All Features
Ryan E. Day
Headquartered in Houston, Texas, Dimensional Engineering was born on the back of a dream, a major contract from an aircraft manufacturer, and a process developed specifically to fulfill that project. Dimensional Engineering has steadily grown to become a full-service team of consulting and field…
Bruce Hamilton
After being recognized in 1990 by the Shingo Prize, my plant became an overnight hot spot for benchmarking. Hardly a week went by when there was not a visit from a distinguished visitor, Fortune 500 company, professional organization, or college class. Initially, we accepted the visits because of…
Janelle Farkas
According to the International Institute for Analytics, businesses that use data will gain $430 billion in productivity benefits over competitors who aren’t using data by 2020. As an industrial engineer for the Northeastern Pennsylvania Industrial Resource Center, part of the MEP National Network,…
Theodoros Evgeniou
It seems that every week, AI technology has learned to do something humans do, but faster and better. From detecting cancers and eye conditions to predicting floods; or analyzing the language, tone, and facial expressions of candidates during recruitment processes, AI is now at the stage where it…
Mike Figliuolo
Driving a strong business starts with the people who work for your business, and those people align with the business through the company culture. How are you shaping yours?
A high-performing culture is one where people drive performance because of the right behaviors. They’ve embedded these…
Frances Brunelle
Just as baby boomers on the manufacturing plant floor are getting ready to retire, so are the owners. More than 5,000 small manufacturing operations (with annual revenues between $2 and $20 million) will either close their doors or find new owners during the next five years.
Some of these owners…
Martin Abel
Imagine that your boss Ethan calls you into his office. He expresses disappointment in your recent performance and lack of commitment. How would you react? Accept the feedback and put in more effort? Would you pout in your office and start looking for a new job?
Now, would your reaction be…
David Moser
Technology companies are frequently driven by their engineering processes. Of course product quality is regarded as most important, and that quality can be tested and measured with numbers and data. Such companies also frequently align their core identity with the engineering that belies their…
Paul Laughlin
What tools should data analysts have in their toolbox? It’s a broad question and one with diverging views. So, I am delighted to welcome back a guest blogger who doesn’t shy away from controversy.
Martin Squires is a very experienced znalytics leader, whom I’ve previously interviewed in our audio…
Jody Muelaner
One of the key ideas in lean manufacturing is that defects should be detected as early as possible. Efforts to control manufacturing processes, so that issues can be detected before defects occur, actually predate lean. Statistical process control (SPC) is a set of methods first created by Walter A…
Kendall Powell, Knowable Magazine
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
When my kids, ages 11 and 8, bang through the back door after school, often the first thing out of their mouths is: “Mom! Can we play Prodigy?”
After a quick mental calculation of how much screen time they've already had for the week and…
Tom Comstock
How can industrial and manufacturing enterprises achieve better new product introduction (NPI), a critical element of operational excellence? Corporate goals of improving market share and revenue, maintaining competitive differentiators, and improving customer experiences are especially challenging…
Davis Balestracci
In 2006 I was at a presentation by a world leader in quality (WLQ) who has been singing W. Edwards Deming’s praises since the late 1980s and even does the famous red bead experiment as part of some of his plenaries.
He presented the following bar graph showing a comparison of the sum of rankings…
Joseph Paris
A few years ago, I was asked to conduct a workshop, deliver a keynote, and chair a three-day conference on manufacturing process excellence in Europe, produced by the Process Excellence Network (PEX), a division of IQPC. Although that was a lot to ask of me, the lineup of speakers and content was…
Derek Benson
As a quality professional, you’ve probably heard the famous quote from W. Edwards Deming, “In God we trust; all others bring data.” Thanks to technological advancements in our industry, data exist more abundantly than ever. This presents a new challenge for those tasked with extracting and…
Kathy Anton
Throughout our 30-year company history, we have witnessed over and over how clearly communicated systems, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and policies can transform business results. It's common to see dramatic improvements like 50-percent faster employee onboarding, a 65-percent reduction in…
Kevin Meyer
I have been immersed in the lean world for more than a quarter century. From the start, when some folks from the Association for Manufacturing Excellence showed me how quick changeover could save my injection-molding operation (and probably my job) from imminent destruction, to now, when I can…
Jon Speer
When it comes to making medical devices, quality is key. That’s a concept that nearly every medical device professional agrees with, but what does it mean? Why is quality so important, and how should it be pursued? These are the questions that medtech executives and company stakeholders should be…
Christopher Shoe
According to a recent LNS Research survey, 37 percent of quality leaders cite an inability to measure quality metrics as their No. 1 barrier to achieving quality goals. Even worse, the survey showed four in five companies have poor visibility into real-time metrics.
These figures highlight a…
Mark Rosenthal
The idea of doing the little things consistently over time is a powerful one that we often overlook in our hurry to show a spectacular result this week. We don’t get results from the big action we are taking today. We get results when business-as-usual is getting the little things right the vast…
Alberto Castiglioni
Ensuring the quality of a car’s performance and design, FARO 3D measurement technology solutions provide simple yet accurate ways of taking contact and noncontact measurements for quality control in automobile manufacturing and assembly.
Portable CMMs such as articulated arms can be used for rapid…
Katia Savchuk
Why are some companies more productive than others? And why do certain divisions within those companies perform better than others do? Research has shown that top performers tend to invest more in research and development, adopt better technology, and employ a more educated workforce.
But a new…
Scott Cowen
It was a year ago that our country lost one of its most well-known and respected mavericks in recent political history. After John McCain passed away, many felt that his death left a void that would be hard to fill and wondered whether nonconformist leaders like him, who usually worry more about…
Paige Needling
Amidst a sea of alarming cybersecurity statistics, there’s one that perfectly captures today’s reality. It’s from a 2019 Trend Micro survey, which says: “80 percent of all businesses expect to be hacked this year.” Not “perhaps” or even “likely.” But will be hacked.
And perhaps worse, only 39…
Fabian Schumann, Jennifer Robison
The World Economic Forum (WEF) estimates that artificial intelligence (AI) will displace 75 million jobs across the globe by 2022, and that the pace will only continue to increase. A PwC report predicts that 38 percent of jobs in the United States—as well as 30 percent in the United Kingdom, 35…