All Features
Direct Dimensions Inc.
“The Awakening” is a 70-foot sculpture by J. Seward Johnson that depicts a man struggling to free himself from the earth. The installation, which has been a landmark for nearly three decades in Washington D.C.’s Hains Point, is comprised of five aluminum body parts: a right foot, a left knee, a…
100 Customer Service Tips by Larry Williams
Editor’s note: This is the first of a series of columns from Larry Williams, author of the soon-to-be-released book Customer Service A to Z. In this series, Williams gives us 100 tips on what employees can do to look better and perform better in the eyes of their customers. These are actions and…
Aly Fields
Editor’s note: Several weeks ago, a young woman by the name of Aly Fields contacted us wanting to learn more about “quality” in general and Six Sigma in particular. A recent college graduate, Aly had taken it upon herself to earn a Six Sigma Yellow Belt. Why? Read her own words below. What…
Mark R. Hamel
I recently experienced the pain associated with coaching a team with poor chemistry. It happened within a kaizen event team, so the pain was finite, being that a kaizen event is a rapid improvement of a limited process area. It was, however, an opportunity to learn a few team-formulation lessons,…
Marvin Marshall
Leadership would be easy if it weren’t for those we lead. As any leader or manager knows, getting people to actually want to do the tasks you need them to do can be a challenge. People will not fully commit to a task unless they’re motivated to desire your goals and objectives or the reason behind…
Sal Lucido
Figure 1: Closed-loop process for managing regulatory compliance
In Part I, Part II, and Part III of this compliance series, I have described the benefits of using a closed-loop process for managing regulatory compliance (illustrated in figure 1).
Readers of this series…
Donald J. Wheeler
In my August column, “How to Turn Capability Indexes Into Dollars,” and my September column, “The Gaps Between Performance and Potential,” I showed how to convert capability indexes into the effective cost of production and use (ECP&U), and how to use these costs to quantify the payback for…
Donald Jasurda
The value of ongoing maintenance and prevention is no secret. We know we can save a lot of anguish and money by taking preventive actions today and every day to avoid major problems later. This principle also applies to the quality of the products designed each day by engineers.
The “…
Donald Jasurda
The value of ongoing maintenance and prevention is no secret. We know we can save a lot of anguish and money by taking preventive actions today and every day to avoid major problems later. This principle also applies to the quality of the products designed each day by engineers.
The “…
Thomas R. Cutler
Burger King’s advertising jingle during the 1970s was, “Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce. Special orders don’t upset us. All we ask is that you let us serve it your way!”
In late August, Sarah E. Needleman profiled in the Wall Street Journal that entrepreneurial manufacturers are experiencing…
Tripp Babbitt
Systems thinking requires a massive change in the way organizations design and manage work. Old thinking must be flushed out so that new and better thinking can replace it. The outdated functional design of organizations according to the type of work performed needs an overhaul. Frederick Taylor,…
Davis Balestracci
I attended a talk in 2006 given by a world leader in quality that contained a bar graph summary ranking 21 U.S. counties from best to worst (see figure 1). The counties were ranked from 1 to 21 for 10 different indicators, and these ranks were summed to get a total score for each county (e.g.,…
Mark Graban
Lean thinkers see the waste in health care when they are at the hospital gemba. I think this is true whether you are a lean person who is new to health care or if you’re a long-time hospital person who has learned lean. Experts (doctors) ranging from John Toussaint to Patricia Gabow to Don Berwick…
Today’s entrepreneurs and business leaders must tread a tightrope through a universe of distractions. Information pours into our brains in a relentless, never-ceasing deluge. A rising army of companies across the globe competes for our customers using “new and improved” business models and…
Bill Kalmar
While watching the local and national news recently, I hearkened back to the 1950s when TV news was void of all the theatrics and proud puffing. Today we hear that station WBUZZ got the “exclusive report” on the upcoming storm, or WGRIM indicates that the station has the “exclusive report” on…
Jon Miller
I am in Japan helping to lead one of our lean manufacturing benchmarking trips. What I took away from the debriefing from yesterday’s lean benchmarking visit was a series of lessons on how to sustain a lean culture after 10 years. The company we visited had made a few defining choices, played its…
CEED
Students of CEED—an Australia-based program that links university engineering students with industry and government companies to complete specific on-site projects as part of their studies—are contributing significantly to the success of manufacturing projects, including those focused on making…
Manufacturing is getting easier in many ways, at least as far as the technology is concerned. For example, machine tools are simpler to program and operate, rapid prototyping means that product development is faster and cheaper than ever, and user-friendly CAD software may even negate the need for…
Davis Balestracci
During my recent travels, I have noticed an increasing tendency toward formalizing organizational quality improvement (QI) efforts into a separate silo. Even more disturbing is an increasing (and excruciating) formality. Expressions such as “saving dark-green dollars” are creeping into…
Angelo Lyall
Most organizations are reluctant to set prices too low or too high because exceeding the boundaries on either side yields damaging consequences. If we accept that, to succeed in the long run, a firm should make decisions that result in positive economic profit (in this case “economic profit” is…
GKS Global Services
Jamie Goldstein from Newton, Massachusetts, was 15 years old and an aspiring car designer when he sculpted an elaborate car design in clay. Having the foresight to create a design portfolio of his work, he wanted to make a more durable model of the clay car, painted and detailed. Modeling clay was…
Akhilesh Gulati
The economy is uncertain, pessimism is rife in businesses, and many are standing around waiting for things to happen. However, complacency does not send a positive message to customers, colleagues, and employees. It is also not conducive to getting workforce input and buy-in to move in new…
Maribeth Kuzmeski
Once upon a time, customer service meant more than pressing 2 to wait (and wait and wait) for “the next available representative.” Companies valued those who bought their goods and services and went the proverbial extra mile to make them happy. Today we’re more likely to hear how a company has…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”
These are the words of the woman who became the poster…
Jon Miller
Leaders lead. Or do they? There is not always a cause-and-effect relationship between leadership actions and follower behavior. Not all leaders succeed at pulling people along in the same direction. If a leader needs to drive people in a direction, keeping the fringes from straying too far from…
