Laurel Thoennes @ Quality Digest
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...
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...
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...
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...
Mark Rosenthal
During a TED talk, Amy Edmondson, the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, talks about “How to turn a group of strangers into a team.” Although long-standing...
Jared Evans
Implementing 6S, the lean strategy for reducing waste and optimizing efficiency in a manufacturing environment, is more than just creating work protocols that people must follow. Because that’s the...
Kevin Meyer
For the past several years, I’ve been fascinated by how we think—and how that affects us, our leadership, and the organizations we’re a part of. A couple years ago I wrote about the beginner’s mind...
Hélène Horent
Founded in 1947, in Veles, Macedonia, BRAKO produces parts and components used in medical devices, road sweeper trucks, airport ground equipment, forklift accessories, metal-welded constructions,...
Ryan E. Day
As manufacturing finds its way through the 21st century, there’s a groundswell change emerging. Organizations are jockeying for competitive position as they endeavor to describe this phenomenon....
Ryan E. Day
‘In God we trust; all others bring data.” “Follow the data.” “Let the data talk.” Nice clichés, but there’s one problem... data can’t talk. In fact, data don’t say a darn thing. Data are bits of raw...
Glenn S. Wolfgang
Flow quality management (Flow QM) is a logistical alternative to handling product in lots for the purpose of assessing and mitigating defects. It features a streamlined, automated acceptance sampling...
Steven Brand
While manufacturers have traditionally been hesitant to invest in their operations due to cost, a recent National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) survey of more than 500 manufacturers reveals that...
William A. Levinson
Quality and manufacturing practitioners are most familiar with the effect of variation on product quality, and this is still the focus of the quality management and Six Sigma bodies of knowledge....
Jeffrey Phillips
Ihave been thinking a lot lately about innovation and how we may have emphasized one component at the expense of another. Here I’m talking about something that should appear obvious—the focus of...
Gwendolyn Galsworth
The world of work shares a single basic transaction, used millions of times a day: translating vital information into human behavior. But operationalizing this formula is not that simple. Workplace...
Bruce Hamilton
Who remembers VisiCalc, often referred to as the first killer app? In 1978, this spreadsheet software ushered in the personal computing boom. Although it only ran on Apple’s priciest computer (the...
Jane Stull
As companies seek to gain efficiencies in the workplace, provide choice for employees, and attract and retain talent, strategies involving agile working and free-address have gained traction. When...
Thomas R. Cutler
Although automation has been successful in replacing repetitive, simple tasks, the human workforce still plays a critical role in manufacturing. Even the most sophisticated and automated...
Aiman Sakr
Does your organization benefit from lessons learned? Does it learn from previous quality issues? A vast amount of learning takes place every day in every manufacturing facility. Do global...
Jim Benson
I love to cook. When I make good food and share it with others, they will take a bite and look as excited to eat it as I was to create it. They might not understand the subtleties that went into it,...
