All Features
Donald J. Wheeler
Many people have been taught that capability indexes only apply to “normally distributed data.” This article will consider the various components of this idea to shed some light on what has, all too often, been based on superstition.
Capability indexes are statistics
Capability and performance…
Del Williams
In industry, gas-fired boilers have been the standard for decades to produce steam and heat process water. However, not all boilers are created equal in terms of safety. By definition, combustion-fueled boilers can emit harmful vapors, leak gas, and even cause explosions and fires.
In a recent…
Gleb Tsipursky
Organizations need to incorporate constructive feedback from stakeholders to survive disruptions amid today’s turbulent economy. Securing constructive feedback is critical in helping you find which decisions are working and which ones aren’t. Yet, many organizations fail to engage effectively with…
Phanish Puranam, Ruchika Mehra
How should humans collaborate with artificial intelligence? This is a question of increasing urgency as AI becomes pervasive in the workplace. From screening job applications and chatting with customers to assessing investment portfolios, algorithms are working alongside us in myriad roles and…
Katie Rapp
The Covid-19 pandemic brought to light a stark reality about current supply chains. As Nissan Motor’s chief operating officer Ashwani Gupta points out, “The just-in-time model is designed for supply-chain efficiencies and economies of scale. The repercussions of an unprecedented crisis like Covid…
Alexander Gelfand
For years, researchers have known that our physical and mental well-being improves when we freely give our time to help others. And when we do so through company-sponsored programs, performance-related outcomes like job satisfaction and commitment to work also get a boost.
But there has been…
David L. Chandler
Virtually all wind turbines, which produce more than 5 percent of the world’s electricity, are controlled as if they were individual, freestanding units. In fact, the vast majority are part of larger wind farm installations involving dozens or even hundreds of turbines whose wakes can affect each…
Lauren Dunford
Industry 4.0 has been a hot topic for years now, for good reason: 86 percent of manufacturing C-suites say digital transformation is a priority, and about 91 percent of industrial companies are investing in digital factories. Yet Industry 4.0 has also become a buzzword in many ways, as so many…
Scott Dietz
The manufacturing community has long struggled with finding skilled workers, citing, among other things, the misconceptions that manufacturing jobs underpay, are monotonous, and involve working in dirty factories. With the adoption of Industry 4.0—automation and robotics—the issue is as much about…
Mark Hembree
‘Anyone can hit a home run if they try,” said the great Ty Cobb at the end of the deadball era as Babe Ruth rose to fame in the 1920s. Cobb was unimpressed by Ruth, the Sultan of Swat. “It’s a brute way to approach the game.”
In 2019, Major League Baseball (MLB) seemed to prove Cobb’s point as big…
Bruce Hamilton
With GBMP’s 18th annual Northeast Lean Conference on the horizon, I’m reflecting on our theme, “Amplifying Lean—The Collaboration Effect.” The term collaboration typically connotes an organized attempt by unrelated, even competitive, parties to work together on a common problem; for example, the…
Gleb Tsipursky
Forward-looking organizations use hybrid and remote mentoring to solve two of the biggest challenges for that type of work: on-the-job training and integrating junior employees. Yet despite solving this major problem, mentoring programs that pair new staff with senior employees are all too rare.…
Adam Zewe
Scientists and engineers are constantly developing new materials with unique properties that can be used for 3D printing. But figuring out how to print with these materials can be a complex, costly conundrum.
Often, an expert operator must use trial and error—possibly making thousands of prints—to…
Ken Moon
Henry Ford was onto something.
In 1914, the automaker began paying his factory workers $5 per day for eight hours of work on the assembly line. Although Ford had refined mass production to make it more efficient, he still needed employees to show up and stick around. The generous wage, equivalent…
Catherine Barzler
Falls are a serious public health issue that result in tens of thousands of deaths annually while racking up billions of dollars in healthcare costs. Although there has been extensive research into the biomechanics of falls, most current approaches study how the legs, joints, and muscles act…
Ella Miron-Spektor, Kyle Emich, Linda Argote, Wendy Smith
‘The experience was magical. I had enjoyed collaborative work before, but this was something different,” says Daniel Kahneman of the beginnings of the years-long partnership with fellow psychologist Amos Tversky that culminated in a Nobel Prize in economic sciences three decades later.
What…
Tim Mouw
According to autolist.com, more than 80 percent of cars produced today are white, black, or some shade of gray. It’s not necessarily because bright and bold colors are more difficult to produce and match than their grayscale counterparts. They just take longer to get through the inspiration and…
Susanne Tedrick
No single person, no matter how intelligent or experienced, can understand everything there is to know about a given job. Questions will come up, and when they do, the individual—whether a software developer, project manager, sales engineer, or any other title—needs to have a handle on the specific…
William A. Levinson
Inflation has skyrocketed during the first half of 2022, which also saw a sharp downturn in the stock market in response to the Federal Reserve’s increase in interest rates to reduce demand. This resulted in a bear stock market and raised the prospect of an economic recession. The nonpartisan…
Martine Haas
One thing is clear about the future of work: Hybrid work arrangements are becoming the norm for many organizations. And no matter the industry, the concerns involve the same five “C” challenges: communication, coordination, connection, creativity, and culture. If you’re struggling to manage a…
Yosef Ayzencot
Starting a business is a costly investment. According to U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, more than half of businesses fail within the first five years of opening. Adding to this pressure were the nationwide staffing challenges during the “Great Resignation” and then the “Great Reshuffle.” This…
NIST
A novel, quantum-based vacuum gauge system invented by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has passed its first test to be a true primary standard—that is, intrinsically accurate without the need for calibration.
Precision pressure measurement is of urgent…
Seb Murray
In 1924, a cartel of light bulb manufacturers including General Electric and Philips agreed to artificially limit the lifespan of their products to about 1,000 hours—down from 2,500. The scandal, revealed decades later, came to epitomize the linear consumption model of making, consuming, and then…
Jennifer Chu
Ultrasound imaging is a safe and noninvasive window into the body’s workings, providing clinicians with live images of a patient’s internal organs. To capture these images, trained technicians manipulate ultrasound wands and probes to direct sound waves into the body. These waves reflect back out…
Grant Ramaley
The FDA Quality System Regulation (QSR) 21 CFR Part 820 was written in 1997 to harmonize with ISO 13485:1996. The goal was to relieve some of the burden of manufacturers having to meet two different criteria, the FDA’s and ISO 13485.
But by 2003, ISO 13485 had changed so significantly that the FDA…
