All Features
Mike Roberts
If you're responsible for managing operations, the following scenario won’t be new to you: You have a meeting with the executive team tomorrow, and you are running around to get information on metrics for your presentation. The next day, you’re expected to report on the overall performance of your…
Umberto Tunesi
Those of us who are accustomed to work with standards like ISO/TS 16949 are also accustomed to “hear voices”: the voice of the customer, the voice of the stakeholders, and so on. The only voice we are not accustomed to hear is the voice of quality. Perhaps this should be called the “sounds of…
Harry Hertz
In an earlier column, I focused on innovation as I pondered the growing importance of the topic to U.S. competitiveness and how to heighten attention to the topic in the 2013–2014 Criteria for Performance Excellence. This month, I am focusing on a second topic of growing importance to business and…
Gene Grilli
There has been no shortage of innovations in leak detection design since Uson first developed automated leak testing methods for the U.S. space mission a half century ago and then brought these techniques to various commercial applications. Last year, for example, Uson unveiled a leak tester that…
Mark Graban
When I was a guest on Quality Digest Live, co-host Dirk Dusharme asked me about hesitations that some health care professionals might have about the lean concept of “standardized work.” As you can see in the show’s archived recording, I talked about how the increased standardization of core…
Tim Lozier
In today’s dynamic business environment, the supply chain plays an ever-increasing role in bringing products to market. As businesses continue to evolve and improve efficiencies in the production process, suppliers play an important role in ensuring business objectives are met. The growing global…
Richard Gasset
A
t a recent nondestructive testing (NDT) task group meeting, the topic of human factors came up, and it took me back to my previous position as a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) repair man. Part of my responsibilities then was to help develop a training manual as a companion to our repair…
William A. Levinson
Two thousand years ago, somebody (like the future Alexander the Great) who wanted to learn from a famous philosopher (like Aristotle) had to visit him in person, or vice versa. Written correspondence was of course possible, but every letter had to be written by hand, and it could take months to…
Mary Beth Edmond, Jonathan Flanders
Editor's note: Part one of this three-part series on patient safety, "Establishing a Patient Safety Culture," offered an overview of the Juran Model for Patient Safety. Part Two takes a closer look at Juran's patient safety curriculum and certification.
It has been 22 years since the Institute of…
ISO
Editor's note: The following interview with ANSI CEO, Joe Bhatia, first appeared in the June 2012 edition of ISO Focus+ magazine and is reproduced with the kind permission of ISO Central Secretariat.
On Sept. 17–22, 2012, the United States will play host to the world’s standardization community as…
James O. Pearson
In retrospect it was easy to see that the strategic planning process for new products was flawed. What began as a simple customer-service escalation due to product quality issues for Strategic Network and Broadband Co. (SNB) exposed a major corporate process problem that affected revenue and…
Donald J. Wheeler
In a class last month I was asked to explain a number that occurs in some measurement system evaluations and which is known as the precision to tolerance ratio (P/T ratio). As I will show in this column, it turns out to be related to the capability ratio.
We will need some notation in what follows…
Matthew E. May
Every day, we are bombarded with messages about how to get things done. We hear a lot less, though, about how to get things right. Most waste in business operations come not from doing the right work inefficiently, but simply doing the wrong work in the first place.
Here are three books that should…
Bill Kalmar
This is the time of year for graduations, weddings, and outdoor musical concerts. And of course, tomorrow many of us will be at a local park, picnic dinners spread out on a blanket beneath the stars waiting for the July 4th fireworks.
Now I realize I will not be endearing myself to all the dog…
Mohan Nair
It’s been a grueling five years with the bailouts, rampant unemployment, declining home values, and rising prices, which have manifested as insecurity, fear, and stress, and for those who are employed—overwork. Employees have been harassed into productivity for so long they’re either running on…
Mark R. Hamel
The question, “Why do you ask?” is typically posed in response to an inquiry that is deemed a bit nosey. It’s actually more of a statement... along the lines of, “Mind your own business!”
But for the purpose of this article, it really is a question—one of, and for, the lean leader’s self-…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Imagine smart tools or robotic delivery systems that instantaneously know where they are on an ever-changing shop floor, a system that could automatically orient a CAD model of an object on the shop floor to the local coordinate system without the use of targets or human intervention. Such tools…
Gallup
Residents in the Pacific, Mountain, and West North Central regions of the United States are the most likely to say they learned something new yesterday and that their supervisor, if they work, acts more like a partner than a boss. Their strong performance in these areas helps these regions rise to…
Bruce Hamilton
When I was in production, we used the term “waves” to describe the ebb and flow of work to the factory. Some days there would be very little, and others a big heaping pile. When the waves came, we worked overtime, bumped queues, and sometimes used less experienced workers to fill in gaps. So-called…
Dawn Keller
I love product development and quality engineering. There are days when I can’t believe that I actually get paid to do this. Between you and me, I’d do this work for a lot less money. In fact, even on the days that I hate the particular circumstances of my job, I still love my job. If that makes…
Knowledge at Wharton
Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli’s most recent book, Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs: The Skills Gap and What Companies Can Do About It (Wharton Digital Press, 2012) has inspired a reaction from just about every group with a stake in today’s workforce. Cappelli debunks the oft-repeated…
NIST
In yet another Olympian feat of measurement, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently calibrated a tape that will be used to measure out the distance of this summer’s Olympic marathon—a distance of 26 miles and 385 yards—to 1 part in 1,000.
Measurement is a…
Davis Balestracci
I am in the midst of teaching an online MBA course in statistical thinking. This is actually my second go-round, and I've heavily revised my inherited materials, which were well-meaning but had some obvious gaps.
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I insisted on using Brian Joiner’s Fourth Generation Management…
The Conference Board
(The Conference Board: New York) -- Americans of all ages and income brackets have the highest job satisfaction levels since the beginning of the Great Recession. However, the majority continue to be unhappy at work, according to a report released by The Conference Board.
The report, based on a…
Paul Naysmith
These days quality professionals have shifted away from actually writing procedures to helping others develop documentation to describe the businesses they are in. Although I live in hope, I still see many poor attempts at “procedures”—or at least failures in their facilitation.
I have a simple…
