All Features
Fred Schenkelberg
Spending too much on reliability and not getting the results you expect? Just getting started and not sure where to focus your reliability program? Or, just looking for ways to improve your program?
There’s not one way to build an effective reliability program. The variations in industries,…
Jason Furness
For the sake of argument, let’s say you’re aware of an issue that’s holding your enterprise performance back, and you know what to do about it. At that point, there are seven key actions you can take to rapidly implement change, which in turn will allow you to respond to market changes with short…
Donald J. Wheeler
Having described the report card chart and the process monitor chart in previous columns, we now turn to a third way that people use process behavior charts—the process trial chart. Here the emphasis shifts from the detection of unknown changes or upsets to the evaluation of deliberate changes…
Kevin Meyer
Few people realize how employee policy manuals, usually given to you on your first day and then mostly forgotten, shape an organization’s culture and thereby its fundamental performance.
To give you a reference point, one company I worked for had an employee manual of 40+ pages. Every section…
NIST
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- The 2016 Baldrige Regional Conferences in Chicago and Dallas are coming up in September. Register now at the advance discount rate.
Both conferences will showcase current and past Baldrige Award recipients. The conferences will be held: • Sept. 8, 2016, at The Hyatt…
Society of Manufacturing Engineers
SME’s July issue of Manufacturing Engineering magazine has published its fourth annual “30 Under 30” issue, celebrating young men and women who have demonstrated leadership, excellence, and hard work in manufacturing. Among the standouts:
Fabian Bartos, 16, of Franklin Park, Illinois, is the…
Robert Fangmeyer
In August 1987, Congress created the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, a public-private partnership that spawned a global movement. This small program was given a great big purpose: to improve the quality and performance of U.S. businesses so as to improve our national competitiveness. As a…
Ryan E. Day
Sponsored Content
In today's hyper-competitive, fast-paced manufacturing world, there is rarely anything like a "routine" day at the office—especially when you're a tier-one supplier for some of the largest aerospace companies in the world. To make the grade and satisfy this kind of demanding…
Michael Huda
Speaking the language of color isn’t like telling someone your name and expecting him to remember it. Our minds just don’t process color like that.
While vague color descriptions are sufficient for many people—“Turn left at the blue house” or “Choose the reddest strawberries”—if you work in an…
Chad Kymal
In 2014, the International Automotive Task Force (IATF) reported that the automotive industry wouldn’t upgrade the ISO/TS 16949 standard to ISO 9001:2015, much to the dismay of Tier One suppliers. In a survey that same year, Tier One suppliers related their desire to update their management…
ISO
(ISO: Geneva) -- The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is seeking applications for a new secretary-general. As the U.S. member body to ISO, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) urges relevant stakeholders to consider this opportunity.
ISO has published details on the…
Gwendolyn Galsworth
Does lean have a clearly delineated limit? When a company starts out on that path, should it expect an endpoint, a completion, an arrival? Is it a forever commitment, or is it a bounded outcome that companies can achieve and then move on? In short, is lean a destination or a process?
These aren't…
Mark Whitworth
Quality is, for every organization and across all industries, a key competitive differentiator. This is especially true in the highly competitive automotive industry, where cost pressures have pushed automakers and their suppliers toward global sourcing and distributed supply-chain operations.…
Evan Miller
Sponsored Content
The CIO for a multiplant packaging company was in an uncomfortable spot. Bringing six newly acquired plants under the corporate umbrella was going smoothly, but he saw that at least in quality systems, there would have to be an unpopular change. The plants were using two…
Ruth P. Stevens
A
s the document and imaging industry evolves, imaging workflows become more sophisticated, and products increase in complexity. But with innovation, the industry has faced a new problem: customer confusion. Workflow management now involves both traditional end users in the office as well as IT…
Jesse Lyn Stoner
Has your team’s performance fallen off lately? Was it once exciting to be part of the team, and lately you find you’re not having fun?
Perhaps your team has succumbed to team drift. In my Harvard Business Review article, “Diagnose and Cure Team Drift,” I explain how to revitalize a formerly high-…
Erwin Miller
The Federal Drug Administration’s (FDA) mission to protect consumers from unsafe food follows different paths. The seven rules that have been finalized since the fall in 2015 to implement the 2011 FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) will require food producers, importers, and transporters to…
William A. Levinson
Masaaki Imai, author of Gemba Kaizen (McGraw-Hill Education, 1997), introduced the concept of the value-adding “bang,” the exact moment at which a process adds value for the customer. He meant the moment at which an official stamped a document, but the same concept applies when a stamping or…
Anthony Vianna
Sponsored Content
Every bicycle frameset used at the Tour de France (and any machine raced at any UCI-sanctioned bicycle event for that matter) is validated by the Union Cyclist Internationale (UCI). Enabling this intensive process is a bike measurement system based on a ROMER Absolute Arm from…
Tim Mouw
When visually evaluating color, everyone accepts or rejects color matches based on their color-perception skills. In manufacturing, this subjectivity can lead to confusion and frustration between customers, suppliers, vendors, production, and management.
This is why color-measurement devices are…
Adam Day
There was a time, not long ago, when employers could rely on new hires to possess rudimentary knowledge of basic assembly methods, schematic diagrams, and the proper use of hand tools. These skills were the result of individuals who grew up maintaining their cars. Yet that way of life is largely a…
Mark Graban
Given all of the problems that exist in our American healthcare system, it’s encouraging that most healthcare organizations are endorsing or practicing some form of process improvement or operational excellence strategy. Under the banner of different labels and using different combinations of…
Michelle LaBrosse
Having more independence requires taking on more responsibility: It’s a lesson teenagers hear again and again from their parents, and yet it rarely seems to result in teenagers actually bearing the burden of more responsibility. Fast forward to these imagined teenagers’ adult lives. As their…
Tim Lozier
Recently, there has been a shift in the way quality is led and implemented in organizations. The updated ISO 9001 standard urges leaders to incorporate quality in all levels of business, from stakeholders to upper management and throughout the entire organization. The new view is this: Quality is…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
I carefully filled the cake cone from the frozen custard machine, pushing it up at just the right moment to create a perfect ball. Then as I shut off the machine, I pulled the cone away with a circular motion to give it the company’s signature curl on top. It was beautiful, and I was proud of the…
