All Features
Bill Kalmar
Recent articles in the news have concluded that “72 is the new 30.” Evidently breakthroughs in medicine, better eating habits, regular exercise, refraining from smoking and alcoholic beverages, and adopting a positive attitude have dramatically increased our longevity.
As I turn 70 this month (…
Cody Steele
Statistician to the Stars William Briggs deserves credit for his correct prediction of the Best Picture Oscar the day before the ceremonies this year. Although Briggs would never encourage anyone to misuse his model this way, I feel my statistics heartstrings strummed by the desire to remind…
Timothy F. Bednarz
When there is a problem, where do leaders begin to address it? A good place to start is going to the employees directly affected by the problem and asking questions about the issue—without it seeming like an inquisition. Developing a tactical approach to questioning employees to understand…
Oscar Combs
ISO 9001 is much more than a standard. It should be part of a company’s strategic plan rather than something to get certified to because customers require it. The guidelines and quality principles in ISO 9001 are just good business practices.
Throughout my career in quality, I’ve often been amazed…
Michael Causey
A prominent politician goes before his constituents during a tough reelection campaign. He’s introduced by the local mayor, and strides to the stage, waving and smiling to enthusiastic applause.
“It’s great to be here with you tonight. I love this great state of [fill in the blank]. Erica and I…
James Brewton
Much has been written about the need for standardized work to maximize worker efficiency and process performance. And rightly so. Without standardized work, huge variances in efficiency and effectiveness are virtually inevitable. Studies indicate there can be as much as a 200-percent difference…
Gorur N. Sridhar
Gauge repeatability and reproducibility (gauge R&R) is mostly used in manufacturing environments to determine if you can trust your measurement system to distinguish between parts, if the measuring tool is consistent, and if measurements are consistent across operators.
In this article we…
Bruce Hamilton
My son, Ben, asked me last week, “How come the bacon cooks better on Grandma’s pan?” I’d just fried up some bacon using a pan handed down from my mother, and the bacon was, as Ben noted, much more consistently cooked.
I answered my son’s question: “Value engineering,” I said with private sarcasm.…
Sonal Sinha, Wally Bell
During the 1990s and early 2000s, several global apparel, sports, and toy brands hit the headlines for the wrong reasons. Large-scale protests erupted against these companies for allegedly using ‘‘sweatshops’’ with dangerous working conditions to manufacture their products.
The Fair Labor…
Keith McDavit
Last weekend I decided to change the oil and tune up my classic car, a 1972 Datsun 1200. (My wife has other names for it.) It sports a “four on the floor” and a simple four-cylinder engine that doesn’t even need fancy smog controls. Since I hadn’t tinkered with this car in a long while, I was…
Debbie Collard
As I join others this year in celebrating 25 years of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, the only improvement program with a prestigious presidential award, I think about the Baldrige’s history of public service, and what the future holds for the only public-private partnership that…
Mark R. Hamel
When discussing lean math with other folks, I often get some less-than-optimal responses. Of course, much of the time it’s probably me.
In any case, this is how I would characterize the more nonvalue-adding responses to the subject. • Apoplectic. You know, the math-anxiety-induced stroke. Some…
John Flaig
Everyone in the quality world is familiar with the famous 80–20 rule for corrective action project prioritization. The “rule” suggests that 20 percent of the causes result in 80 percent of the effects or in technical terms, the principal of factor sparsity. For the engineer this can be thought of…
Judy Worth, Tom Shuker
Headlines shout the message almost every day: The U.S. healthcare delivery system is unaffordable, inefficient, and sometimes downright dangerous. It is in need of true transformation. To do this, we must tap into the wisdom of those delivering care and equip them with the means to create a new…
William A. Levinson
Automobiles were once high-maintenance luxuries that only the wealthy could afford. Renewable energy, such as that from photovoltaic sources, also is a luxury among whose sole redeeming qualities are its uninterruptable nature—at least during the daytime. Government efforts to compel its use, e.g…
Calvin Kwon
Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto—a significant Catholic pilgrimage site in Lourdes, France, visited by nearly 6 million people each year—was digitally documented on Jan. 29, 2013, by CyArk, a nonprofit organization in Oakland, California, whose mission is to preserve cultural heritage, and Organization…
Ford Motor Co.
Cutting waste-to-landfill at Ford Motor Co.’s Van Dyke Transmission Plant has always been important to workers there, but they weren’t satisfied until last fall, when a small, diligent local committee played a major role in solving a nagging 10-ton problem.
The solution, which keeps 10 tons’…
Gallup
In my experience, if you ask senior leaders if they would fire a sales manager whose team missed quota three years in a row, they usually say yes. If you ask them if they would fire a plant manager whose facility had a poor safety record for three consecutive years, they would say yes. But ask if…
Jeff Dewar
“Check on your customers every 10 minutes or so,” instructs the typical restaurant manager. And Deming turns in his grave again because the manager’s objective is arbirtrary. It’s not based on the capabilities of a process or the needs of the customer. But wait—there’s a new service quality…
AQSENSE
(AQSENSE: Girona, Spain) -- AQSENSE has incorporated into 3DExpress a new functionality to configure, with a single click, the “one camera—multiple lasers system,” which avoids capturing occlusions.
3DExpress software was presented November 2012 at the VISION show with the slogan, “3D Machine…
Patrick Runkel
If the title of this post made you think you’d be reading about Abraham Lincoln and Tyra Banks, you’re only half right.
A few weeks ago, statistician and journalist Nate Silver published an interesting post on how U.S. presidents are ranked by historians. Silver showed that the percentage of…
Stan Craig
The full-page ad in a Sunday edition of The New York Times stated boldly that $60 million was received during 2012—more than $1 million a week—by a variety of recognized charities and community causes. The ad was not from a charity or fund-raising organization. It was from one of America’s largest…
Umberto Tunesi
Last night I went to the theater. Actor and satirist Marco Paolini was performing his favorite monologue about Galileo Galilei. Not an easy task, when you consider the man and his place in history. Paolini was juggling religion, the Inquisition, mathematics, astronomy, astrology—and Galileo’s…
Matthew Littlefield
With the evolution of quality management, there has been a shift away from manual and paper-based solutions. Organizations are now leveraging the power of automation and integration across the value chain to improve the quality of products and processes. This progression has materialized directly…
Matthew E. May
A good friend of mine recently recommended a wonderful documentary to me: Jiro Dreams of Sushi. I now recommend it to you. It’s a phenomenal and fascinating study of a man who embodies the disciplined pursuit of perfection.
The 85-year-old Jiro Ono owns Sukiyabashi Jiro, a 10-seat, $300-per-meal…
