All Features
Barbara A. Cleary
When giant companies known for the quality of their products and services find themselves suddenly in the news due to massive recalls—think Volkswagen, Toyota, John Deere, Craftsman, or Chipotle—the first question to emerge often is: What went wrong?
Before jumping to the conclusion that quality…
Hilke Plassmann
The holy grail of marketing—a universal predictor of customer behavior—may be closer than ever, thanks to recent advances in the field of neuromarketing.
Even at its best, traditional market research has built-in limitations. First of all, consumers may be biased or unwilling to reveal their true…
Mike Figliuolo
Finding the right balance between how you handle success and failure makes a tremendous difference in the motivation level of your team members. There are some simple techniques for celebrating success and dealing with failure. Apply them and you’ll find your team is happier and more effective.…
Thomas R. Cutler
It’s no surprise that multinational companies have complex global supply chains. What’s less obvious is how to simplify supply-chain processes and arrive at a lean, consistent, reliable, and cost-effective solution. One global leader, ITT Corp., has taken on this challenge with the help of Ultriva…
Meredith Griffith
Sponsored Content
Most of us have heard of a backward way of completing a task, or doing something in the conventionally wrong order, described as “putting the cart before the horse.” That’s because a horse pulling a cart is much more efficient than a horse pushing a cart. This saying may be…
Kelly Graves
An overwhelming majority of organizations have inadvertently created an “us vs. them” culture. They turn much of their focus and many of their resources away from serving the customer and instead direct them toward fighting one another and vying for power. Or they have given up and are just “doing…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
Last weekend, as I was clearing clutter, I found a copy of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine. As I thumbed through it, I recalled that Wells, in his future world, describes man’s descendants as evolving into two distinct species: the Eloi and the Morlock. The Eloi live in an Eden-like setting where…
John Flaig
Sometimes when authors try to make a technical concept more understandable, it’s simplified but unfortunately, less accurate.
For example, when the developers of Six Sigma wanted to explain control charts and process capability analysis, they needed to include how the signal can be separated from…
Lolly Daskal
If you are going to be a leader or hold a leadership position, there’s one quality you absolutely require to be successful. You need to be a seeker.
A seeker is someone who is always searching. Seekers bypass mediocrity and are not content to settle for the status quo. They search for excellence…
Arun Hariharan
The other day, I visited a retail outlet of a wireless services provider to get information about its international roaming packages. The company has a few thousand outlets nationwide; they’re called “relationship centers” staffed with half a dozen employees who try to up-sell products and…
Michelle LaBrosse
Your project teams seem to have all the right pieces—team members with technical proficiency, good internal communication, an organized project manager—but something still isn’t quite right. Your team still struggles to get projects done on time and isn’t as productive as it could be. What’s going…
Davis Balestracci
This article is based on some ideas from my respected colleague Mark Hamel. Despite the lean framework, these ideas apply to any improvement approach—all of which come from the same theory, lean included.
During the past 35 years, quality has evolved from the necessary evil of quality control to…
Jim Benson
When you are a consultant, or worse yet, seen as a thought leader, people hire you expecting that you’ll know “the answers.” At best, what you actually know are paths to make sense of problems, communicate them, and then solve them. No consultant should ever arrive knowing the answers. If they do…
Elisabet Lagerstedt
A few years back, a searing pain in my elbow sent me to the doctor, who diagnosed me with olecranon bursitis. Apparently, all that time spent leaning forward on hard desks in different meeting rooms during my team’s frequent marathon strategic planning sessions was putting too much stress on my…
Bruce Hamilton
Here’s a personal reflection from my distant past that might describe a current state for some of you.
When I began working in manufacturing during the pre-lean era, the quoted lead time for my company’s products averaged 12 to 16 weeks. By the 1980s, however, many customers began to routinely…
Manufacturing Extension Partnership MEP
Whether it’s for performance management or for risk, it’s important to know who your suppliers are and have a close business relationship with them.
It’s a given you should already have a strong relationship with your key suppliers, but how often does your supplier request the following items? •…
Peter Dizikes
Want to encourage innovation? A new study co-authored by an MIT professor finds that little-known state laws called “constituency statutes” have significant effects on the quantity and quality of innovative business actions.
The statutes, which allow companies to prioritize the interests of “…
Evan Hackel
I had a call from one of my clients, a franchise brand. I can’t mention the company’s name here, but you know them. They have branded walk-in locations in hundreds of cities and towns across America—probably near where you live.
The call explained that the company had a very specific problem it…
Paula Oddy
Sponsored Content
As an auditor of quality management systems, I can tell you from firsthand experience that most auditees dislike corrective actions. Corrections are tied to findings of nonconformance; understandably, people generally want to emerge from an audit without any significant findings…
Mario Moussa, Derek Newberry, Madeline Boyer
Twisting your features into a mask of pain, you dig your heels into the soft grass. A rope tears into your palms. A clear, tiny voice speaks to you amid the many confused thoughts swirling in your head: “So-o-o-o... what am I learning from this experience?”
Well, if you’re like many who have done…
Gilles Hilary
In 2013, the U.S. Air Force realized that more than 20 percent of the nuclear officers at Malmstrom Air Force Base had cheated on their certification exam. Many other officers knew about the problem but didn’t report it. The root cause for this dangerous behavior was a culture of fear that led…
Peter Marks
Part of the vision of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) is to strengthen the center as the preeminent regulatory organization for biologics. One way CBER is achieving this is through the work of the Office of Compliance and Biologics Quality (OCBQ) and the Office of Vaccines…
Arun Hariharan
A horrific accident on Dec. 16, 2015, claimed the life of an airline service engineer: He was sucked into the live engine of an aircraft. The engineer had been standing on the ground supervising the aircraft being pushed in reverse from its parking bay.
“No one knew what happened,” said an Air…
Martin Roll
Sustainability is the new mantra for strategic differentiation. Becoming recognized as a “sustainable” organization can enhance brand equity, as well as unlock opportunities to create new markets and launch sub-brands, line extensions, and packaging innovations. But it requires organizations to…
Harry Hertz
Even before the landmark publication of In Search of Excellence in 1982, bosses realized that operational excellence gets accomplished through dedicated employees. Yet, to this day, many organizations stifle high performance through the annual performance evaluation process for each employee. This…
