All Features
Emily Newton
Welding technology has progressed over the years, thanks to innovations that improve accuracy and overall productivity. Some advances have been in welding automation handled by advanced robots. Other breakthroughs rely on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine vision for better defect detection.…
Bruce Hamilton
You may recognize the following quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, or more recently from Kelly Clarkson: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I’ve thought about this often during the last 22 months in context of the horrible pandemic and, more parochially, in relation to the efforts of many…
Anthony D. Burns
I’m a chemical engineer. The fundamentals of the chemical engineering profession were laid down 150 years ago by Osborne Reynolds. Although chemical engineering has seen many advances, such as digital process control and evolutionary process optimization, every engineer understands and uses Reynold…
Sybil Derrible, Juyeong Choi, Nazli Yesiller
Communities across the U.S. Southeast and Midwest are assessing damage from the deadly and widespread tornado outbreak on Dec. 10–11, 2021. It’s clear that the cleanups will take months and possibly years.
Dealing with enormous quantities of debris and waste materials is one of the most…
Bruce Hamilton
In 1996, the TSSC (Toyota Production System Support Center) began working with my company to create one-by-one production capability in our product assembly. Previous to TSSC’s assistance, we’d moved the furniture and machines into cells, creating the appearance of flow production, but we lacked…
William A. Levinson
Shigeo Shingo was able to summarize entire concepts in single phrases, such as “paint parts, not air.” This meant that paint which misses parts in a spray booth constitutes wasted material and also an environmental aspect. “Ship product, not air” defines similarly empty space in packaging as wasted…
Cameron Shaheen
With the holidays fast approaching, manufacturers, distribution centers, and e-commerce providers are working to meet growing customer demand, while also navigating severe supply-chain disruptions and mounting labor shortages. At this point, we all had hoped to have the devastating effects of the…
David Isaacson
Within every organization, problems or incidents arise that can affect the quality of your operations. Take for example, food recalls due to improper food labeling that not only could cause sickness in humans, but also result in a hit to a company’s reputation. Or, automotive product recalls due to…
Chuck Werner
Manufacturers should routinely ask themselves: “How do I know what my problems are?” The old-school way to answer this question was based on having the resources to produce spreadsheets of operational data and the expertise to analyze the data and understand how to respond.
This does not describe…
Gleb Tsipursky
How should organizations—including their quality departments—reshape office space to maximize productivity in the future of work? What will the new workspace—from the office to homes—look like in the future? We know it will be different. But to survive and thrive in the post-Covid world, you need…
William A. Levinson
This article contends that we should replace “quality” with “value” to address an enormous array of previously unaddressed risks and opportunities. Poor quality is only one of the Toyota Production System’s seven wastes, and it is rarely the most costly one because it is also the only waste to draw…
Jim Benson
Stress is a natural physical and mental reaction to life experiences. In fact, for short periods of time, it is actually valuable to us. The hormones our brains release during stressful moments were designed to protect us by preparing us to react quickly in dangerous situations.
Unfortunately,…
Bruce Hamilton
Just a little over a year ago we lost Hajime Oba, one of the great pioneers of Toyota Production System (TPS) learning in the United States. In 1992, he was the founding manager of the Toyota Production System Support Center (TSSC), a nonprofit affiliate of Toyota Motors of North America (TMNA),…
Stavros Karamperidis
Ningbo-Zhousan may not exactly be a household name, but find something in your house made in China, and it’s quite likely it was delivered from there. Ningbo-Zhousan, which overlooks the East China Sea some 200 km south of Shanghai, is China’s second-busiest port, handling the equivalent of some 29…
Rick Gould
Ever since people could tie logs together to form rafts and use them to transport goods by water, seaborne trade has flourished and grown. Historians believe that the first international trade routes were developed 5,000 years ago between the Arabian Peninsula and Pakistan, while by the 18th…
Saligrama Agnihothri
Health-tracking devices and apps are becoming part of everyday life. More than 300,000 mobile phone applications claim to help with managing diverse personal health issues, from monitoring blood glucose levels to conceiving a child.
But so far the potential for health-tracking apps to improve…
Dawn Bailey
The spirit of service—for a small clinic started in 1913 to provide free care to Los Angeles (LA)—lives today in the servant-leader aspirations of 2019 Baldrige Award recipient Adventist Health White Memorial (AHWM), a 353-bed, safety-net hospital.
The community of two million people that AHWM…
John Preston
‘This government is obsessed with skilling up our population,” said Boris Johnson in his recent speech on “leveling up.” There’s still a fair amount of uncertainty about exactly what the United Kingdom prime minister’s plan to level up the regions will involve, but manufacturing and skills seem…
Jim Benson
Value stream mapping is a team exercise, it’s collaborative, enlightening, and the foundation for professionalism.
I’m pretty well-known for saying that teams are unique and that there is no one process that satisfies every team’s needs. There is, however, one activity that I’ve seen every team we…
Silke von Gemmingen
Due to digitalization in Industry 4.0, internal logistics is subject to constant change. Internal traceability—i.e., tracking goods in the warehouse or production facility—increasingly plays a key role. Manufacturers and consumers are placing more emphasis on the safety and quality of products.…
David Cahn
Lean Six Sigma has improved manufacturing operations and processes for years now. Now the effect of the methodology is extending to supply chain and operations to help eliminate waste and reduce variation. Using lean to eradicate waste and Six Sigma to eliminate defects by reducing process…
Emily Newton
Effective equipment testing is essential for manufacturers of industrial equipment and end-users. Without testing, defects and damage can shorten the life span of equipment, cause unplanned downtime, and reduce the quality of finished goods.
This is especially true for businesses in sectors like…
Bruce Hamilton
PDCA—plan, do, check, act (or adjust)—is one of those acronymic concepts that regularly finds its way into lean discussions. Descended from Francis Bacon’s scientific method (hypothesis, experiment, confirmation), PDCA has become a ubiquitous catchword for business process improvement. From…
Glenn Daehn
Failure of a machine in a factory can shut it down. Lost production can cost millions of dollars per day. Component failures can devastate factories, power plants, and battlefield equipment.
To return to operation, skilled technicians use all the tools in their kit—machining, bending, welding, and…
Doug Devereaux
The premise for the NIST MEP Digital Supply-Chain Network project is familiar to MEP centers—many small and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs) are often not ready for Industry 4.0 and don’t know how to implement it. Manufacturers with fewer than 50 employees often lag in digital supply-chain areas…
