All Features
Ashley Y. Metcalf
Lean supply chains are designed based on several key principles. First, the general philosophy of lean is to reduce or eliminate nonvalue-added waste. The concept of reducing waste is always beneficial to organizations. We should continuously strive to reduce things like wasted time, wasted effort…
Quality Digest
Eight years ago Quality Digest published the article, “Suit Up, Show Up, Give Up: Are e-marketing techniques killing trade shows?” The premise was that electronic marketing was slowly diminishing the need for in-person events. However, until recently inertia has kept these sprawling shows alive as…
Liz Uram
Have you ever dreaded having a conversation with an employee who wasn’t meeting performance expectations? Maybe you avoided it, hoping it would improve on its own? If so, you are not alone.
Most managers would agree that one of their least favorite tasks is talking to an employee about poor…
Gregg Profozich
The manufacturing world, across industry sectors, has witnessed significant improvements in productivity and competitiveness during the past couple of decades as a result of continuous improvement (CI) methodologies. Two of these methodologies that are recognized as having broad applicability are…
Henrik Bresman
Right now it seems far away, but a post-Covid world is coming. Is it closer to us than the start of the pandemic? We can’t say with any certainty, but we must think about how we will work in the future. The sudden changes of early 2020 showed us how we are capable of extraordinary transformations…
Adam Conner-Simons
This story was originally published by MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL).
Scatterplots. You may not know them by name, but if you spend more than 10 minutes online, you’ll find them everywhere.
They’re popular in news articles, in the data science community, and…
Knowledge at Wharton
A new study finds that productivity has remained stable or even increased for many companies that shifted to remote work during the coronavirus pandemic. However, innovation has taken a hit as both leaders and employees feel more distant from each other.
Businesses tend to spend less money and…
Jill Neimark
If you’ve ever stayed in a relationship too long or stuck with a project that was going nowhere, you’re not alone. Humans are generally reluctant to give up on something they’ve already committed time and effort to. It’s called the “sunk costs” phenomenon, where the more resources we sink into an…
Gregg Profozich
In the first article of this series, we saw that Lean and Six Sigma are complementary continuous improvement methodologies that reduce the overall waste and variability in production processes, respectively. Although these two methodologies use different approaches and tools to drive improvements…
Catherine Cooksey
New employees at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are often surprised to learn that our agency is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. How could this be? On the surface it seems that the missions of the two organizations couldn’t be more different. The Department of…
Clare Naden
Never have we been more acutely aware of the importance of reliability when it comes to laboratory testing. As the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted, the development of accurate diagnostic tests plays an important role in outbreak management.
Whether a laboratory develops its own test…
Vanessa Bates Ramirez
China’s star has been steadily rising for decades. Besides slashing extreme poverty rates from 88 percent to under 2 percent in just 30 years, the country has become a global powerhouse in manufacturing and technology. Its pace of growth may slow due to an aging population, but China is nonetheless…
Marlene Chism
New leaders often don’t realize that saying “yes” to leadership requires stepping out of the comfort zone. Avoidance is no longer a strategy.
As a leader, it’s up to you to navigate through the cultural politics, make difficult decisions, and resolve conflict between employees or co-workers.…
Nate Burke
Businesses are constantly looking for ways to improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations. And this will only become a more important focus as we continue to navigate the complex and volatile Covid-stricken commercial climate.
Fortunately, e-commerce is thriving. Unlike…
Renita Kalhorn
Steffen Heilmann is a firm believer in empowering his people and giving them opportunities to grow. During his early weeks as CTO at Aroundhome, he and his staff were heading into an important negotiation with their data center provider to take over responsibility of a mission-critical database.…
Bob Holmes, Knowable Magazine
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
It’s been a long year, but a vaccine against Covid-19 has started to roll out across the United States. There won’t be enough to vaccinate everyone right away, so public health officials will need to figure out how to manage the slow ramp-up…
Bryan Christiansen
‘Little things make big things happen.” In just a few words, this cliché sums up MRO and its benefits. But what are these “little things,” and what effects do they have on your company’s bigger picture?
In the complex world of maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO), answers to these questions…
Bruce Hamilton
As we begin to take our approximately 4 1/2 billionth trip around the sun, I’m reflecting on the previous 525,600 minutes and looking ahead to the new decade. The decade (the ‘20s), by the way, began last month, not a year ago, a factoid noted in a short address by Hiroyuki Hirano in 1999 as the…
Maria Church
Sometimes work seems like, well, work. It’s not the fun, fulfilling, or rewarding kind of work that we look forward to tackling but the life-sucking, drudgery kind of work. What to do when work drains the soul and seems like a waste of a life? Find the meaning in the work you do, and you will find…
Jim Benson
We focus on the work, we focus on the teams, but we rarely focus on the individuals. What does an individual professional need to be fully engaged, enthusiastic, and ready to take on new challenges?
Think of five of those needs.
At the core of any needs you wrote down is bound to be information.…
Joshua Pearce
People will recycle if they can make money doing so. In places where cash is offered for cans and bottles, metal and glass recycling has been a great success. Sadly, the incentives have been weaker for recycling plastic. As of 2015, only 9 percent of plastic waste is recycled. The rest pollutes…
Shaneé Dawkins
What do first responders do? It’s an easy question, and I used to think I knew the answer. Firefighters put out fires; police officers enforce the law; emergency medical system (EMS) workers treat injuries; 911 operators answer 911 calls and dispatch first responders to the scene. Simple, right?
I…
Steven Ouellette
What is the most important thing for your business to be working on right now? Would everyone else working there agree? Is everyone working toward the business’s goals? How do you know?
Most businesses in my experience cannot answer these questions. There may be metrics, but they are not…
Sheronda Jeffries
Since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, UK officials have seized millions of substandard face masks at Heathrow Airport. These masks could have put millions at risk for contracting or spreading the Covid-19 virus.
Industry and governmental organizations including the Therapeutic Goods…
Philippe Aghion
Imagine a ship at sea, at risk of sinking in a tempest. Is it better to empower the crew to do whatever it takes to save the ship, or should every decision be made by the captain and top officers? Similarly, what should the optimal form of firm organization be during a severe downturn? The need to…
