Peter J. Sherman
As organizations become successful and grow, uncertainty is generally the enemy. Thriving organizations seek to eliminate variation and increase efficiency. They identify best practices and...
Jennifer Huergo
As I peer into the cardboard box NIST researcher Amanda Forster holds out for me, I can’t help thinking that this mild-mannered materials scientist has an impressive collection of shivs.
Forster’s...
Gilles Hilary
It all started as a normal day for traders David and John (not their real names). Out of the blue, their company’s audit and compliance team called them, seeking clarifications about some of their...
Andrew Maynard
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, recently revealed the second part of his master plan for the company, and it’s a doozy. Not content with producing sleek electric cars (which to be fair, were only a...
Jesseca Lyons
This may be stating the obvious, but engineers are generally very analytical. One of the areas where this trait comes to the fore is in evaluating all the ways things can go wrong. This includes...
John Elliott
In 1978, REO Speedwagon released the single “Roll with the Changes,” a song that never fails to give me an adrenaline rush, especially as I run or bike. I think it’s pertinent to what healthcare...
Heinz Schandl
The world is using its natural resources at an ever-increasing rate. Worldwide, annual extraction of primary materials—biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores, and minerals—tripled between 1970 and 2010...
Manfred Kets de Vries
Thrill-seeking employees’ addiction to risk can create havoc in the workplace. Managed correctly, however, their fearlessness can be a great advantage to any organization.
People who knew Lawrence...
Robert Fangmeyer
In August 1987, Congress created the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, a public-private partnership that spawned a global movement. This small program was given a great big purpose...
Mark Whitworth
Quality is, for every organization and across all industries, a key competitive differentiator. This is especially true in the highly competitive automotive industry, where cost pressures have...
Steven Mates
Right now, scientists all over the world are trying to understand how we get injured when our bodies are subjected to strong, dynamic loads—a hard body-check on the hockey rink, a tackle on the...
Davis Balestracci
Today I want to concentrate on the foundation of what is most commonly taught as design of experiments (DOE)—factorial designs.
Elsewhere I’ve mentioned three of C.M. Hendrix’s “ways to mess up an...
Jonathan Jacobi
When I first entered the safety profession, older, more experienced professionals recommended that I consider OSHA as a potential employer. The innuendo I sensed in this advice was that if I worked...
Chris Outram
Day in, day out, business leaders are reminded that digital disruption is coming for their customers, for their talent, and for their bottom lines. CEOs of traditional companies consistently rate...
ISO
The global food industry has never faced more challenges. From tainted dairy products to contaminated beef, high-profile cases crop up regularly to dent consumer confidence, while leading companies...
Loic Sadoulet
It’s a tragic irony that the day before the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil well disaster, executives from BP and the rig’s operators, Transocean, visited the platform on a “management tour” that...
Knowledge at Wharton
I t wasn’t that long ago that GM ran commercials advertising that its Oldsmobile division didn’t just produce cars for your grandfather, but also for everyone else. It was an attempt to...
Jon Speer
Design controls and risk management processes should be tools to ensure that medical devices are designed, developed, and manufactured to be safe and effective, and to address indications for use,...
Fred Schenkelberg
A fault tree analysis (FTA) is a logical, graphical diagram that starts with an unwanted, undesirable, or anomalous state of a system. The diagram then lays out the many possible faults, and...
Todd Hohn
More than 313 million global work-related accidents occur each year, according to the International Labour Organization, with a high percentage of those accidents resulting in significant time away...
