Jim Benson
If I have been on a decades-long drive to make work more flexible, Alton Brown has been on a similar one in the kitchen. There is no shortage of rants on his various shows about “unitaskers”......
Brian Lagas
‘Why are our changeovers taking so long?”
If you’ve asked this question on the shop floor, more than likely you were met with blank stares by your employees. Open-ended questions like this are...
Harish Jose
I must confess up front that the title of this column is misleading. Similar to the Spoon Boy in the movie, The Matrix, I will say, “There is no lean problem or a Six Sigma problem. All...
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
As some of you already know, I was in Ford Motor Co.’s corporate quality office during the early 1980s when, just after “If Japan Can, Why Can’t We” aired on NBC, we pleaded with W. Edwards Deming to...
Kevin Meyer
My favorite part of a recent podcast with James Clear, author of Atomic Habits (Avery, 2018), was the last five minutes, when he talked about a potential downside of good habits. When we decide to...
Jay Arthur—The KnowWare Man
When I first learned quality improvement back in 1989 at Florida Power and Light, the consultants who trained us taught a very specific way to draw a Pareto chart. They’d been trained in Japan, the...
Alex Bekker
Do you know what a retailer and a tightrope walker have in common? They both have to balance. For the tightrope walker, the logic is clear. But what’s the balance that a retailer is looking for?
A...
Mike Micklewright
Industry 4.0 is the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. Also known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it follows behind the previous three revolutions of: 1...
Jon Terry
Lean solutions represent an evolved method of approaching how business is done. It’s all about transparency, about you and your colleagues being accountable and maximizing efficiency to bring the...
Nicola Olivetti
According to a report by PwC, industrial sectors worldwide plan to invest $900 billion in Industry 4.0 each year. Despite these growing technology investments, only a few technologies are...
Jesse Allred
Lean manufacturing is a philosophy focused on maximizing productivity and eliminating waste while creating a quality product. One of the most powerful strategies in the lean toolbox is total...
Kevin Price
In the world of risk management, maintenance of mission-critical equipment drives priorities and budgets. It is the ultimate test of proactive maintenance and smart decision making. Managing assets...
Bill Laverty
Operations management plays an important role in the manufacturing process, but similar to a stage crew at a theater, operations managers do all their best work behind the scenes. The best operations...
Boris Shiklo
About 10 years ago, software testing was perceived as the only possible quality assurance (QA) measure for software, according to the World Quality Report 2018–2019. However, QA has since outstepped...
Ryan E. Day
Most of us have heard of kaizen—continuous improvement of philosophy and methodology. In business, this involves all employees working to improve a company's processes to lean it out, to run with...
Harish Jose
Today I’m looking at Factory Physics and the Toyota Production System (TPS). My main references for the post are the 1977 paper co-authored by ex-Toyota president Fujio Cho and key ideas from Factory...
Mike Micklewright
Knowledge of kaizen theory, principles, tools, and experience in application are of course very important in leading successful kaizen events that drive real bottom-line results. However, equally...
Morgan Sliff
Boeing has been rife with issues lately. While the recent Ethiopian Airlines crash has dominated headlines and elicited an FBI investigation into the company, another federal body has stated it will...
Ryan E. Day
If you have worked in the quality field for anytime at all, you have probably heard of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award—it’s the highest level of national recognition for performance...
Stephen Rice
In the wake of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes of Boeing 737 Max planes, people are thinking about how much of their air travel is handled by software and automated systems—as opposed to...
