Therese Graff
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal (“The Reason Southwest Stopped Overbooking”), which contained excerpts from an interview with Southwest Airlines’ CEO Gary Kelly, brought out the need to...
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Our August 11, 2017, episode of QDL looked at the role of technology in after-market service, stairs that help you up, Fidget Cubes, and more.
“Climbing Stairs Just Got Easier With Energy-Recycling...
Gerald Friedman
It’s easier than ever to buy stuff. You can purchase almost anything on Amazon with a click, and it is only slightly harder to find a place to stay in a foreign city on Airbnb. So why can’t we pay...
Bruce Hamilton
At GBMP’s launch of the Shingo Institute’s Build Excellence workshop, it occurred to me that perhaps systems thinking might be more aptly named systems rethinking. Workshop participants offered up...
Jun Nakamuro
Japanese improvement techniques have been emulated across the globe for decades, and none carries more cultural weight than the theory of kaizen. When I expose Western leaders to lean practices in...
Ken Levine
Completing the define phase of a lean Six Sigma (LSS) project is a critical part of any project, although it’s often underestimated in practice. The define phase of the define, measure, analyze,...
John Guaspari
‘You want me to pull the kids out of school for what?”
I could tell that my wife didn’t like my idea because she had used the tone she uses when I say something that is, to employ the pet phrase...
Steven Brand
Labor costs are likely the largest line item on your company balance sheet. Therefore, a successful cost-reduction strategy must adequately balance resourcing and cost controls.
Although laying...
Bruce Hamilton
On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first U.S. astronaut to journey to the “final frontier.” Atop a Mercury rocket, Shepard launched into a 15-minute suborbital journey reaching an altitude of...
Harish Jose
There is a great Greek paradox/puzzle called the Ship of Theseus. There are multiple versions and derivations to it. My favorite version is as follows (highly watered down).
Theseus bought a new...
Harish Jose
In today’s column, I will be looking at process validation and the problem of induction. Yesterday, I looked at process validation through another philosophical angle by using the lesson of the...
Gwendolyn Galsworth
The one complaint—the one problem—that nearly every company puts at (or very near) the top of its list of challenges is communication. George Bernard Shaw, the famous Irish playwright, sets us...
Mike Richman
The June 30, 2017, episode of QDL offered a wrinkle in time, of sorts: not only orbiting debris and medieval medicine, but moments in the here and now such as our interview with Keith Bevan of the...
Kevin Meyer
Before you can improve something, you must first have a very clear understanding of what its current state is. Don’t assume you know what it is. Go to the gemba, be it the factory floor, the...
Douglas C. Fair
Plant-floor quality issues tend to focus on a company’s technical resources. When products fall out of spec, alarms sound and all hands are immediately on deck to fix things. Despite large...
Michael Ray Fincher
To meet the 2018 deadline for becoming certified to ISO 9001:2015, organizations are scrambling to overhaul their quality management systems. One major revision to ISO 9001 is the requirement to...
Christopher Martin
Many of us are familiar with the concept of the Ohno Circle, innovated by Taiichi Ohno at Toyota during the 1940s. While familiarity with the technique and the goals it sets to accomplish is one...
Robert A. Brown
Lean thinking has taken its rightful place in the effort to improve efficiency in manufacturing. However, it isn’t fulfilling its potential in many areas, most notably with knowledge workers. This...
Bonnie Stone
In part one of “New Spin on the ‘Stand in a Circle’ Exercise,” I described how Taiichi Ohno, the creator of the Toyota Production System, used the “Stand in a Circle” exercise to help managers...
Ryan E. Day
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Building airplanes and spaceships poses some of the most unique engineering and manufacturing challenges mankind has ever encountered. Fortunately, you don’t have to build rockets...
