All Features
Matthew Barsalou
Recently, a friend from my undergraduate days complained that he was written up at work for low productivity. He operates a forklift in a warehouse and was informed that he only reached 97 percent of the previous week’s productivity.
I asked for details, but there was not a lot he could tell me;…
Jack Dunigan
The hour was late, quite late, in fact, somewhere around 8 p.m. The office had technically been closed since 5 p.m., but I was still there working with two volunteers. I was tasked with the job of preparing registration packets for the 1,300 or so incoming guests at a conference. The sponsoring…
Mike Richman
For those working in quality or regulatory environments, waste is a mortal enemy. The Japanese call it muda, which in my own oddly mnemonic fashion I’ve always associated with mud slung into high-speed gearing or splattered all over clean rooms. It’s the opposite of smooth, efficient operations.…
Paul Naysmith
“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs,” Rudyard Kipling begins in “If,” his beautifully written poem for his son. It’s a poem of advice and guidance for becoming a well-rounded adult, and dealing with the crises that life will throw at you. Kipling’s son John went on to…
Patrick Runkel
What do you see when you look at the image in figure 1? Do you see a bulging sphere that stretches the checkerboard pattern in the center, causing its lines to curve?
Are you sure? Look again. This time, test any “curved” line by holding a straightedge next to it.
Figure 1: Curved lines or…
Bruce Hamilton
Last week marked the 100th anniversary of the introduction of a moving assembly line at Henry Ford’s Highland assembly plant, an innovation that inaugurated mass production.
Ford was not the first to build cars in an assembly line. Ransom Olds did that first in 1902, and Ford copied him. And,…
Gottfried Giritzer
In theory, most manuals sound promising. In practice, they often show their true colors. Gottfried Giritzer can look back on a work experience of more than 20 years. In his book Positive Quality Management for a Change (BoD Norderstedt, 2013), he sums up years of experience and presents basic and…
Michelle LaBrosse
Negotiation is a word that conjures up images of board rooms, power plays, and attorneys. However, we all negotiate every day with our co-workers, spouses, and neighbors. Whether you’re in a court room or your kitchen, here are seven steps to prepare for a negotiation, from identifying your…
MIT News
The U.S. economy retains myriad sources of innovative capacity—but not enough of the innovations occurring in America today reach the marketplace, according to a major two-year MIT study.
The report, by MIT’s commission on Production in the Innovation Economy (PIE), found that potentially…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
Last spring my dog, Buddy, started chasing chipmunks. They would quickly escape into one of their holes in the ground, where he would dig for a few minutes, then give up. Then one day a chipmunk ran into the mouth of the corrugated plastic pipe that carries excess rainwater away from my backyard…
Alan’s Apothegms with Alan L. Austin
Years ago I had the good fortune to work at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. I had been hired by John Porretto, the executive vice president for finance and administration, to support and further the university’s continuous improvement efforts.
John was one of the most…
Arun Hariharan
As Thomas Edison said, “Genius is 1-percent inspiration and 99-percent perspiration.” Perspiration may be boring, but it gets you results.
I don’t know about you, but I have come across numerous senior executives who were are all fired up during the intellectual phase of a new quality initiative…
Christine Schaefer
In a recent article published by Manufacturing Business Technology, Luis Calingo, a veteran Baldrige examiner and current president of Woodbury University, spoke of the great benefits of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence to the manufacturing sector today. In a follow-up interview,…
Tim Lozier
Editor’s note: Tim Lozier will be a guest on Quality Digest Live this Friday, Oct. 18, 2013, at 11 a.m. Pacific
During the past few years, risk management continues to be a topic of interest. There are plenty of benchmarking trends that point to risk. We see it in enterprise strategic initiatives…
Umberto Tunesi
First published Oct. 1, 2013, on the CERM Risk Insights blog. © Umberto Tunesi and CERM Risk Insights.
It isn’t Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. I wish it were. It’s the committee draft (CD) of ISO 9001:2015, or model No. 5, if you prefer. No connection whatsoever to that lady-loved scent, Chanel No. 5…
Lean Math With Mark Hamel
Little’s Law, named after John D. C. Little and his 1960 queuing proof, characterizes the dynamic relationship between work-in-process inventory (WIP), throughput rate, and lead time within a reasonably stable system. The “system” can be that of a process, cell, or line and can extend to one or…
Carly Barry
In part one and part two of this series, I've outlined some reasons why a lean Six Sigma project might have been deemed a failure. We’ve gathered many of these reasons from surveying and talking with our customers. I'd like to present a few more reasons and then share some advice from Minitab…
Alan’s Apothegms with Alan L. Austin
I have thought much about the need to engage people, not just empower them. A man I admire and have known for years served as a volunteer in a leadership capacity in the church to which I belong. I had the opportunity to hear this successful businessperson speak many times, but one message in…
Knowledge at Wharton
Tablet sales showed their first sequential decline ever during the second quarter of this year, according to the research firm IDC. Apple sold fewer iPads than expected in its most recent quarter. Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader sales fell 20 percent in the fiscal first quarter ended August 20…
Jack Dunigan
“He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.”—Francis Bacon
You can get to the top of our profession and game by being conniving,…
Larry Goldman
Has anyone else noticed how every pricey light bulb now has a life-span estimate? From a marketing perspective, I do love the concept: Invest more up front, but save on energy and materials costs over the long run. Seems like a win-win situation. But is it really?
When one of our kitchen ceiling…
Paul Naysmith
It is the end of summer. The golden sun filters through clouds and reflects on a pond, a glimmering silver. Above me, Spanish moss hangs like a wizard’s beard from a giant oak stooping over me, centuries old. The green cathedral canopy against the blue sky has been an unfamiliar sight of late. I…
Kyle Toppazzini
In the lean Six Sigma framework, we normally define what is called the critical-to-quality (CTQ) characteristics. A CTQ characteristic is any feature or product that is important to the customer. However, in the FUSE framework, which stands for formulate, understand, synthesize, and execute, we…
Georgia Institute of Technology
For owners of delivery truck fleets who may be trying to decide between electric or diesel vehicles, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are offering some advice: comparisons of the energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and total cost of ownership for the medium-duty vehicles…
Georgia Institute of Technology
A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology finds that older and younger people have varying preferences about what they would want a personal robot to look like. And they change their minds based on what the robot is supposed to do.
Participants were shown a series of photos portraying…
