All Features
Davis Balestracci
Any article about control charts leads to inevitable (and torturous) discussions of special cause tests—all nine of them. No wonder confused people continue to use things like trend lines. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
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First of all,…
Michelle LaBrosse
A serious condition is spreading like fireweed across corporate America. The symptoms include glazed-over eyes, droopy shoulders, cramped hands, aversion to natural lighting, and a permanent butt print in your office chair. This condition is called “Corporate Zombie Syndrome.” It can strike when…
Bill Kalmar
This is a call to action for all quality professionals, for Baldrige winners, for Baldrige applicants, for Baldrige examiners, for state quality award winners, for state quality award program directors and their staff, and anyone who values the impact that the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality…
Thomas R. Cutler
Process requirements for catalog and online fulfillment centers are quite distinguishable from brick-and-mortar retailers. Even catalog companies such as Oriental Trading Co., Cornerstone Brands, and Augusta Sportswear face unique challenges, and each of them has turned to voice-picking…
Steven Ouellette
Let's face it—many industrial researchers, including Six Sigma Black Belts, do a terrible job of planning the research they need to do to perform their jobs efficiently. See that guy over there? Yeah, he is the one I am talking about, so you should read this article so you can help the poor…
Michael Lowenstein
There is a strong recognition that customer service is especially important in the branded experience. Service is one of the few times that companies will personally interact with their customers. This interaction helps the company understand customers’ needs while, at the same time, it shapes…
NVision Inc.
Engineers from NVision Inc., using the company's HandHeld scanner, were able to quickly reverse engineer a large impeller for a major hydroelectric facility, sparing the facility what would have been an extended shutdown had they needed to produce a replacement impeller from scratch. In less than…
Michael Lowenstein
The word “advocate” has French and Latin origins. It has multiple applications, including legal, political, social care, and marketplace. It is the marketplace applications where the business, academic marketing, and management consulting communities have focused. Essentially, advocacy can be…
Bill Kalmar
It seems that you can't pick up a newspaper today (yes, I still get one) without reading a story about the sorry state of education in the United States. Why has the quality of our educational system slipped? Why can't Johnny read? Here are my thoughts inspired by the proliferation of back-to-…
Paul Naysmith
In the mid 1970s to mid 1980s the Punk movement was an intensely bright burning star that fizzled out just as quickly as it came in. As I understand it, the Punk movement was the antidote to the excessive color and pageantry of the Glam Rock scene. Punk music was stripped back, rockin’ in your…
With a heavy focus on research and development, and innovation, Eltek Valere develops and manufactures advanced electronic power supplies. They were the first company to release and manufacture a high-efficiency power rectifier.
Eltek Valere is the world technology leader in energy conversion,…
John Flaig
A run chart is a graphical display of data over time. Run charts are used to visually analyze processes according to time or sequential order. They are useful in assessing process stability, discovering patterns in data, and facilitating process diagnosis and appropriate improvement actions.…
Management system standards trace their beginnings to the use of simple preventive practices that were developed and used at the beginning of the industrial revolution. These preventive practices included responses to common problems, for example, ensuring changes are communicated to everyone…
William A. Levinson
Professional societies can and should break the costly paradigm that a conference requires the physical presence of all attendees. A conference with a virtual attendance option can increase participation enormously while demonstrating how businesses around the world can reduce travel expenses.…
Patrick Stone
I don’t know about you, but I sleep easier now knowing that our Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has declared war on unpasteurized milk in the United States [Editors note: also see Fox News, NaturalNews.com]. It’s not enough that the U.S. government is fighting the war on terror (an oxymoron)…
Tripp Babbitt
Charlie Bucket and his adventures in a chocolate factory may be fantasy, but anyone watching realizes that the Oompa-Loompas provide most of the innovation and work at the factory. Yet in today’s service companies, the emphasis is less on the Oompa-Loompas and more on the Willy Wonkas…
American Express
Americans are placing an even greater premium on quality customer service this year. Results from an American Express survey indicate that seven in 10 Americans (70%) are willing to spend an average of 13-percent more with companies they believe provide excellent customer service. This is up…
Akhilesh Gulati
Cooking is not my forte, but I try. I intended my latest concoction to be interesting, new, and easy. It was a soup, made with nontraditional ingredients, and it won rave reviews at a neighborhood potluck. No one could guess all the ingredients, so it won the “unique” dish award. When asked…
In part one of this two-part article, we looked at the history of management system standards. Part two details some of the evidence that supports the assertion that these standards add value to organizations.
A 2008 detailed study published by the Harvard Business School provides real data,…
Dave Anderson
Every leader tells a white lie every now and then, right? Perhaps—but that doesn’t make it OK. White lies can do serious damage to your reputation and can lead to much bigger issues down the road. Read on to see why cleaning up your act can help save your business.
Picture this: It’s 4:30 p.m.…
The QA Pharm
The truism, “Quality, cost, and speed—pick two,” was often quoted throughout my career: meaning a production company could not achieve all three ideals and therefore must choose which two out of three ideals to concentrate on;
• Sacrifice quality with low cost and high speed
• Sacrifice cost…
When the Japanese word kaizen entered the language of quality improvement via Masaaki Imai’s seminal book, Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success, (McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 1986), the author defined kaizen as “ongoing improvement involving everyone.” In a 2011 video posted on YouTube, Imai…
Bill Kalmar
Most of us, I’m confident, have some rather significant events in our lives that bring joy and excitement. It could be marriage, the birth of a child, perhaps a first grandchild, a new home, or retirement. Somewhere in all those events many of us will celebrate our 50th high-school reunion. That…
Duke University
Duke University electrical engineers have developed a man-made material that they say literally allows them to manipulate light at will.
They say that the results of their latest proof-of-concept experiments could lead to the replacement of electrical components with those based on optical…
Mark R. Hamel
First, the introduction. This post was earnestly written by my friend, Jeff Fuchs. He’s the director of the Maryland World Class Consortia, a lean nonprofit assistance organization in the mid-Atlantic. He’s also president of Neovista Consulting, which works with large and small organizations on…
