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The word kanban means “sign” or “signboard” in Japanese and is often used in conjunction with lean or just-in-time principles for scheduling and manufacturing. Kanban is a “pull” system, whereby product, parts, or inventory move forward based on customer demand, thus eliminating inventory, waste,…
MIT News
The manufacturing sector, its advocates note, is burdened by negative stereotypes. Outsiders often mistakenly think that manufacturing consists of jobs that are “dumb, dirty, and dull,” as MIT President Susan Hockfield said during a recent conference on the subject.
Many people also view…
Miriam Boudreaux
So, you think you’ve got them all figured it out, and then, bam! Somebody else comes up with a new quality acronym to throw you off your game. But don’t give up too soon. Acronyms are confusing, but they all boil down to continual improvement. The trick is to decide, along with your company, which…
Donald J. Wheeler
Editor--Part 2 of this article can be found here.
In some industries a few test batches will be produced prior to going into production. When this happens, a critical question is: “Are all of the test batches alike?” With only one value per batch, how can we compare a set of three or more values to…
Bill Kalmar
A government task force recently proclaimed that the prostate scientific antigen (PSA) test need not be administered to detect cancer. The report indicates that the results of surgery can result in incontinence, sexual dysfunction, heart problems, and even death.
Men for years have had this test,…
Jude Holmes
What is the greatest threat to the U.S. manufacturer? The great recession? Close, but not quite. Corporate espionage? Save it for the movies. Obamacare? Let’s not go there. A product recall can make every other problem seem trivial.
The folks at Toyota know something about that. The 2009–2010…
The Conference Board
According to a new report from The Conference Board, the proportion of employees who work predominantly from home or from another remote location has, during the last decade, more than tripled in many industries, while nearly doubling nationwide among all full-time (nonself-employed) U.S. workers…
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…
