All Features
Bill Hathaway
Within a process improvement or quality program, training activities are critical to building organizational capability and typically represent the highest expense category. And yet the training process often receives little formal scrutiny. Perhaps it would be appropriate to focus process…
Ngoc Le
Manufacturers love to hear the word “in control” when talking about processes. From a statistical process control (SPC) point of view, an in-control process means that a process is stable or predictable. After putting in the work to get a process controlled, how do you make sure it stays in control…
Timothy F. Bednarz
Effective leaders manage by keeping their finger on the pulse of their employees’ key activities. When tasks and assignments are delegated, leaders must take the time to review each employee’s progress against goals to determine what, if any, additional training and coaching is needed to…
Josh Cable
Editor's note: This is part one of a two-part series. In part two, former manufacturing managers will offer tips and best practices on how to transition from manufacturing to consulting.
In early 1990, when Chevron Corp. told Lonnie Wilson that he was being transferred from El Paso, Texas—where…
Alan Nicol
So, we have a process improvement program installed. Our people are trained or are getting trained. We have a list of prioritized improvement efforts, and we are attacking that list concertedly. We are tracking our improvement benefits, and the numbers are good. What could possibly be wrong?…
Georgia Institute of Technology
Using a novel method of integrating video technology and familiar control devices, a research team from the Georgia Institute of Technology is developing a technique to simplify remote control of robotic devices.
The researchers’ goal is to enhance a human operator’s ability to perform precise…
Tim Lozier
Editor’s note: In an upcoming webinar presented by EtQ and moderated by Quality Digest, we will consider the elements of risk management and what to look for in an effective software solution. For a preview of the webinar, please tune in to the Fri., Oct. 5, 2012, episode of Quality Digest Live,…
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
On those sweltering summer days—when it’s too hot to play at the playground, it seems like you could fry an egg on the pavement, and your car feels like an oven after a couple hours parked at the mall—it’s not just the beating sun that’s driving up the temperature. It’s our very urban environment,…
Paul Naysmith
Let me give you my definition of “PowerPointing”: To provide a presentation of slides so crammed with text that the background no longer shows, and that are read aloud, line by line, by someone staring at a screen rather than the audience. Many of you have experienced this; often the presenter will…
Donald J. Wheeler
I n my September column, I showed how the normal distribution is the distribution of maximum uncertainty. Now I will expand on that theme and answer the questions generated by that column.
Last month I demonstrated that the middle 91 percent of the normal distribution is spread out to the maximum…
Rip Stauffer
Editor’s note: In response to Kyle Toppazzini’s article, “Lean Without Six Sigma May Be a Failing Proposition,” published in the Sept. 27, 2012, issue of Quality Digest Daily, Rip Stauffer left the following observant comment.
I started my career in quality when the consulting world hadn’t yet…
Advancing the organization and achieving business success require developing new products, finding new markets, and building enabling systems and infrastructure. Keeping execution aligned with the strategy to accomplish these objectives has always been a difficult challenge in running a business.…
Nanovea
Electronic applications typically have challenging surfaces, angles, steps, and structures that must be measured during development. Whether it is circuit-board flatness or microstructures on the board itself, precise measurement is crucial. Components continue to shrink in size, and surfaces…
Arun Hariharan
I’m a customer. One morning last week, I visited my bank for a small requirement that should have taken about two minutes. However, there was a big line and 27 people were ahead of me. This was my fourth visit to this bank for the same requirement. My work remained on hold until I could resolve…
Patrick Runkel
You know the famous proverb: "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime." It's especially true when you're casting your line for statistics.
When I first started using Minitab Statistical Software, it was daunting trying to learn all of its…
Timothy F. Bednarz
The overarching principle behind organizational development is that all employees have a wealth of knowledge and experience that can be harnessed and tapped into, which enables the organization to grow. Managers are the organization’s primary facilitators of knowledge and experience at their…
Akhilesh Gulati
Terry had been using lean techniques to improve his company for quite a while now. He’d held kaizen events, reduced inventory, provided training for his employees, and was quite pleased with the progress his organization had made.
However, he felt it was time move beyond this type of…
Ron Kaufman
When an organization’s employees aren’t happy, it’s unlikely they’ll be providing the kind of quality service that leads to happy customers. One of the fastest ways to create internal strife is to let “difficult” people go unchecked. The best way to handle these personalities is to help resolve the…
Christina Tangora Schlachter, Terry Hildebrandt
The global economy has turned the rules of leadership upside down and shaken them vigorously for good measure. Where there was once a fairly defined hierarchy—Boss A tells Worker B what to do, and Worker B does it—there’s now a flat landscape where everyone is expected to take the reins as needed.…
Mark R. Hamel
We’ve all heard the flight attendant’s compulsory safety announcement regarding oxygen masks. Personally, I’ve grown pretty numb to the whole safety monologue. Not a good thing.
During a relatively recent trip on a Southwest flight there was a refreshing twist to the typically sober announcement.…
Miriam Boudreaux
No matter how much effort we put into meeting a quality standard’s requirements for continual improvement, there are times when we are not sure whether to call for a corrective action. Although there is no instrument that points to yes or no and determines when a corrective action is needed, I have…
Matthew Littlefield
In part one, “Overall Equipment Effectiveness,” (OEE) I gave a detailed explanation of how LNS Research thinks the OEE Formula is best applied to a given asset or production line to both maximize local production efficiency and overall supply chain performance. In this article, I’ll go through a…
Matthew Littlefield
Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is an important metric for many companies' initiatives in operational excellence. As of Sept. 5, 2012, we have now benchmarked more than 350 different companies across a number of different strategic objectives, metrics, and operational excellence capabilities…
Jay Arthur—The KnowWare Man
I went into my local Barnes & Noble looking for a book and decided to check if they carried my book, Lean Six Sigma Demystified. There were four rows of business books on management, leadership, sales, and so on. The “quality” section, consisting of about 15 titles, was on the bottom shelf of…
Tripp Babbitt
In 1862, the bloodiest battle in American history was fought on Sept. 17, and 23,000 soldiers from the North and South were killed in about 12 hours of fighting. This military “victory” for the North paved the way for Abraham Lincoln to issue the emancipation proclamation a few months later. Not 10…
