All Features
Eric Stoop
The frequently referenced learning pyramid asserts than an average student retains 75 percent of information learned through practice, compared to just 5 percent of what he hears in a lecture. Although experts may dispute the relevance of these figures when applied to modern society, all of us can…
Paul Foster
Next to defining a problem accurately, root cause analysis is one of the most important elements of problem-solving in quality management. That’s because if you’re not aiming at the right target, you’ll never be able to eliminate the real problem that’s hurting quality.
So which type of root cause…
Minitab LLC
Process validation is vital to the success of companies that manufacture pharmaceutical drugs, vaccines, test kits, and a variety of other biological products for people and animals. According to FDA guidelines, process validation is “the collection and evaluation of data, from the process design…
Anthony Chirico
Perhaps the reader recognizes d2 as slang for “designated driver,” but quality professionals will recognize it as a control chart constant used to estimate short-term variation of a process. The basic formula shown below is widely used in control charting for estimating the short-term variation…
Mike Richman
Our industry embodies many aspects, but “Big Q” quality generally involves issues affecting management, measurement, and methodologies. This week on QDL, we covered all of them, and more. Let’s look closer:
“Ripped from the Headlines: Tariff Fallout” U.S. manufacturers are currently dealing with…
Dirk Dusharme
In this episode we look at a history of quality, how you serve your customer in the housing industry, and what makes a good review.
“Young couples ‘trapped in car dependency’”
Building entry-level housing along highways may give couples the chance to buy a home, but at what cost to them and the…
Kevin Meyer
During the late 1990s, I was working in the Silicon Valley for a medical device company, responsible for a drug-infusion pump manufacturing operation. I had just completed a crazy period where I had also “temporarily” (months and months...) led the advanced engineering department after that manager…
Harish Jose
I am writing today about “bootstrap kaizen.” This is something I have been thinking about for a while. Wikipedia describes bootstrapping as “a self-starting process that is supposed to proceed without external input.” The term was developed from a 19th-century figure of speech—“pull oneself over a…
Brian Maskell
If you are a CEO of a manufacturing company with many value streams, it’s impractical to think that you have the time to review all the performance measures of every value stream in your company. Yet you need to know the operational impact of lean on your entire organization.
The traditional…
Gary Bell
It is all too common in the industry: A part design is created and sent out for production only to hit repeated snags as questions arise about datums, locators, symbols, and values. Even simple misunderstandings, such as where the geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) lines terminate,…
Gwendolyn Galsworth
Have you heard this? “Just because this department is a bit dingy—and it’s sometimes harder than heck to get the scoop on things—doesn’t mean it’s a bad place. Good work happens here. In fact, we’ve been doing darn good work in this area long before you showed up with a bucket of hope called…
Anthony Chirico
In my first article, the merits and cautions of AS9138 c=0 sampling plans were discussed and a simple formula was provided to determine the required sample size to detect nonconforming units. In the second article, the process control properties of MIL-STD-105 c>0 sampling plans were…
Sylvie Couture
In 2012, CMP Advanced Mechanical Solutions, a leader in the design and manufacture of sheet metal enclosures, mechanical assemblies, and machined systems, burst onto the Industry 4.0 scene with its avant-garde use of the visual work instruction software VKS. This software allowed the company to…
Mike Richman
One of the highlights on our calendar each year is the first Friday in October, which is Manufacturing Day here in the United States. This event offers us the perfect opportunity to celebrate the centrality of manufacturing as a driver of the economy, innovation, automation, education, and lots…
Carrie Van Daele
Karen is skinny. For almost 15 years, one of my personal goals was to join her in running three times a week. That never happened because I was skinny, too. I was able to eat as much as I wanted without gaining weight. And then, I turned 50. My clothes were not loose on me anymore, and guessing my…
Anthony Chirico
In my previous article, I discussed the merits and cautions of the “acceptance number” equal zero (c=0) sampling plans contained within AS9138. A simple formula was provided to determine appropriate sample size, and it was illustrated that twice the inspection does not provide twice the consumer…
Dan Jacob
LNS Research published its research, “Driving Operational Performance With Digital Innovation: Connecting Risk, Quality, and Safety for Superior Results” to address fundamental challenges quality and safety leaders face today.
If quality and safety are separate functions in your organization (…
Anthony Chirico
Aerospace standard AS9138—“Quality management systems statistical product acceptance requirements” was issued this year (2018), a few years after its accompanying guidance materials in section 3.7 of the International Aerospace Quality Group’s (IAQG) Supply Chain Management Handbook. The new…
Dirk Dusharme
In this all-manufacturing episode, we look at the STEM pipeline into manufacturing, supplier development, how to make sense of manufacturing data and, no, manufacturing is not dead.
“Strengthening the STEM Workforce Pipeline Through Outreach”
NIST does more than just research and come up with…
Donald J. Wheeler
Parts One and Two of this series illustrated four problems with using a model-building approach when data snooping. This column will present an alternative approach for data snooping that is of proven utility. This approach is completely empirical and works with all types of data.
The model-…
Alison Hawke
Historically, quality in a process was something that was done at the end of the line. You inspected your widget once it was made, and if it had flaws, you fixed it or threw it out.
As in many modern manufacturing environments, quality in software has become a process you do from start to finish.…
Laurel Thoennes @ QD
In the foreword of Mark Graban’s book, Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More (Constancy Inc., 2018), renowned statistician, Donald J. Wheeler, writes about Graban: “He has created a guide for using and understanding the data that surround us every day.
“These numbers are…
Rip Stauffer
I must admit, right up front, that this is not a totally unbiased review. I first became aware of Davis Balestracci in 1998, when I received the American Society for Quality (ASQ) Statistics Division Special Publication, Data “Sanity”: Statistical Thinking Applied to Everyday Data. At the time, I…
Mike Richman
With more than 110,000 expected attendees, IMTS is Chicago’s hottest suburb this week. (I like to refer to it as “Manufactureville.”) Here’s what we covered during our second show of the week, from the booth of today’s sponsor, Q-Mark Manufacturing:
“Tapping Your Employee’s Knowledge”
It’s no…
Bruce Hamilton
Bob C. was a frontline employee with 25 years of experience. His day was spent operating a machine that stripped and terminated leadwire assemblies. Problem was, there were more than 1,000 different assemblies, and it seemed that, while the machine was always busy, it was always behind schedule.…