All Features
Rob Matheson
Liquid-liquid separation and chemical extraction are key processes in drug manufacturing and many other industries, including oil and gas, fragrances, food, wastewater filtration, and biotechnology.
Three years ago, MIT spinout Zaiput Flow Technologies launched a novel continuous-flow liquid-…
Eric Stoop
With only a handful of aerospace original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) as potential customers, aerospace suppliers have to hustle to make sure they’re selected. Stand out for the right reasons, and you could solidify 20 years worth of business. Make the wrong impression, and you could miss out…
Eric Cooper
You’re in the market to build a new house. Would you tell the builder what you’re looking for, or would you just tell him to build “something?” If the latter, what’s the likelihood that the house you end up with is going to be what you want? Documenting your requirements should be obvious, right…
Robert Means
Manufacturing is an industry in flux. Characterized by increasing pressure from global competitors, the impact of new technologies, Industry 4.0, and the “smart factory,” the face of manufacturing is changing drastically for the better. In a recent manufacturing outlook survey from the National…
Ryan E. Day
When your public motto is “staying on the cutting edge of technology,” you’ve set a bar for yourself. Thomas Paquin set that bar when he founded Laser Specialists Inc. (LSI) in 1986. Paquin’s untimely death in 1993 left the company with questionable leadership and direction. In 2004, Nick and Jon…
Steven Brand
The global aerospace and defense (A&D) industry grew by 2.4 percent and generated about $674 billion in 2016, according to a Deloitte 2017 study. California alone was responsible for generating $62 billion a year in revenue in 2014, according to a 2014 California Aerospace Industry Economic…
Earl Van As
Competitive forces are intensifying in the B2B supply chain, increasing customer expectations for service and pricing, and creating more pressure for businesses to maintain an edge. Instead of being reactive to today’s increasingly low margins, decision makers should take advantage of the risks…
Ames Laboratory
Iver Anderson and Emma White, metallurgists at Ames Laboratory, like to show off two samples of metal powders encapsulated in custom-made hourglasses to visitors. Dull gray, the powders are barely remarkable in and of themselves, let alone in comparison to each other—until the hourglasses are…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Those of us who care about communication accuracy in the workplace—which should be all of us—cringe at the idea of using something like Facebook or Twitter to communicate with co-workers. We look at how those platforms in particular get abused outside of business and can’t imagine a corporate world…
Dave Crenshaw
According to a poll conducted by Harris and the University of Phoenix, 59 percent of American workers wish they were in a different career. For employees in their 30s, that number is right around 73 percent. Employees disliking their jobs may be nothing new, but pushing to make the workday more…
Vip Vyas, Diego Nannicini, David Sherman
In an era of volcanic Twitter accounts, devastating disruptions, seismic shifts toward de-globalization, and widespread corporate uncertainty, is your organization trapped in fear, or is it reaching out to the future? In short, are you “forwarding” your business?
Against the current backdrop,…
Jennifer V. Miller
Are there any positive leadership stories out there anymore? Anyone? Anyone?
Sometimes, I feel like Ben Stein’s economics teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, casting about for any story that sheds a positive light on the ability to lead with character. Within one week I heard three stories of…
Steven Brand
The manufacturing industry in the United States is ripe for a new industrial revolution, and artificial intelligence and robotic automation are set to play a key role in that change. Because manufacturing is a major driving force in a nation’s economic prosperity, it is especially important that…
Mike Richman
Last Friday’s episode of QDL welcomed the new year with our usual original take on featured editorial content, plus a great Tech Corner. In case you missed it, here’s what we covered:
“Most ‘Innovations’ Are Mere Novelties” In this article, author Helen Barrett exposes the myth of the lone-wolf…
Chip Bell
I do not at all understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. —Anne Lamott
Howard Perdue was the owner, manager, and spiritual leader of the Ford tractor dealership in McRae, Georgia, during the 1950s and 1960s. In that era, about 185…
Mike Richman
Many people don’t understand how the theory of evolution works. There is this notion that change somehow just occurs naturally over the course of geological time. What some fail to grasp is that change does not simply happen. It occurs because there is some external pressure that forces adaptation…
Gleb Tsipursky
When was the last time a colleague said something so ridiculous that it made your jaw drop? Perhaps a desk mate went into something political, claiming that George Bush is behind 9/11 or that Barack Obama is a Muslim from Kenya? Or maybe your boss voiced science denialism, arguing that the Earth…
Scott Berkun
On Tuesdays I write about the top-voted question on “Ask Berkun.” This week’s question came from J.R., who wrote: “What is a favorite theory that you wish more people understood?”
A favorite theory that I wish was more well-known is the Satir Change Model. It’s popular in some circles, but often…
Annette Franz
Why is employee engagement at an all-time low? Why is turnover as high as it is? Why are employees constantly looking for better opportunities?
Think about those questions, along with what I wrote in my column, “Employee Engagement: A Confluence of Passion and Purpose”: “...engagement comes from…
Bruce Hamilton
Speaking at the 2003 Shingo Conference, Guy Briggs, general manager of North American operations for General Motors lamented, “We spent the 1980s ‘counting robots’ before we realized that it’s people that make the difference in our business.”
He was alluding to the thirty-five billion (yes,…
Walter Copan
For the last 30 years, NIST and the Department of Commerce, together with the President of the United States, have been recognizing the nation’s most outstanding organizations with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.
It was my privilege on Nov. 15, 2017, to join Secretary of Commerce…
Phanish Puranam
What would you say about a system that improves performance but is disliked by a significant percentage of those participating in it? Conventional organizational hierarchy may be just such a system. Yet plenty of theorists—including, at times, ourselves—have concentrated on explaining the…
Jim Benson
People are always asking us for help with ways to prioritize. Almost everyone believes prioritization to be an action in and of itself. They ask, “What mechanisms do you use to prioritize?” However, we find most often that prioritization issues, like trust issues, are a symptom of deeper problems…
Jeffrey Phillips
I was leading an innovation workshop recently with a company that invited some of its customers to talk about the future. We were interested in getting feedback from key B2B customers about the future of the industry, where things were heading, and what strategies and programs my customer should…
Ryan E. Day
Sponsored Content
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