Last month we reviewed how Ford Motor Co.’s lean concepts were slowly phased out of the organization. The concepts, however, weren’t lost: Toyota realized their potential and improved upon them. Toyota’s chief of production, Taiichi Ohno, embraced Ford’s concepts wholeheartedly. He applied them to machining operations and then to other areas of production. As a result, the Toyota ... [Read More]

Does ISO 9001 require controlled processes for improvement? By now, I think most users would agree that it does. The requirements for that controlled process are simple to describe. They start with planning. To meet the minimal requirements of ISO 9001, an organization must have thought through, planned, and implemented its processes for improvement. However, ISO 9001, even when we refer ... [Read More]

The gold standard for modeling the future in a business environment is the designed experiment. Design of experiments (DOE) is a well-developed approach to planning and executing controlled manipulations. Somewhat less respectable are models derived from historical data. It makes sense to utilize as much of this information as possible, but caution is required. Problems you may encounter ... [Read More]

It’s that time of year when we look back at what we have accomplished, at what we’re thankful for, and what lies ahead in the year to come. What a year 2008 has been: skyrocketing (and plummeting) fuel prices, an election that seemed like it would never end, a flood of foreclosures, a bunch of bank failures, and a sinking stock market. As I write this, Thanksgiving is right around the ... [Read More]