All Features
Michelle LaBrosse
Imagine you are sitting in your car, wondering, “What shall I do for dinner? Shall I pick up Chinese food to go, meet my friend Sally, or go home and cook dinner myself while watching American Idol?” All of a sudden you’re sitting there, frozen in time, unable to make a decision about what to…
Bill Kalmar
This is one of those stories that defies logic and common sense. It is a story that stretches the lines of poor customer service and transcends into the annals of, “How to Disenfranchise Customers Over a Piece of Cheese.” Additionally, it is one of those episodes where you look around for a…
American National Standards Institute ANSI
(ANSI: Washington) -- The Internet as we know it is about to max out. Within the next 12 to 18 months, every one of the 4.3 billion internet protocol (IP) addresses will have been exhausted.
When the Internet was created more than 30 years ago, 4.3 billion unique addresses seemed…
European Space Agency ESA
A key technical challenge of the joint European Space Agency (ESA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) LISA mission has been solved: how to maintain precise pointing of a laser beam across 5 million km of space (figure 1).
The next-decade Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (…
Tripp Babbitt
The real battle for quality doesn’t lie in processes; it lies in thinking. The recent rift in the state of Wisconsin and other places caused in part by increasing government costs leads one to ask: “Who is responsible? Is it management or labor?”
Gov. Scott Walker’s actions in Wisconsin…
Georgia Institute of Technology
The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) may possess the secret to baking perfect buns every time. Its researchers have developed a production-line system that automatically inspects the quality of sandwich buns exiting the oven and adjusts oven temperatures if it detects unacceptable buns…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
During the last couple of decades we have seen huge advances in laser trackers, portable arms, structured light scanners, laser scanners, photogrammetry devices, and other 3-D measurement technologies that have made accurate 3-D shop floor measurement more feasible than ever before. Each of…
Bruce McDuffee
If you’re in the business of manufacturing drugs, medical devices, nutraceuticals, or manufacturing or importing any product in the United States that falls under current Good Manufacturing Processes (cGMP) regulations, your facility will be inspected by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (…
Davis Balestracci
Quality improvement people sure love those tools. A particular favorite, of course, is the control chart, of which, I think, seven are usually taught. Two questions I’m always asked are, “Which chart do I use for which situation?” and “When and how often should I recalculate my limits?”
Wrong…
William A. Levinson
Last May I wrote in “Airline Companies Are Driving Customers Away” that the U.S. Military Academy allows cadets only four responses to questions as to whether a specific duty or responsibility was carried out: “Yes, sir,” “No, sir,” “I don’t understand, sir,” and “No excuse, sir.” Col. Larry…
Joseph A. DeFeo
Designing for customer needs always leads to higher quality products and services, as well as innovative outcomes, because an effective design process uncovers hidden customer needs. Adapting the most effective models of continuous innovation can create the habit of innovation. Continuous…
Oscar Combs
Anyone involved with any type of management system has run across the term “preventive action.” It leaves many professionals scratching their head, wondering what a preventive action actually is. I must admit, the term and its concept can be quite confusing and abstract.
Webster’s dictionary…
Kimberly Egan
It turns out that I am not the only one who has noticed that food regulation is sometimes a little, well, silly. The federal government recently “identified a mother lode of government waste and duplication” and decided that getting rid of it “could potentially save billions of tax dollars annually…
Angelo Lyall
The business world seems fascinated with the story of how Toyota “invented” lean manufacturing. In actuality, Toyota did not aim to create this heavily marketed tool kit that we call lean manufacturing; the company simply did things “The Toyota Way” as they put it. Unleashing the innovative…
Miriam Boudreaux
There’s no more vicious cycle than problems that constantly reoccur because there’s no time to stop and solve them correctly. Although we all would like this cycle to stop, managers can’t afford to let employees waste time with too much researching, and employees don’t always have the time…
Sam Pfeifle
With stakeholders that include the Palestinian National Authority, the Roman Catholic Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, and the Armenian Apostolic Authorities, it’s hard to overestimate the religious and political importance of the International Project for Survey, Study, Assessment,…
Marti MacGibbon
Heather, a manager at a publishing company, prides herself on her extremely high standards, even jokingly referring to herself as a “perfectionist,” but she has difficulty meeting deadlines. During brainstorming sessions with her staff, Heather yearns to unearth new discoveries and innovations…
John Hamm
There are people in every organization whose titles indicate they are leaders. Often, and unfortunately, their employees beg to differ. Oh, they don’t say it directly, not to the boss’s face, anyway. They say it with their ho-hum performance, their games of avoidance, and their dearth of…
Bruce Hamilton
Sometimes things that seem factual are not exactly true. Here are a few examples relating to inventory:
• When I was a materials manager, the auditors would declare that we had taken a “good inventory” at year-end when the amount of positive variances was counterbalanced by an equal amount of…
Steven Ouellette
“Come and listen to a story ‘bout a man named Ned / a poor Texas Sharpshooter barely kept his family fed. Then one day he was shootin’ at his barn / and he came up with a plan to spin a silly yarn. ‘Specifications,’ he said, ‘making of… the easy way.’ ” What do a Texas sharpshooter and…
For years now, outsourcing U.S. manufacturing overseas has been a common practice. Asia leads the way in producing most consumer goods—from electronics to housewares and everything in between—at a far lower cost than would be possible in the United States. Although this has resulted in a…
Stewart Anderson
The recent events that have unfolded in Egypt and resulted in the overthrow of an authoritarian regime by the Egyptian people contains an important lesson for organizations: Authority does not exist unless it is accepted by those in lower positions.
Most organizations have a hierarchical design…
Mark R. Hamel
A recent George F. Will column referenced the sign re-created to the right. Although I don’t necessarily believe that the signage encompasses the complete definition of discipline, it certainly provides food for thought.
A lot of folks think of discipline, especially in the context…
Vision Engineering Ltd.
From its humble beginnings as a music carrier, the compact disc (CD)—and later the digital versatile disc (DVD)—is now entering its third generation for the high-definition market as HD DVDs or Blu-ray. However, one thing that must stay consistent throughout these evolutions is the high-…
Ed OBoyle
We all know these are difficult economic times. Consumers’ priorities have shifted dramatically, and that means dramatic changes for many businesses. Gallup has analyzed consumer behavior in many different sectors of the economy throughout the recession. What they’ve discovered is a foundational…
