered them, those insecure types who have a point to prove, weight to throw around, and a chip on a shoulder they are just hoping someone will knock off.…
Denise Robitaille
Editor’s note: Denise Robitaille is a member of the U.S. TAG to ISO/TC 176, the committee responsible for updating the ISO 9000 family of standards. She will be reporting on the revision progress to ISO 9001, which will be completed in 2015. Read other articles in the series here.
By now most…
NIST
The market for miniature, hybrid machines known as MEMS, which are microelectromechanical systems, is diversified, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has introduced a long-awaited measurement tool that will help designers, manufacturers, and customers see eye-to-eye on…
Thomas R. Cutler
Lift trucks are one of the most important transport vehicles for goods at almost all companies. Automating the functions of a manned lift truck to positioning, monitoring, tracking, and identification enables fewer accidents, less material damage, higher productivity, and best-practice standard…
jeffdewar
The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program includes employee empowerment as an integral part of its criteria. The word “empower,” or one of its derivatives, appears seven times in the criteria in reference to workforce development, yet it remains one of the most elusive elements to embrace.
In…
Harry Hertz
I always find the annual Baldrige Quest for Excellence Conference to be more than a mere gathering of people to discuss topics of common interest. It is an energy-rich experience. The 25th anniversary event was all that and more because of the combination of celebratory gala, Baldrige Award…
Donald J. Wheeler
You may occasionally encounter charts with two-sigma limits. The origins of this practice are not clear, and no real justification of this practice has been given in the literature. In this article, I will consider the theoretical and practical consequences of using two-sigma limits on a process…
NVision Inc.
NVision Inc. recently volunteered its 3D laser-scanning services to help Sarasota sculptor Greg Marra create an exact replica of the rifle that former Navy Seal Chris Kyle used while in the military.
Christopher Scott “Chris” Kyle is widely considered to have been the most lethal sniper in U.S.…
