All Features
Gartner
With the lines between work and nonwork already badly frayed, Gartner Inc. predicts that the nature of work will undergo 10 key changes through 2020. Organizations will need to plan for increasingly chaotic environments that are out of their direct control, and adaptation must involve adjusting to…
Gwendolyn Galsworth
As every company knows, workplace information—production schedules, customer requirements, engineering specifications, operational methods, tooling and fixtures, material procurement, work-in-process, and the thousand other details on which the daily life of the enterprise depends—can change…
The QA Pharm
One of the regulatory responsibilities of the quality control department is the release decision for drug batches into the market. When I was first given that responsibility early in my quality assurance (QA) career, it was impressed upon me to not count the cost of the batch when making that…
Barbara A. Cleary
A spate of cartoons and commentary throughout the summer has lampooned BP, Halliburton, Transocean, and Cameron International for their apparent inability to plan timely control measures that might have constrained the destruction after the blowout on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of…
Angelo Lyall
The uncertainty that comes with change is a debilitating fear in many firms. Intimidated by the thought of straying from the tried and true, those who are hired to lead often fall short as they grow comfortable with mediocre, secure process methods. However, a key factor influencing the outcome of…
Bill Kalmar
During the last couple of weeks we have been hearing the story of JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater, who became an overnight celebrity for his dramatic exit down a plane’s emergency slide. His stylish disembarkment while clutching a beer made worldwide headlines. Hollywood is already…
Alberto B. Ayulo
Every journey has a beginning, and mine began during a U.S. Air Force commander’s first week on the job. He called a staff meeting and told everyone that things had to change for the organization to succeed, and “lean” was the solution. Everyone in the room looked dazed and confused, wondering…
John David Kendrick
Complexity can be thought of as the level of difficulty in solving mathematically presented problems. Six Sigma practitioners and operations research professionals are often asked to predict the complexity of a hardware or software product by predicting (in man-hours or full-time equivalents) the…
American Customer Satisfaction Index ACSI
(ACSI: Ann Arbor, MI) -- Customer satisfaction with domestic automobiles has shown resilience despite an overall decline for the industry, according to a report released Aug. 17 by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Automobile satisfaction dipped 2.4 percent from an all-time industry…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
I would like to share with you a story about my mom, a woman who was very insecure about her background. She grew up in a blue collar family where neither her mother nor father finished eighth grade. Mom completed high school, but only with tutoring by my father. She would frequently say to me, “I…
Barbara Hemphill
Kathy is the office manager for a large corporation. The great news is that the company is growing and Kathy is looking for employees to handle all the new clients. The bad news is that she has no office space for these new employees to work in. The truth is, the office and storage areas are full…
As many as 14.6 million Americans are unemployed, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. That means 14.6 million people have been dealing with the losses that come with unemployment: the loss of financial stability, of identity, and of their normal daily routine.
Emily Wright dealt with…
Gwendolyn Galsworth
Editor's note: In this second in a series of articles on workplace visuality, Gwendolyn Galsworth, Ph.D., author of Work That Makes Sense (Visual Lean Enterprise Press, 2010) and Visual Workplace/Visual Thinking (Visual-Lean Enterprise Press, 2005), and recognized visual expert, shows us how…
Steve Martin
I like the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle for three reasons: It’s simple, it provides a pathway for teaching, and it works.
I love teaching. For me, seeing the light bulb over a lean student’s head illuminate for the first time is highly rewarding. During the early years of my lean journey,…
Michelle LaBrosse
Are you tired of hearing people say that change is the only constant? I think we all need to keep saying it to remind ourselves that we must be ready to keep changing. But here’s the rub: How do we make change stick? How can you, as a project manager, use your skills to create business processes…
Mark Graban
I have as many bad customer-service experiences as the next guy, with health care and other businesses. As I’ve said before, unless there’s a broader lesson involved, I try not to be a “hack” blogger who just uses his platform to complain about the last bad thing to happen. However, I think the…
Mark R. Hamel
My dog, Bailey, has a sensei—a dog-obedience trainer. Actually, my wife and I have a sensei to teach us how to train our dog. In fact, my wife and I have used the same dog-obedience trainer for the last three dogs, all German shepherds. No one would mistake us for Mr. and Mrs. Dog Whisperer.…
Jacques Hoffmann
In part one of this series, we considered the pros and cons of pressure-decay testing. In part two, we’ll take a close look at a leak-testing method called “differential pressure decay.” This method is similar to simple pressure-decay testing discussed in part one.
ADVERTISEMENT…
Bob Cramblitt
Although he’s not one for clichés, Rus Emerick, process improvement specialist at Schneider-Electric, endorses this one: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
This concept, which dates back to Aristotle, is at the core of an approach called functional analysis that has implications…
Bill Kalmar
Here it is, one week into August with loads of summer days still staring us in the face, and yet the “back to school” ads have been popping up for weeks. Every day brings advertisements for backpacks, tennis shoes in school colors, insulated lunch bags, computers, Master brand combination locks,…
Stewart Anderson
The recession has been an extremely disruptive event for many organizations. Many bear relentless pressure to identify new market needs, create appropriate products and services, become more effective and efficient, and develop and modify systems and processes to meet and deliver those goals. In…
Robert Parsons
Finally, the long and arduous process that appears to be a requisite phase in the development of an international quality management system standard appears to be nearing an end. Though the AS9100:2009 and AS9101:2009 (checklist) have been available for quite some time, the aerospace industry has…
Gwendolyn Galsworth
Editor's note: In this first in a series of articles on workplace visuality, Gwendolyn Galsworth, Ph.D., author of Work That Makes Sense (Visual Lean Enterprise Press, 2010) and Visual Workplace/Visual Thinking (Visual-Lean Enterprise Press, 2005), and recognized visual expert, sets out the basic…
Tripp Babbitt
While reading an issue of Quality Digest Daily, I came across an article by Kenneth Levine and Peter Sherman titled, “Ten Simple Principles for Treating Employees as Assets.” I thought it followed the usual themes about engaging employees and driving out fear until I ran across the following jewel…
Steve Moore
An article titled “Sharp Drop in Firefighter Fatalities in 2009” appeared in a safety trade journal recently. For the first time in three years, it said, on-the-job firefighter fatalities dropped below 100. The article went on to say that the 82 firefighter deaths in 2009 were substantially below…
