All Features
Environmental Quality Corner with Ken Appel
Ken Appel is the manager of regulated industries for Veriteq.
In part 1 of this article, we discussed the pros and cons of various systems for stand-alone monitoring instruments (e.g., chart recorders and data loggers) and wired networks, with and without power over Ethernet (POE). In the…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
The boys slumped against the wall of the dugout; you could read the despair on their faces. “What’s the point?” mumbled the right fielder. “We’re just going to lose again.” The team was on an eight-game losing streak, with a record of three wins and eight losses, and five games left to play.…
Environmental Quality Corner with Ken Appel
Ken Appel is the manager of regulated industries for Veriteq.
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he U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its European Union counterparts recently agreed to cooperate on pharmaceutical plant inspections to enable stepped-up enforcement of safety guidelines. These agreements will help…
Minitab LLC
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efore Michael Mercer established his consulting company, he accumulated more than 30 years of quality improvement experience at 3M. That experience led him to develop a deep trust in the power of Minitab Statistical Software. He began using one of the earliest mainframe computer versions to…
Thomas R. Cutler
Food safety standards are becoming increasingly stringent. Although government legislation has long been implemented, your customers may be driving an even higher standard of food safety through the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) or Safe Quality Food (SQF) Institute, which require third-…
Bob Kill is president and CEO of Enterprise Minnesota.
For manufacturers that watched their businesses decline as original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) opted to transfer their supplier relationships to cheap-labor countries such as China and India, there is now solid evidence that those…
Michelle LaBrosse
Michelle LaBrosse is the founder of Cheetah Learning
There’s a reason that top-performing executives all over the world have coaches. It’s because good coaching dramatically improves performance.
A study by Metrix Global showed coaching produced a 529-percent return on investment (ROI).…
Xing-Fei He is senior product manager at DALSA Corp.
Flawless brake operation is so essential to the safety of a vehicle that all brake systems have passed some type of safety testing before a driver ever gets behind the wheel. But how much better would you, as a driver, feel knowing that the…
Rob Snoeijs is a freelance technical writer for LayerWise.
LayerWise, a company based in Leuven, Belgium, focuses on selective laser melting (SLM), a powerful technology that shapes any desired metal-part geometry by melting metal powder layer by layer. Using this digital approach, the optimum…
In 2008, wheel-alignment machine builder Burke E. Porter Europe NV (BEP) approached 3-D measurements specialists LMI Technologies Inc. for advice. At the time, BEP was developing plans to improve performance for end-of-line wheel alignment with its series of noncontact-alignment (NCA) machines.…
The QA Pharm
My definition of “specification” is rather simple: It’s a promise.
Just like any other promise, you’d better be sincere when you make it and be able to keep it. Failure to keep a promise brings disappointment. Frequent failure leads to distrust. And consciously breaking a promise is nothing less…
Steven Ouellette
I know we have been talking about statistics a lot in my last few articles, but recent reader comments have prompted me to think more about why doing statistics properly matters. Come with me, dear reader, on a journey to find out why you should embrace, and not run screaming from, your inner…
Tripp Babbitt
In my previous article, “Prying Management Away from Old Assumptions,” we talked about the relationship between thinking, system, and performance. W. Edwards Deming told us that to improve performance, the system has to change and that the system represents 95 percent of any organization’s…
Minitab LLC
Gold'n Plump Poultry provides chicken products to stores, delicatessens, and restaurants in 40 states. Commitment to process excellence has helped the company thrive even in tough times, and Minitab Statistical Software has provided the powerful tools they needed to analyze quality data. But the…
Mike Richman
A recent article appearing in the Quality Digest Daily e-newsletter (“Why Lean? Why Now?” by Dean Bliss http://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/health-care-news/why-lean-why-now.html) discusses the value of lean in a health care setting. In his editorial, Bliss writes about the manufacturing origins…
100 Customer Service Tips by Larry Williams
If you think your time spent outside the workplace is devoid of circumstances that can affect your job, you’re mistaken. There are many factors outside of work that can be detrimental to your employment. The following tips will help you avoid leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that will lead right…
Donald J. Wheeler
Last year I discussed the problems of transforming data prior to analysis (see my August 2009 column, “Do You Have Leptokurtophobia?,” my September 2009 column, “Transforming the Data Can Be Fatal to Your Analysis,” and my October 2009 column,“Avoiding Statistical Jabberwocky.”) There I…
jeffdewar
Earlier this week, 100 attendees from near and far descended on Salt Lake City for the 2010 International Visual Workplace Summit, sponsored by the QMI Visual Lean Institute and the Utah Manufacturing Extension Partnership. We were all there to discuss the visual workplace. My first question was…
Bill Kalmar
Back in 1956, Dean Martin recorded a song that was No. 1 on the Billboard Chart for six weeks. It also turned out to be Martin’s biggest hit ever. That song was “Memories Are Made of This.” As our American pastime now turns to the World Series, I thought of the many memories I have of our Detroit…
100 Customer Service Tips by Larry Williams
“Good things come to those who wait!” When you show patience in making decisions, you make better, more informed decisions. In customer service, your ability to search out the right opportunity can make all the difference in the world.
In sports competition, it’s all about timing. On the…
Jennifer Robison
They might not know who you are. But they can make you fat or thin, they can make you smoke or quit, they can make you happy or sad—and they don’t even mean to. They do know the people that you know—and that’s how your network of friends, their friends, and their friends’ friends influence you.…
It is no secret that the health care industry is undergoing revolutionary changes. Are you responding by re-evaluating your approach to process improvement? In a world where doing more work with fewer resources is the norm rather than the exception, now is the right time to update your own work…
Thomas R. Cutler
Blount is a discrete manufacturer specializing in chain-saw components. At their plant in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, the company operates a 1,200-machine facility and serves a global market. Manufacturing executives were looking for a performance management solution to support the company’s lean…
Denise Robitaille
Election time is once again upon us. And, like a bumper crop of kudzu run amok, campaign ads have besieged local broadcasts with the tenacity of an unrelenting pestilence. My mailbox is equally stuffed with innuendo-laden campaign fliers. A horrific waste of paper.
The malicious tone of the…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
On a summer day in 1973, my 12-year-old sister was riding her horse on the quiet streets near our house. There was a little more traffic than usual as two cars came toward her from opposite directions. Cindy rode onto the well-tended lawn of a stately two-story house to get out of the way. While…
