All Features
John Bell
Should every company be striving for the type of strategic advantage that has become the hallmark of Amazon, Google, and Facebook? For sure, in the tech world, it’s hard to imagine success without quick and continuous technology improvement. What about your world?
Whether you sell information or…
Stephan Manning, Marcus M. Larsen
One of the big themes in the current presidential race is how decades of free trade have dealt a heavy blow to the U.S. worker as millions of jobs were shipped overseas to take advantage of cheap labor.
That’s even turned some pro free-trade Republicans into protectionists. As a result, the…
Evan Miller
Sponsored Content
PLZ Aeroscience is North America’s largest custom aerosol manufacturer and packager. It produces its own private-brand products and custom formulations, and provides contract filling for other customers. PLZ has been in business for more than 100 years and during the last six…
Takehiko Harada
Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from the book, Management Lessons From Taiichi Ohno: What Every Leader Can Learn From the Man who Invented the Toyota Production System, by Takehiko Harada (McGraw-Hill Education, 2015).
The phrase, “kaizen equals getting closer to the final process” was hardly…
Gwendolyn Galsworth
Visual scheduling is a plain, two-dimensional format that maps out which products, parts, or subassemblies need to be produced, and when, in what quantity, and in what order. Nothing could be simpler.
In companies where schedules aren't published in a single, centralized location for all to see…
Brooke Pierce
The healthcare industry is in a state of constant change, and with change comes opportunity. With the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), healthcare providers are, or will be, paid differently for their services. No longer can they…
Harish Jose
Today I’d like to talk about kaizen—specifically, the order for kaizen. The term has come to mean “continuous improvement,” but kaizen originally translates from Japanese as “change for better.” To help clarify this useful concept, I’ll present three different views for approaching kaizen: Taiichi…
Jeffrey Eves
Sponsored Content
There are many paths for organizations to become good, sustainable, low-footprint citizens of the business world. Production processes can be redesigned to be more efficient, corporate campuses can be located so as to reduce employees’ dependence on fossil fuels, and buildings…
Helena Lui
There’s an old saying that “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Every project manager knows that she has to create a realistic project budget before the project begins. This step is not optional because when you’re midway through your project and realize you’ve run out of money, you’re in big…
Eric Gasper
An upcoming audit can be one of the more stressful times of the year for a quality team. Whether you are pursuing a new certification or retaining your current one, audit preparation can be a daunting challenge to even the most diligent organization. Although standards such as ISO/IEC 17025, ISO/…
Knowledge at Wharton
Time was, layoffs were seen as an emergency strategy, the last resort in a downturn or crisis. Today, however, layoffs are a standard tool for doing business. As the economy continues to heal and job indicators improve, a number of firms have announced a fresh wave of layoffs—Nordstrom, Sprint,…
Norman A. Paradis
The last few months have witnessed the unraveling of the remarkable life sciences company Theranos, culminating in the news that federal regulators may ban Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes from the blood-testing industry for at least two years. The company is also facing a federal criminal…
Tab Wilkins
Recently I came across the PriceWaterhouseCoopers U.S. CEO Survey and watched several videos about leadership challenges for manufacturers. The speakers talked about new and old trends they’re focused on as company leaders, as well as several trends that could apply to small and medium-sized…
Naveen Khajanchi
Adam Grant, a professor of psychology at Wharton, admitted how wrong he was to pass up on the opportunity to invest in an online startup selling glasses. Because the company didn’t have a functioning website the day before its launch, and because other competitors were already operating in the…
Amy Williams
My first exposure to manufacturing was nearly 21 years ago. My on-the-job training was brief and mainly consisted of general safety, machine operating, and maintenance instructions with little focus on problematics or quality requirements. After all, I wasn’t forming sheet metal for an airplane; I…
Tim Lozier
When we look at business dynamics, regardless of industry, we see an increasing rate of change in products, processes, and regulations. One process affects the next, and with a growing focus on regulations and standards, complexity becomes an ever-expanding theme, whether related to quality…
Ken Levine
One poorly understood concept in lean Six Sigma is how much to “stretch” when setting S.M.A.R.T. goals. These letters are defined as S—specific; M—measureable; A—assignable, attainable, or achievable; R—realistic, reasonable, or relevant; and T—time-based or time-bound. Regardless of the different…
Joby George
Driven by market expansion, financial pressures, and the need to accelerate innovation, today’s manufacturers have expanded their global operations and supply partners. This evolution has only amplified the manufacturer and supply-chain relationship, which is often characterized by a delicate…
GBMP
Hub Pen Co., located in Braintree, Massachusetts, imports specialty writing instruments and imprints them with company logos and other customized inscriptions. In 2013, the company received a grant for training in lean and continuous improvement, which was delivered by the Greater Boston…
Knowledge at Wharton
A trained mechanical engineer, Mark Chang found himself “totally uncertain and unprepared” the first time he was called on to hire someone else.
“I didn’t even know why I was hired in the first place—what did they like about me?” Chang recalls. “So, how do I go out and look for the next person?”…
Gallup
Increasingly dynamic workplaces have made organizational change an everyday reality. Demands for workforce agility require a step up from those commanding—particularly in ongoing measurement and making use of feedback during this breakneck pace of change.
There is a definite need for continuous…
Matthew Barsalou
The start of a failure investigation may involve brainstorming, but empirical methods will be required to actually identify a problem's cause. Implementing an improvement action without a confirmed root cause risks a reoccurrence of the issue because the true root cause has yet to be addressed.…
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…
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? •…
