All Features
Dawn Bailey
Picture in your mind the classic Texas burger—juicy, mouth-watering, topped with the perfect fixings (apologies to vegetarians).
Now assume that your key products are hamburgers, and that a picture of the perfect burger is used consistently in your social media activities. It’s simple. It’s…
William A. Levinson
Renaissance engineer and artist Leonardo da Vinci is well known as the intellectual father of the modern tank, submarine, and helicopter. He reputedly introduced a deliberate design flaw into his tank’s locomotion system because he never wanted anybody to actually build this terrible weapon.
The…
Bruce Hamilton
Padding factory performance has become a best practice at one company I visited recently. As I walked the floor with the site manager, I was impressed by the level of improvement activity I saw.
“We’ve been at this for about eight years,” said the site manager. “But it’s only in last couple years…
Alan Nicol
Statistical process control (SPC) is generally a Six Sigma tool. A few people and organizations will use SPC as a stand-alone methodology. Generally, it is not a tool found in the lean toolbox because conducting SPC is considered, by some, to be a nonvalue-added process.
However, there is a…
Steven Weeks
Due to globalization and advancing technology, today’s manufacturing environment is increasingly competitive. Therefore, the accuracy and quality of machined durable goods is extremely important if a company is to stay competitive. Of course, having the necessary equipment to perform the…
Kevin Meyer
Electronic manufacturer Jabil’s website promotes its commitment to lean, especially its report showing the following:
• 13,000 kaizen events so far in 2013 • 322,000 completed in 2012 • 9,500 Lean Bronze practitioners • More than 200 Six Sigma Black Belts
That truly is impressive, and I happen to…
Chad Crisostomo
Editor’s note: FARO is offering a free webinar on portable arms and software on Tuesday, July 16, 2013, at 11 a.m. Pacific. Click here to register.
Articulating arms, also known 3D measurement arms, are portable coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) that determine and record the location of a probe…
Ryan E. Day
They did it again—ruined my scoop. I pride myself on what I consider a natural ability to read between the lines and then find information and facts to fill in that void. Like the void created when companies wax verbose about some altruistic subject like “trust,” but keep mum on their motivation…
Kimberly Egan
What do China, Maine, Connecticut, Chipotle, and Whole Foods have in common? They all think you have a right to know whether the food you are eating contains any genetically modified organisms, known as GMOs.
I like that. Why do I care? Because the genes in GMO plants have been altered in a…
Michael Ray Fincher
For me, a quality professional with 20 years experience in manufacturing—producing everything from garbage bags to luxury ski boats—my transition to the service industry was a shocking experience to say the least. It was not without challenges, I must confess.
When I was asked to join the…
Bruno Scibilia
All processes are affected by various sources of variations over time. Products that are designed based on optimal settings will, in reality, tend to drift away from their ideal settings during the manufacturing process.
Environmental fluctuations and process variability often cause major quality…
Mike Richman
Trend conferences are all the rage these days. For those of you who have never attended one, this is an event in which corporate managers gather together their colleagues, their customers, and assorted media types willing to work the rubber-chicken circuit. During the course of a day or two, you’…
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.
Belinda started the My Executive Council (MEC) meeting with the…
Jamie Ambrosi
With summer and family vacations coming up, I feel compelled to publicly reveal a vacation-related personality quirk of mine (one of many, to be completely honest) and then to invite you to play a fun, though slightly geeky, game that will reveal this quirk in action.
First, the revelation: My…
Jack Dunigan
Editor’s note: This continues Jack Dunigan’s series about unsung heroes in the workplace, and the 16 traits they all share.
When I lived in the Virgin Islands, I learned that almost all luxury yachts in the world are finished by women… and the reason is not that they will work for less money.
No…
Bruce Hamilton
Some time ago, while giving a presentation titled “Organizational Obstacles to Lean,” I displayed a slide captioned “It’s not about culture.” My point was that “culture” is a bad analogy because it places the burden for change on the shoulders of employees rather than on management where it…
Richard Chambers
I recently spoke at a conference where one of the sessions was called “Four Most Dangerous Words in Finance.” It reminded me of a blog I wrote a few years ago called “Ten Things Not to Say in an Audit Report.” Beyond the categories of phrases or messages that I explored in that blog, however, lie…
Alan Nicol
At the heart of lean methodology are the seven classic wastes (eight or nine if you subscribe to evolved methods). Waste is the enemy of lean. Strategies such as pull systems, first-in-first-out prioritization, takt time management, and kaizen are methods we use to minimize and eliminate waste in…
Matthew Littlefield
Editor’s note: There is a free recording of the QD/LNS webinar on enterprise quality management software (EQMS) which ran Tuesday, June 25, 2013, at 11 a.m. Pacific. Click here to view recording.
There are a number of costs and benefits when standardizing across the enterprise a process that’s…
InfinityQS
With cloud computing becoming the new norm in the market, manufacturing leaders would be wise to fully educate themselves on how they can benefit from its services. Following are six benefits you can expect from the cloud.
Cost flexibility. By using the cloud, manufacturing leaders can reduce IT…
MIT News
You may have seen little squares of Tcho chocolate in their brightly colored wrappers decorated with futuristic parabolas of gold and silver. They’re easily found: Starbucks has sold them; Whole Foods sells them now.
Those usually aren’t the stores you visit to track down handcrafted chocolate…
Michael Causey
The Internet giveth and the Internet taketh away. For years, we’ve been hearing about the benefits online tools will bring to the medical industry, especially at hospitals and physicians’ offices. Many of those promises have come true, and it’s been a benefit for patients and industry.
But that…
Matthew E. May
If you’ve followed the evolution of my thinking through the series of books I’ve written, you know that elegance—defined as the ability to achieve the maximum effect with minimum means, and characterized by the presence of both uncommon simplicity and surprising impact—is my root cause.
Elegant…
MIT News
Editor’s note: This is part two of a two-part series on how technology is, in part, behind the sluggish employment growth of the last 10 to 15 years. To read part one, click here.
To get some insight into Harvard economist Lawrence Katz’s question, “Will the job disruptions caused by technology…
Mark Graban
From my experience, you have to be cautious when somebody says either, “Lean says you should...” or “Toyota would tell you to...” because those statements, even if stated authoritatively, can be wrong.
At a recent speaking engagement (I won’t disclose where), a professor (one who teaches about…
