All Features
Jason Chester
Manufacturers have seen the need to digitize operations for quite some time, but the Covid-19 pandemic has forced the issue to center stage. They’ve had to adapt to sudden, dramatic changes like more remote workers and social distancing across production lines. It didn’t take long to realize the…
Harish Jose
Recently, I came across an interesting insight at Toyota’s website. I was taken aback by the first sentence of this paragraph: “Eventually, the value added by the line’s human operators disappears.”
The complete paragraph is shown below: “Eventually, the value added by the line’s human operators…
Chuck Olinger
Most manufacturers want a quality management system (QMS) to meet strict quality values. They need one to expressly meet the needs of their specific organization yet be within the parameters of federal, state, and industry prerequisites.
For example, food, drug, and medical device companies all…
Suneel Kumar, Sreelal Sreedhar
The word “aptitude” is sometimes misused to mean ability or achievement. There is, however, a real and meaningful difference between the three words. Understanding the relationship between aptitude and ability can be a significant factor for your inspection operators.
A basic description of the…
Knowledge at Wharton
Wharton professor G. Richard Shell’s graduate course on business responsibility is peppered with students he calls “ethics refugees.” They are young people who earned their bachelor’s degrees and landed a great job only to fall into an ethical or moral trap set by a boss, a co-worker, or the…
Paul Laughlin
Do you see the limitations and over-hyped expectations of today’s approach to artificial intelligence (AI)? Does it need a reboot, a redirection, to finally achieve its potential, one that truly understands us and we can trust?
That is the premise of a great book on the subject, Rebooting AI:…
Innovating Service With Chip Bell
When you played cowboys and Indians as a kid, did you want to be the cowboy or the Indian? I wanted to be the Indian. All the ones I saw in comic books had super-cool moccasins and could move around with their bow and arrows without making a sound. And there were plenty of famous Native Americans…
Iffet Turken
We need instant adaptability to the new skill sets in the unknown future of work. The Covid-19 pandemic is a prime example of how change is accelerating and requiring us to adapt quickly. We often hear about the skill sets we will need but not enough about how executives will adapt to them. A “…
Duke University
Price discounts and other promotions on consumer goods can boost a product’s sales in the short term, but that same strategy may destroy a brand’s equity, according to research from Carl Mela, a marketing professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
Brands often focus on the short-term…
Jim Hardeman
Customer complaints about service or food safety, and general quality incidents for delivered products, are bound to happen. It’s how brands use these incidents to further enhance product quality and the customer experience that matters.
Restaurant and grocery customers will—and should—report…
Kate Zabriskie
Regardless of their intentions, people who micromanage often create an environment of fear, mistrust, and disengagement. The constant oversight, checking in, and nitpicking wears down even the strongest employee. Turnover goes up, engagement goes down, and all the while, the managers who…
Steve McKee
Have you noticed gas prices going up? Is your company having a hard time finding new employees? Are you paying more (and waiting longer) for parts? The experts say inflation may be upon us. If it isn’t yet, it soon will be, given all the funny money the federal government has pumped into the…
Eliot Dratch
Owning and operating a top-quality manufacturing business comes with a multitude of challenges. To help outline points of improvement and give your business a road map to success, California Manufacturing Technology Consulting (CMTC) offers these quality strategies to help you achieve premium…
Dawn Bailey
In 2020, MESA, a small business in Oklahoma, became to date the first and only three-time Baldrige Award recipient.
From a one-person consulting firm founded in 1979, MESA has grown to support a workforce of more than 250 people. The largest privately owned company in its market, it is a…
Kimberly Merriman, David Greenway, Tamara Montag-Smit
As vaccinations and relaxed health guidelines make returning to the office a reality for more companies, there seems to be a disconnect between managers and their workers about remote work.
A good example of this is a recent op-ed written by the CEO of a Washington, D.C., magazine that suggested…
Michael Lee Stallard
Astronaut crews living and working in space experience as a matter of course what many of us experienced unexpectedly during the coronavirus pandemic. Consider these similarities.
Astronauts are physically isolated for a long period of time from family, friends, and the majority of their work…
Carlos Valdes-Dapena
In my work in collaboration and team effectiveness, I am sometimes approached about helping with a “dysfunctional team.” People use the word “dysfunction” liberally and can mean various things by it. I’ve learned some lessons about team dysfunction, and the most important one is that it isn’t what…
Clare Naden
We all know that like attracts like, but when it comes to the workplace, differences can be a very good thing. Numerous studies have shown that workplace diversity and inclusion can drive innovation and lead to new markets and financial benefits.
There is also evidence that when employees feel…
Sara Harrison
If you’ve watched Grey’s Anatomy, then you’ve gotten a peek into the complex hierarchies that rule a hospital. Over 17 seasons, the show’s eponymous heroine, Meredith Grey, ascends from a lowly intern to chief of general surgery, learning from the presiding residents and older surgeons along the…
Harry Hertz
Each year after the Quest for Excellence Conference, I sift through my notes and try to identify themes I have heard in the presentations of the new Baldrige Award recipients. The most recent summary was after the 2019 conference (the 2021 conference included recipients from the last two years).…
Nate Burke
In recent years, the focus and surge in e-commerce has been undeniable. There has been clear evidence of how a lack of online consideration can ultimately result in a brand’s demise, with Debenhams and Topshop just two recent examples. However, the latest moves by online giants, including Amazon,…
Borka Hajdin
It is safe to say that we can drop the word “digital” from digital marketing and just call it marketing. Because we are now officially living in a digital world. In 2020, worldwide online transactions in some sectors increased by 135 percent.
B2B companies that were previously dabbling in digital…
Knowledge at Wharton
When Wharton management professor Adam Grant sat down to write his new book, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know (Virgin Digital, 2021), he wanted to make the case for why executives should reconsider their approaches to how to manage people in a modern workplace and embrace new…
Lee Seok Hwai
As a young man of 20 in his first job at a state-owned enterprise in China, Guoli Chen found senior management fascinating, but not in a good way. His boss’s boss did very little—unless one counts reading newspapers, drinking tea, and gossiping as work. “I wondered whether anyone could replace him…
Arron Angle
Iwas talking to a friend recently, and the subject of organizational health came up. With my quality background my ears perked up, and I asked him to explain what he thought organizational health meant.
The friend went on for several minutes explaining that organizational health was all about six…