All Features
Jessica Thiefels
A leader’s job is to keep the team on track. You focus on hitting deadlines and executing projects without losing focus or getting lost in the weeds of decisions, communications, and logistics. The ability to execute in this way is critical for every leader.
In fact, Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman…
Nicole Radziwill
As early as 2015, McKinsey’s “Digital America” report projected that adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies in manufacturing alone was expected to increase domestic GDP by more than $2 trillion by 2025. This estimate, developed from expectations surrounding productivity enhancements, waste reduction…
Vip Vyas, Diego Nannicini
Is your enterprise dominated by passive thinking and prescribed routines? Or is it one that generates fresh thinking and unlocks insights into the future?
The viral popularity of TED Talks—with more than a billion views to date—highlights the innate hunger we have for discovering breakthrough…
Ryan E. Day
Current business conversation often focuses on data and big data. Data are the raw information from which statistics are created and provide an interpretation and summary of data. Statistics make it possible to analyze real-world business problems and measure key performance indicators that enable…
Jon Terry
Lean solutions represent an evolved method of approaching how business is done. It’s all about transparency, about you and your colleagues being accountable and maximizing efficiency to bring the most value to your customers. At the team level, lean processes help guide teams and individuals to…
Jesse Allred
Lean manufacturing is a philosophy focused on maximizing productivity and eliminating waste while creating a quality product. One of the most powerful strategies in the lean toolbox is total productive maintenance (TPM), a system targeting continuous improvement through a holistic approach to…
Ryan E. Day
In the article, “ANSI’s Role in the Wide World of Standards,” (Quality Digest, March 12, 2019), we looked at where standards originate and how companies are involved in developing them. In this article, we’ll outline four points that can help your organization integrate standards into your…
Annette Franz
I have been doing a bit of speaking lately, either about journey mapping or with journey mapping as part of the talk, and I’ve learned a lot, or rather, confirmed a lot. Namely, you might think you’re journey mapping, you call it journey mapping, but it’s not really journey mapping. Here’s what…
Kevin Price
In the world of risk management, maintenance of mission-critical equipment drives priorities and budgets. It is the ultimate test of proactive maintenance and smart decision making. Managing assets that “cannot be allowed to fail” is more than an emotionally charged mandate that forces managers…
Shobhendu Prabhakar
Someone recently asked me why quality failures and safety incidents continue to occur despite organizations communicating their quality and safety visions to the workforce, developing and implementing quality and safety management systems, and campaigning day in and day out about quality and safety…
Ryan E. Day
Brodie International provides liquid flow-meters and equipment for the petroleum and industrial markets. The company specializes in producing high-precision meters and valves that are used in the custody transfer of petroleum products.
The challenge
Brodie products involve components with complex…
Chris Woolston, Knowable Magazine
Companies spend millions of dollars and burn countless hours conducting performance reviews and devising checklists to assess their employees, and business scholars have studied the issue with great urgency and intensity. The results so far? By all available evidence, formal attempts to rate…
Ronda Culbertson
The AS9100 family of standards has completed very important updates, raising the business management quality bar again for aerospace and defense suppliers and OEMs. The transition to the new standards caught quite a few organizations somewhat flat-footed; particularly with the emphases on risk…
Steven Brand
How do you know if your election vote is really counted? How do you know the person you’re chatting with online really is who they say they are? And how do you know if a product you purchase has really met quality standards?
These three scenarios may not seem like they have much in common, but…
Bill Laverty
Operations management plays an important role in the manufacturing process, but similar to a stage crew at a theater, operations managers do all their best work behind the scenes. The best operations managers strive to go unnoticed, and why shouldn’t they? A seamless supply-chain process should…
Harry Hertz
Recently I’ve seen some startling statistics from Gallup and Glassdoor about employee and customer engagement. I hope those statistics do not represent data from any organization you or I associate with. The actions of senior leaders, as well as setting the right focus on employees, can prevent…
Boris Shiklo
About 10 years ago, software testing was perceived as the only possible quality assurance (QA) measure for software, according to the World Quality Report 2018–2019. However, QA has since outstepped these boundaries. The QA process now implies that all stakeholders have a direct interest in…
Chris Woolston, Knowable Magazine
More than a decade has passed, but Mary Mawritz can still hear metal-tipped tassels flapping against leather loafers—the signature sound of her boss roaming the halls of his real estate company.
“Whenever I heard that jingling, I would get sick to my stomach because I knew he was approaching,” she…
Brian S. Smith
Throughout my career, I have been a member of several trade organizations. I believe that standards have meaning, in every field. When I become a member of an organization, I endeavor to learn as much as possible.
For example, I belong to ASQ (American Society for Quality). I enjoy having…
Ryan E. Day
Most of us have heard of kaizen—continuous improvement of philosophy and methodology. In business, this involves all employees working to improve a company's processes to lean it out, to run with less waste. But most of us who are familiar with kaizen think of it as something you do.
Especially, we…
Jim Benson
We need to hold people accountable. I invite you to just look at that sentence for a minute. I hear it in every organization we work with. Every. Single. Time.
Look at the sentence. Now, consider for a moment, why you would say it. Go on.
Accountability models rarely do root cause analysis…
Ryan E. Day
More and more, manufacturers are becoming the target of hackers, but what can they do about it, if anything? It seems every month, maybe even every week, we hear about some sort of data breach or cyberattack. Think Facebook, Google, and Marriott. As consumers we’ve almost become inured to the idea…
Harish Jose
Today I’m looking at Factory Physics and the Toyota Production System (TPS). My main references for the post are the 1977 paper co-authored by ex-Toyota president Fujio Cho and key ideas from Factory Physics (Waveland Press, 2011).
One of my favorite definitions of lean comes from Wallace J. Hopp…
Marlene Chism
In a world where speed is valued, we all waste a lot of time and resources with two unconscious patterns: Chasing opportunity and avoiding important conversations. This article is about two mindsets that increase speed and efficiency.
Speed bump No. 1: Chasing opportunity
As much as we all value…
Jesse Lyn Stoner
Back in the good old days, if you were in a position of authority, you could just announce what needed to be done and assume it would be carried out. But times have changed.
As companies expand and become more complex, no matter what organizational structure is in place, people must work with each…