All Features
David C. Crosby
The most important element in producing a quality product or service is the attitude of the people doing the work—not only the worker—but the attitude of all levels of management. Employee attitude about the product, about the work, about the boss, and about the company will pretty well determine…
Minitab LLC
A $1 billion annual budget may sound ample, but a few years ago, the costs of services ranging from law enforcement to cleaning county buildings had squeezed the government of Erie County, New York, to its limit. Residents faced a painful choice: raise taxes or slash services. But Chris Collins,…
The emergence of green technology and increased environmental awareness has prompted a paradigm shift in the way companies think about the design of their products. Because robust designs mean creating products to meet customer and societal needs, it is important that all enterprises rethink these…
Steven Ouellette
One of the most useful diagnostic tools for understanding what is going on in a process is the statistical process control chart (SPC). This is also a frequently misunderstood tool, and these misunderstandings lead to misdirected effort during a Six Sigma process, resulting in lost time and money…
Dale Hershfield
Twitter is the latest new thing. Want to follow John McCain or Al Gore throughout their day? Easy. Just sign up to receive their tweets. While their tweets may provide insights, or just entertainment (Ashton Kutcher and 50 Cent also tweet), does Twitter have value for business management?
The…
Craig Cochran
When I first got into quality, I really hated verifying the effectiveness of actions taken to correct a problem. After all, I was young and inexperienced. All of the people whose actions I was verifying were older, wiser, and more experienced than I was. Who was I to say that their actions were…
Barbara A. Cleary
Specific techniques for data collection, fundamental to accurate analysis, are sometimes overlooked in the need to see outcomes or trends in data. The lowly check sheet represents a critical tool in effective data collection if it is used correctly.
Because check sheets are such simple tools,…
Steve Daum
With several generations of statistical process control (SPC) technology under our belts, it may be time to rethink how we apply SPC in the 21st century. Basic techniques have been practiced since the 1930s. Some companies will soon be able to say, “we’ve been practicing SPC for 100 years.”…
James Odom
Charles Kettering, the famous inventor, once said: “A problem well stated is a problem half solved.” This implies that a good portion of problem solving should be devoted to a thorough understanding of what’s going on before any corrective action steps are taken.
In many cases, too much time is…
Scott Alamanach
Don’t miss the author’s follow-up to this article, “Going Low Profile in Afghanistan.”
--Editor
Profitable manufacturing requires efficiency, and this principle guides most (if not all) of our quality management systems (QMS). We’ve learned there’s little gain in correcting a production error…
Akhilesh Gulati
Recently a strategy consultant was overheard saying she writes romantic novels. Look into many organizations and, although said in jest, it has more than a modicum of truth to it.
Don’t get me wrong. The high-level strategic plans are important and necessary. But, the devil is in the details,…
Gretchen Hancock
These days blogs and newspapers seem to make a daily reference to climate change, resource scarcity and security, the environment and the economy. It's overwhelming … and with the legions of experts in each of these fields, hard to see where one organization, let alone an individual, can make a…
John Bruman
Editors note: The author submitted this just days before he lost his job. What is ironic about this "rant," as Bruman puts it, is that it was written seven years ago. Do we never learn?
Recent months have brought disturbing news about the U.S. economy, the stock market, and business leadership…
Chet Kagel
Command Medical Products of Ormond Beach, Florida, is a medical-device manufacturer that designs, manufactures, assembles, and packages disposable medical devices such as intravenous tubing, blood bags, IV bags, and catheters. Command Medical initiated its journey into lean manufacturing to…
Donald J. Wheeler
Last month we showed the X chart in figure 1. The four lowest values and the three highest values were seen to be “outliers” when we looked at the histogram. When we fitted a bell-shaped curve to the histogram, the outliers corrupted the model and resulted in a poor fit. Yet we used all the data…
Here’s a story that proves once again that exciting quality applications can occur anywhere in the world.
BHP Billiton operates the EKATI Diamond Mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories, approximately 200 miles northeast of Yellowknife—just below the Arctic Circle. Arctic winter gear designed…
Chet Marchwinski
The current recession is the fifth in my working career. And it is beginning to feel like the worst. I can't imagine that any manager or improvement team member in any industry in any country isn't feeling a bit queasy at this point, as the world economy keeps recessing toward an unknown bottom.…
Steven Ouellette
A colleague of mine made an interesting point about how we teach and learn experimental design techniques, and I thought I'd explore the subject further. He observed that the order that we teach statistics is almost exactly opposite of how one would actually use them. So this month I will describe…
Steven Ouellette
One of the most frequent questions I get from Black Belts and Green Belts I train is about the characteristics of a good Six Sigma project, particularly a first project. Define, measure, analyze, improve, control (DMAIC) is a procedure that is useful for certain types of projects and terrible for…
Akhilesh Gulati
Those best adapted to particular conditions will succeed in the long run. This idea was invented by Herbert Spencer in Principles of Biology (University Press of the Pacific, 2002) to describe Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection of living species.
By the early 1900s, this insight was…
Criteria changes and lean Six Sigma
In these difficult economic times, organizations are looking at all possible means to operate profitably. As demand for products and services drops and customers expect the lowest possible price, organizations are feeling urgent pressure to cut costs as a…
Steven Ouellette
Many people go through a point in their lives where they question the beliefs they hold most dear. Then there are those who question the entire basis for statistical process control (SPC) once they have learned the statistical basis for them. I can’t help you with the former, but I have something…
Steven Ouellette
As you read this you will, no doubt, have already made (and perhaps broken) your New Year’s resolutions. I’d like to propose one that we, as business leaders, have a special responsibility to follow and whose failure we hear about in the news almost every day.
Of course, I’m talking about…
Bipin Roy
During a recession, the concept of lean should make absolute sense to an information technology (IT) manager who wants to pursue every channel to increase efficiency and productivity.
We have seen a procession of quality standards adopted by software services organizations in the last two…
David C. Crosby
There are several issues about the Six Sigma approach to quality that bother me. First, Six Sigma is a performance standard that hardly anyone can understand. Secondly, it’s an engineering approach to quality management. It’s more of a defect-management program than it is defect-prevention.…