All Features
Greg Hutchins
I live in the Northwest of the United States. We are now the small business and startup mecca of the country. Why? San Francisco and Silicon Valley are too expensive. So, folks are moving in droves to Portland and Seattle; one-third of the license plates in my hood are out of state.
But there are…
John Hayes
Reports that small, low-profile, single-bin automated guided vehicles (AGV) capable of light load, small-bin pickup and transport will soon take over warehouses, distribution centers, and manufacturing plants are exaggerated. Sure, when Amazon bought Kiva years ago for a little less than a…
Steven Brand
The evolution from manual methods to advanced techniques for creating goods and services has become a complex process, giving rise to a host of HR challenges in manufacturing.
The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) paints a positive outlook for the U.S. manufacturing industry. NAM’s most…
Jon Speer
Medical device startups tend to share many common issues. They are usually striving for better resources (such as people and capital) as well as the knowledge and expertise required to deal with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and successfully bring a product to market.
For many…
Doug Bulla
Being a numbers-driven manufacturing CFO is a good thing—in fact, it’s essential. But as a CFO, you probably know finance and operations more than you know the ins and outs of manufacturing, which can lead you to measuring the wrong key performance metrics.
Here are five costly manufacturing…
Thomas R. Cutler
Flawless order fulfillment from a distribution center or warehouse to the customer’s door is the neglected leg of the supply chain. Ironically, without careful attention to the last mile, e-commerce customers are disappointed with the quality, accuracy, and condition of the products being…
Annamarie Mann
Once the status symbol of anti-establishment Silicon Valley tech companies such as Google and Facebook, the open-office floor plan now pervades U.S. workplaces. According to The Washington Post, about 70 percent of U.S. offices have an open-office floor plan.
Supporters say open floor plans…
Bruce Hamilton
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
—George Orwell
The famous quote from George Orwell’s political allegory, Animal Farm, occurred to me recently as I listened to a design engineer explain to me how he was taught in college that engineers have a special…
Kevin Meyer
One of the most powerful lean tools is called value stream mapping, a visual management method used to document the flow and creation of value in a process. The definition of a value stream is all steps—both value-added and nonvalue-added—that contribute to taking the process from raw materials to…
Ryan E. Day
Sponsored Content
For growth-minded organizations like TS Tech, global supplier of automobile seats and interiors, “the way we’ve always done it” is rarely good enough. As a tier-one supplier to major automotive OEMs, TS Tech always has an eye out for ways to improve quality and throughput. They…
Victor Prince
A few summers ago, I hiked the ancient Camino de Santiago trail across Spain. It was the best month of my life for many reasons. Along with a lot of other great things I got by walking almost 500 miles, it also taught me some valuable project management lessons that I can use at work.
Less is…
Tim Lozier
Sponsored Content
The difference between cloud providers is often found in their chosen deployment method. Typically, software can be implemented either through multi-tenant or dedicated cloud environments. With the advent of virtual servers, cloud environments have moved past the “trend” phase…
Therese Graff
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal (“The Reason Southwest Stopped Overbooking”), which contained excerpts from an interview with Southwest Airlines’ CEO Gary Kelly, brought out the need to address airline capacity issues on the ground and in the air. Responding to a question on the impact…
Ryan E. Day
What do cocoa, socks, and smartphones have in common? If you guessed risk of slavery in the manufacturing supply chain, you are correct. Does your organization have an international supply chain? Then it’s at risk. What are you doing to address the risks associated with modern slavery in your…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Our August 11, 2017, episode of QDL looked at the role of technology in after-market service, stairs that help you up, Fidget Cubes, and more.
“Climbing Stairs Just Got Easier With Energy-Recycling Steps”
These stairs actually help you go up.
“The Curious Case of the Fidget Cube”
How a product…
Ryan E. Day
Innovation within industry is a must to improve processes, products, and customer experience. Although some innovations, like Amazon’s floating distribution center, seem implausible, other sci-fi technology is already revolutionizing and redefining the way employees accomplish tasks.
Tales of…
Mike Richman
The dog days of summer are here, but the Aug. 4, 2017, episode of QDL offered lots of cool content. Let’s take a closer look:
“What Went Wrong With the F-35?” One expert calls the Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet an “inherently terrible airplane.” So why does the Air Force consider it warfighter…
Bruce Weinberg
Science funding is intended to support the production of new knowledge and ideas that develop new technologies, improve medical treatments, and strengthen the economy. The idea goes back to influential engineer Vannevar Bush, who headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development during…
Jun Nakamuro
Japanese improvement techniques have been emulated across the globe for decades, and none carries more cultural weight than the theory of kaizen. When I expose Western leaders to lean practices in Japan, they often express that they have come away with a better understanding of “true kaizen.” They…
John Stepper
Whenever I talk to organizations about open, connected ways of working, this question inevitably comes up: “How do you get leaders to do it?”
It’s a problem. Most often, managers simply don’t have the time to learn a different way of leading. Or their habits are so deeply ingrained that doing…
Michael Hughes
The F-35 was billed as a fighter jet that could do almost everything the U.S. military desired, serving the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy—and even Britain’s Royal Air Force and Royal Navy—all in one aircraft design. It’s supposed to replace and improve upon several current—and aging—aircraft…
Fred Schenkelberg
Our customers, suppliers, and peers seem to confuse reliability information with mean time between failure (MTBF). Why is that?
Is it a convenient shorthand? Maybe I’m the one confused, maybe those asking or expecting MTBF really want to use an inverse of a failure rate. Maybe they aren’t…
Coleman Flanagan
Sponsored Content
Your life as a nondestructive testing (NDT) inspector is not always easy. And if you’re engaged in rope access inspections, you face additional challenges. Whether you’re dangling from a rope 30 feet in the air or hanging over the ocean from a platform rig, you have to be choosy…
Mark Whitworth
For decades, audit management has centered on paper checklists, with tracking moving to Excel spreadsheets in more recent years. Despite growing adoption of cloud-based manufacturing software, many auto suppliers still rely on paper checklists and spreadsheets to manage audit programs.
There’s a…
John Guaspari
‘You want me to pull the kids out of school for what?”
I could tell that my wife didn’t like my idea because she had used the tone she uses when I say something that is, to employ the pet phrase she employs in such instances, “really stupid.”
“For Guaspari Family Quality Day,” I replied. “We take…
