All Features
In the race to design smaller handheld devices and smartphones, a key factor is decreasing the sizes of components. As the demand for thinner and lighter microelectronic devices increases, manufacturers often are limited by how oddly shaped the energy sources must become to make them conform to…
Ryan E. Day
The words “plastic,” “polymers,” and “environmental responsibility” rarely bump consonants in the same sentence, but public sentiment and keen competition can nudge a company into exploring all kinds of plastic substitutes. Of course, a $160 price tag on a barrel of oil is also rather compelling.…
Brian Lagas
Embracing sustainable and green principles is not just a trend. Cultivating such practices helps organizations become more efficient, competitive, and profitable. It’s more than simply a good thing to do. Manufacturers are realizing the many short- and long-term financial benefits from…
Sonal Sinha
There’s a reason why companies like Coca-Cola, Disney, Gap, and GE consistently rank among the world’s most admired organizations—and it has to do with more than just the strength of their products and services.
These companies have demonstrated their commitment to the local communities and…
Quality Digest
There is no substitute for knowledge... —W. Edwards Deming
The W. Edwards Deming Institute (deming.org) and Purdue University held their 2013 Annual Fall Conference in West Lafayette, Indiana, last week, focusing on Deming’s ideas and their connection to the critical concept of sustainability.…
Andrew McKeon
Editor’s note: Andrew McKeon will be a guest of Quality Digest Live on Friday, September 27, 2013, at 11 a.m. Pacific/2 p.m. Eastern. McKeon will be speaking at The Deming Institute’s Annual Fall Conference, Oct. 18–20, 2013, in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Businesses today are moving from a world…
Tom Kadala
Why is the price of oil still hovering around $100 per barrel, if global demand has fallen and the supply of alternative energy sources, including shale and renewables, are increasing? Could it be that commodity traders are reacting to a new series of less visible market forces?
We know that…
Marc Gunther
Zero is a good number when it comes to sustainability. Zero emissions. Net-zero energy buildings. And of course, zero waste. Zero waste is radical. It’s attainable. It’s good business. And it’s cool.
I’ve been excited by the idea of zero waste ever since I wrote a FORTUNE story called “The End of…
Laurel Thoennes @ QD
“What makes a personal kanban any better than a to-do list?” asked Julie, crossing out a completed task on her “ta da!” list with exaggerated strokes.
“With personal kanban you visualize your work, it becomes tangible, you get kinesthetic feedback, it’s flexible, contextual, and it promotes…
Michelle LaBrosse
You can’t pick up an article or turn on the news without running across the word “sustainability.” So, I got to thinking about what sustainability means on an individual level—not from a purely ecological perspective, but from a humanistic one.
Ecologically, sustainability is about biological…
Jack Healy
One of the more improbable business changes of our times has been caused by a number of corporations such as Walmart, General Motors, IBM, and others who have taken on the direct responsibility for improving the environment by ensuring that “sustainability” is implemented throughout their…
Managing for quality is breaking new ground. Increasingly, organizations are being encouraged to look at the entire landscape unfolding before them from the perspective of a balanced array of outcomes characterized by what authors Andrew Savitz and Karl Weber call The Triple Bottom Line (Jossey-…
Stewart Anderson
The 5 Whys is a well-known root cause analysis technique that originated at Toyota and has been adopted by many other organizations that have implemented lean manufacturing principles. Unlike more sophisticated problem-solving techniques, the 5 Whys doesn’t involve data segmentation, hypothesis…
Mary F. McDonald
In my last article, I discussed sustainability in generic terms, focusing mostly on environmental issues. This month, we’re going to look at how sustainability is reported externally.
Why do we care about how sustainability is being reported? It’s a hot topic! In The New York Times, Sept. 14,…
Raissa Carey
Most of us know that Wal-Mart has been a big player in the “green” movement. The world’s biggest retailer takes the whole “let’s save the planet” talk very seriously. So it wasn’t with much shock that in July the company announced a worldwide sustainability index initiative—a single source of data…
Paul Scicchitano
Last week a big story was leaked to me.
I learned that the Obama Administration had been circulating a draft replacement to Executive Order 13423 that would require all U.S. government agencies in the massive federal bureaucracy to commit to a 20 percent reduction in carbon emissions throughout…
