All Features
Mike Micklewright
I write this as I am sitting in the Jury Assembly Room (JAIL for short) on the 17th floor of the Richard J. Daley Center in downtown Chicago, waiting for something to happen.
I estimate that there are another 130 poor souls who probably have a million things to do and are waiting just like I am in…
Umberto Tunesi
They come trendily dressed, grinning and baring their teeth. They are equipped with the latest electronic tools. And they are forever hypnotizing you into believing that they come in peace.
I’m one of them. I know these aliens from inside their world.
They tell you that you have problems, but do…
Michelle Paret
I couldn’t wait to get to the Guinness brewery after landing in Dublin. Yes, I was eager to taste a pint nearly fresh off the line, but I was also curious to see if there would be any indication that the brewery was home to arguably one of the most important developments in the field of statistics…
Jim Rough
There are three fundamentally different systems for eliciting collective intelligence in a large organization: the triangle, the box, or the circle. Each of these systems has a different underlying structure, promotes a different attitude in people, requires different leadership competencies, and…
Paul Naysmith
Last year I wrote a column titled “My Toyota Dilemma,” what I considered a nice little story about how I, an avid fan of the Toyota quality principles, didn’t actually own a Toyota, and how ironic that was. However, Quality Digest fans, I can now declare that I am—well, really my wife is—a proud…
Steve Geraghty
Although the many logistical aspects of product assembly make the welding stage of manufacturing inherently challenging, assembling products in high-mix environments is particularly demanding, since several different product models are processed every day. Many part numbers and part scenarios…
Joel Smith
Story update 5/31/2012: Joel Smith and his wife Silvana are the proud parents of a new baby girl, Juliana Garcia Smith, born May 23, 2012.
My wife and I have been expecting a baby girl soon—very soon, in fact, as in “Will this be published before the baby is born?” soon. The due date given was May…
Ron Kaufman
Travelers coming through New York’s three airports—La Guardia, JFK, and Newark—might soon feel the need to double check that they aren’t walking through the set of a science fiction movie. That’s because the airports are introducing some high-tech help in the form of “Ava”—a life-sized, computer-…
Jay Arthur—The KnowWare Man
At the ASQ World Conference held in Anaheim last week, I ran into my old friend Jack Revelle, author of many SPC books and videos. He said clients were constantly asking him to take Six Sigma and “dumb it down.” Surprisingly, despite everything the Six Sigma community knows about the voice of the…
University of Michigan
In the United States, factories produce about 75 percent of what the country consumes, but the right decisions by both business and political leaders could push that to 95 percent, say University of Michigan (U-M) researchers.
However, a huge portion of U.S. manufacturing—as much as 40 percent—…
Strategy
(Booz & Co.: New York) -- A new wave of optimism is overtaking the U.S. auto industry as it rebounds from the depths of the recession and a brutal restructuring, according to Booz & Co.’s second annual U.S. Automotive Industry Survey and Confidence Index.
“Bullishness and optimism…
Kimberly Egan
Today we’re going to talk about transglutaminase. It’s an enzymatic glue with which you can stick two proteins together. Doctors and biologists call it Factor VIII, and it is one of the many amino acids involved in one of my favorite biological events, the clotting cascade. When you cut yourself…
James Brewton
A common practice in manufacturing and other nonservice lean initiatives is the application of work cells for supporting workflow and productivity. Work cells enable maximum efficiency of workflow through a value stream by optimizing motion economy. One tool for efficient work cell design is a…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
It’s show time. That time of year when people with products to sell and people looking for products to buy hit the trade show trail. For quality pros and test and measurement folks, the lineup is daunting: Quality Expo, ASQ World Conference, CMSC, and of course IMTS, among many others. But are they…
Athenée Mastrangelo
Your clients are your No. 1 priority, right? So how are you managing their information and your relationship with them? Do you have all their information stuffed in a shoebox, or do you have an effective contact relationship management (CRM) system? Maybe you’re somewhere in between.
The…
Michelle LaBrosse
Some of us are natural-born planners. We plan out every moment of our lives in detail, from what we will be doing on the weekend to how many children we want and what their names will be, to how our career will progress—in detail.
Others of us are doers and are more spontaneous, nervous if too many…
Akhilesh Gulati
The IT department of a school district supported itself by providing application development, database maintenance, training, and other services to its internal clients, although no money exchanged hands. The school’s outreach unit, which provided training and education to local organizations, also…
Connecticut Spring and Stamping
For one Connecticut manufacturer of close-tolerance, precision-stamped and coiled metal parts, an eight-year journey to provide its customers with higher precision parts from progressive tools has reached a happy ending. In-house CNC machining has allowed it to stamp parts at a very low cost, and…
Matthew E. May
Five years ago, at noon on May 7, 2007, I sat in the canteen at the Los Angeles Policy Academy in Elysian Park, just north of downtown Los Angeles, awaiting the arrival of Captain Robert S. Hauck, then second in command of the West Los Angeles Bureau.
Some sort of ceremony had just concluded, and I…
jeffdewar, Kristine Bammert
There is a remarkable quality movement afoot centered in South Asia with tentacles that reach to the United States, Europe, and Africa.
Starting in primary school and extending throughout high school, students are introduced to the teachings of W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, Philip Crosby,…
Davis Balestracci
“I’m shocked... shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”
—Casablanca’s Captain Renault, as he’s closing down Rick’s Cafe... while being handed his gambling winnings
I saw an abstract of a recent talk by several “experts” who have been very active selling (expensive) improvement…
Kevin Rudy
This past week, History premiered a new show called the United Stats of America. No, that’s not a typo. It’s a show hosted by twin brothers who are both stand-up comedians and obsessed with statistics.
Since I’m also obsessed with statistics (I’m still working on the stand-up comedy part), I…
Knowledge at Wharton
If loyalty is defined as being faithful to a cause, ideal, custom, institution or product, then there seems to be a certain amount of infidelity in the workplace these days.
Consider some recent studies: MetLife’s 10th annual survey of employee benefits, trends and attitudes released in March 2012…
Bruce McDuffee
Humidity is a tough measurement. It’s very hard to get a repeatable measurement with low uncertainty. This post discusses seven best practices that will help you make a more accurate, repeatable, and reliable humidity measurement. The recommendations are primarily based on the NPL document, “A…
Paul Naysmith
Sales professionals, according to some circles at least, aren’t all that different from us quality professionals. I once believed they were two-faced liars, because they’d sell their mother to get that precious sales commission. However, as a systems thinker, I like to get my facts straight before…
