Jon Speer
We raise the corrective and preventive action (CAPA) topic often because it is still something that companies tend to struggle with and find themselves in hot water over, particularly when it comes...
Capture 3D
For more than 125 years, GE Appliances (GEA) has been designing and manufacturing a full suite of consumer appliances—including refrigerators, ovens, dishwashers, freezers, washers, dryers, air...
Eryn Brown
In ancient times, the story goes, cooks in the city of Sybaris were granted yearlong monopolies for the sale of unique dishes they created. Since then, generations of inventors have relied on patents...
Megan Ray Nichols
Manufacturing is in the middle of a new industrial revolution that requires skilled laborers. However, by most reports, many manufacturers lack enough of these well-trained employees, creating a...
Russell Fedun
Cogeco’s technical distribution center in Burlington, Ontario, is one of Canada’s drop-off points for internet modem and cable device repair. In 2011, the company’s management carried out a kaizen...
Alison Gillespie
On a recent morning, Rick Lake stopped in the middle of giving a tour of NIST’s machine shop to ponder a part sitting on a shelf. It was about 25 cm long and made of metal coated in a sheen of purple...
Ryan E. Day
Business partnerships are nothing new. Partnerships that result in leaner manufacturing processes, more consistent quality, and lower manufacturing costs—that is worth talking about.
With global...
Maria Guadalupe
Making mistakes and learning from them is par for the course for companies. But years of bad decisions could lead to the downfall of conglomerates.
In the case of General Electric, a major engine...
Robert Gabsa
In today’s talent market, employees are consumers of the workplace: They are attracted, recruited, and wooed into making employment decisions, similar to how companies market products and services to...
Nick Castellina
It is a great time to be a small business in manufacturing. Today’s digital disruption is about ideas, not major capital investments or facilities with sprawling footprints. Although it’s true that...
Guy Courtin
The digital age is well underway, and that accounts for every aspect of business. A 2016 Boston Consulting Group (BCG) survey says that companies that digitally transform their supply chains will be...
Jesse Lyn Stoner
Do you seesaw back and forth, trying to manage polarities in your life and find the right balance?
There are a lot of seesaws you can get caught on: overcommitted—bored, trust too easily—...
Naphtali Hoff
A story is told about a reporter who was interviewing a successful bank president. He wanted to know the secret of the man’s success. “Two words: right decisions,” the banker told him.
“And how do...
Mike Richman
There’s a big problem for companies within industry these days: the inability to monitor statistical process control (SPC) in real time. This issue manifests itself in several ways, and its effects...
Ryan E. Day
Advanced Integration Technology (AIT) serves the world’s largest and most technologically advanced aerospace OEMs and tier one suppliers, including Boeing, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman,...
Jim Benson
Let’s take a second to emphasize who is important in the following quotes, all by W. Edwards Deming: “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you are doing.” “A bad...
NIST
Augmenting its efforts to protect the nation’s critical assets from cybersecurity threats as well as protect individuals’ privacy, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued...
Dick Wooden
Iran across the book, Successful Human Relations: Principles and practice in business, in the home, in government (Harpercollins, 1952) while browsing older books about relationship development...
Jim Benson
Human beings are good at placing roadblocks to success and building plans that can’t be followed. We tend to fall back on our “common sense” or “snap judgement” which often makes us feel like our...
Bruce Hamilton
Many years ago, the Toyota Production System Support Center (TSSC) introduced a visual measurement device to my factory, referred to as a “production activity log” (PAL), also known to some as an...
