All Features
Jason Furness
In a previous article I wrote about the reasons why so many lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, and other improvement programs fail. In this article I’m going to expand on reason No. 1: the Academy Award Syndrome.
Academy Award Syndrome
The Academy Award Syndrome is where a program or project is…
Mike Brandt
At the heart of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are two critical words you will see in almost every article and write-up where Industry 4.0 is mentioned. Those two words are “digital” and “smart,” and they represent a complete shift in enablement and employee productivity in the modern…
Jim Benson
Tonianne DeMaria and I run the Personal Kanban, Modus Institute, and Modus Cooperandi Corp-o-plex pretty much duo-handed. There’s a lot of work. The rules of Personal Kanban apply to us, too. We are constantly experimenting with new ways to visualize our work and limit our work-in-process (WIP).…
Ryan E. Day
Manufacturing activities have strong ties to economic prosperity. Deloitte’s 2016 Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index states, “Nations and companies are striving to advance to the next technology frontier and raise their economic well-being.” It’s no surprise that the manufacturing sector is…
John Toon
Can companies rely on the results of one or two scientific studies to design a new industrial process or launch a new product? In at least one area of materials chemistry, the answer may be yes—but only 80 percent of the time.
The replicability of results from scientific studies has become a…
Dan Chalk
Although many manufacturing organizations have held firm to traditional operational processes for generations, the time has come for transformational change. There is an ongoing shift in cultural expectations of how, when, and where work happens, and it is driven by consumer choice. Industry…
Stephen McCarthy
Cost of quality (CoQ) is certainly not a new topic. It was first described in 1956 by American quality control expert Armand V. Feigenbaum in a Harvard Business Review article. As you likely already know, CoQ consists of four categories: internal and external failures, and appraisal and prevention…
Taran March @ Quality Digest
What must it be like to be Elon Musk? Here’s a guy who can successfully launch the world’s most powerful rocket into space, a feat hitherto reserved for nations with decent budgets. Since 2010 his commercial company, SpaceX, has been ferrying satellites to their permanent homes, and delivering…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Our Feb. 9, 2018, episode of QDL looked at electronic notes, electronic privacy, smart electronic device, and... wow... have we taken technology too far?
“Study Shows Doctors Record Better Notes After Using Best-Practices Program”
Shortcuts to electronic note taking, such as autofill and copy…
Noah Askin
Music lovers will likely know Spotify, a music streaming service that has become famous for curating tunes based on its users’ preferences. Back in 2013, Spotify had a personalized news feed called Discover that gathered together artists, album reviews, new releases, recommendations, and playlists…
Gwendolyn Galsworth
It’s easy enough to make a visual device—or borrow an idea for one from something you saw in a book or at another workplace. Reproducing other people’s ideas (as long as you say thank you) is a positive, and it can keep you going for a while. But not for very long.
Unless you are a natural-born…
Gordon Styles
Within the advanced manufacturing industry there will always be a race to reduce speed and cost while maintaining quality. To this end, the industry’s landscape continues to quickly change as new technologies enter the market, new strategies are adopted, and consumer preferences evolve. Below are…
Julia Russell
Retailers and brands convened in New York recently to experience the National Retail Federation’s Retail’s Big Show, and one of the biggest topics on attendees’ minds was technology. From automation to personalization to social marketing, the growing importance of technology in the shopping…
Jesse Lyn Stoner
All relationships depend on a foundation of trust. There is a direct relationship between employee trust and performance. Customer trust is a key factor in decisions on purchases. And in our personal lives, friendships are built on trust and one of the biggest causes of destroyed marriage is lack…
Michael Armstrong, Kenneth Klassen
Patients often wait weeks or months for medical appointments. Canada’s Fraser Institute recently reported that Canadians typically wait 10 weeks to see specialists. Long wait times are one reason Canada ranks behind other developed countries in healthcare quality.
In the United States, waits are…
Fred Schenkelberg
MTBF use and thinking is still rampant. It affects how our peers and colleagues approach solving problems, and there is a full range of problems that come from using the “mean time between failure” (MTBF) metric.
So, how do you spot the signs of MTBF thinking even when MTBF is not mentioned? Let’…
Jun Nakamuro
The sad truth is that the word “engagement” is not very engaging. It’s one of those fluffy, ambiguous terms that have become all too familiar around the business world, like “empowerment” and “respect.” What does engagement really mean, and how do you, as a leader, engage your workforce? The…
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…
