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Fred Schenkelberg
When products were crafted one at a time, the design and manufacturing processes were often done by the same person. For example, a craftsman would design and build a chest of drawers or a carriage. Some trades would employ apprentices to learn the craft, which also included design.
Larger…
Donald J. Wheeler
The simple process behavior chart can be used in many different ways. Since report card data are common in all types of businesses, the report card chart is often the first chart that people create. Some of the pros and cons of report card charts are covered here.
Report card data are data that…
Chad Kymal
The aerospace standard AS9100 Revision D was originally planned to be released in April 2014. Many of us close to the standard expected it to be released in May 2016 after the April International Aerospace Quality Group (IAQG) meeting in Singapore. However, this was not the case; the IAQG decided…
Mike Beels
It’s amazing that, in this day and age, some manufacturers have not yet heard of “lean.” How are they surviving in today’s competitive market without it? The issue is that, in many ways, the customer sets pricing. If manufacturers want to be profitable, they must find ways to become more efficient…
John Bell
Should every company be striving for the type of strategic advantage that has become the hallmark of Amazon, Google, and Facebook? For sure, in the tech world, it’s hard to imagine success without quick and continuous technology improvement. What about your world?
Whether you sell information or…
Stephan Manning, Marcus M. Larsen
One of the big themes in the current presidential race is how decades of free trade have dealt a heavy blow to the U.S. worker as millions of jobs were shipped overseas to take advantage of cheap labor.
That’s even turned some pro free-trade Republicans into protectionists. As a result, the…
Harish Jose
May 8 was Mother's Day. In today's article I will be writing about somebody who has been called "The Mother of Modern Management" and "America's First Lady of Engineering." Many of this woman's concepts and ideas lend themselves really well to the Toyota Production System.
Lillian Moller Gilbreth…
Patrick Runkel
The Pareto chart is a graphic representation of the 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto principle. If you’re a quality improvement specialist, you know that the chart is named after the early 20th-century economist Vilfredo Pareto, who discovered that roughly 20 percent of the population in Italy…
Evan Miller
Sponsored Content
PLZ Aeroscience is North America’s largest custom aerosol manufacturer and packager. It produces its own private-brand products and custom formulations, and provides contract filling for other customers. PLZ has been in business for more than 100 years and during the last six…
Takehiko Harada
Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from the book, Management Lessons From Taiichi Ohno: What Every Leader Can Learn From the Man who Invented the Toyota Production System, by Takehiko Harada (McGraw-Hill Education, 2015).
The phrase, “kaizen equals getting closer to the final process” was hardly…
Gwendolyn Galsworth
Visual scheduling is a plain, two-dimensional format that maps out which products, parts, or subassemblies need to be produced, and when, in what quantity, and in what order. Nothing could be simpler.
In companies where schedules aren't published in a single, centralized location for all to see…
Jim Benson
We are all cursed with “surprises” at work. We come in, sit down, get ready for the day. We select a task to start on, and about halfway through, it explodes on us. The seemingly simple task now has 30 subtasks all lined up, ready to destroy our day.
This is stressful. Since we’re likely already…
Mike Micklewright
Quiz time: What significance does the yin and the yang have in discussing standardized training? I suggest that you pause and guess (and then read on for the answer).
OK, we all get it, standards are a part of our lives in the business world, and they are gaining more and more focus as companies…
Lisa Lang
Most of the time when I’m consulting, the problem that my clients think they have is not the real problem. That makes sense, because if people understood their real problem, they would just fix it. The fact that the problem still exists is a likely indicator that the real issue hasn’t been…
Harish Jose
Today I’d like to talk about kaizen—specifically, the order for kaizen. The term has come to mean “continuous improvement,” but kaizen originally translates from Japanese as “change for better.” To help clarify this useful concept, I’ll present three different views for approaching kaizen: Taiichi…
Jeffrey Eves
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There are many paths for organizations to become good, sustainable, low-footprint citizens of the business world. Production processes can be redesigned to be more efficient, corporate campuses can be located so as to reduce employees’ dependence on fossil fuels, and buildings…
Helena Lui
There’s an old saying that “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Every project manager knows that she has to create a realistic project budget before the project begins. This step is not optional because when you’re midway through your project and realize you’ve run out of money, you’re in big…
Lawrence Yu
If we used a time machine to transport a pharmaceutical scientist from the 1960s into a current pharmaceutical production plant, it might be surprising to learn that he would already be familiar with most of the processes and production techniques being used. That’s because not much has changed in…
Ryan E. Day
Ihave never been accused of being an early adopter of cutting-edge technology. On the other hand, I don’t dance the Luddite jig, either. True to my own type, I hung on to my old M-1A tank, aka a Motorola flip phone, for as long as I could, but was pleased as punch when circumstances led me to…
Fred Schenkelberg
What if all failures occurred truly randomly? Well, for one thing the math would be easier.
The exponential distribution would be the only time to failure distribution—we wouldn’t need Weibull or other complex multi-parameter models. Knowing the failure rate for an hour would be all we would need…
William A. Levinson
All process activities can be broken down into one of five categories: waiting, handling and setup, inspection, transportation, and transformation. Of these, only transformation of the product adds value.
A figure in Frederick Winslow Taylor’s 1911 book, Shop Management makes it clear that, while…
Bruce Hamilton
Today’s article is inspired by the politically-charged gobbledygook we call presidential primaries. This battle of principles turned battle of wills reminds me that the role of the change agent can be as much theater as science. In a public forum, at least, the positions of the opponents are…
Becky Blalock
When asked about the thing most managers dread about their job, the No. 1 response is giving constructive feedback. Yet this is the most important task for any leader.
As someone who came out of college and was leading a team at 22 years old, I wish I’d had some guidance on how to make feedback…
Bruno Scibilia
In yesterday’s column, I discussed how a DOE was chosen to optimize a chemical-mechanical polishing process in the microelectronics industry. This important process improved the plant’s final manufacturing yields. We selected an experimental design that let us study the effects of six process…
Ryan E. Day
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W hen you work on projects like NASA’s Space Launch System and deep-space radio telescopes, the opportunity for accolades and large revenues can be great. However, due to the massive scale and demanding tolerances of such projects, the opportunity to have your lunch eaten by…
