Some are calling it, “The Great Resignation.” Others are calling it “The Great Reshuffle.” After spending the past year as executive director of America Works, I’ve talked with more than 250 manufacturing workforce development professionals throughout the MEP National Network and our partners.…

The pandemic has seen an unprecedented global effort to accelerate the development of safe and effective vaccines as well as a rapid expansion of vaccine manufacturing capacity. However, challenges in further scaling up vaccine manufacturing capacity to meet higher-than-expected demand, and the…

Consumers who see a product on sale being virtually touched are more engaged and willing to pay more than if the item is displayed on its own, according to a recent research paper I co-authored. Behavioral economists have previously shown that people value objects more highly if they own them, a…

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Seth Godin’s concept of Finding Your Who, which is all about identifying who your products are for. The Who isn’t defined by demographics but by psychographics: Their (customer) beliefs, their dreams, their desires. It’s a reminder that developing personas is so…

One of my favorite Halloween memories was decorating the annual giant pumpkin with my son when he was young. As a toddler, he was primarily an observer as he watched me sculpt the face of the pumpkin with a scrimp knife. However, his commitment to the pumpkin-carving process ramped up dramatically…

China’s dominance in manufacturing has made it the factory for the world. The subsequent economic growth enriched an ever-expanding middle class, and the country’s retail industry has quickly adapted to supply a growing appetite for consumption. Some of these developments in the way people spend…

The origin of SARS-CoV-2 remains a mystery. One theory is that the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 was transmitted from animals to humans—a fairly common occurrence. Another is that it came from a laboratory accident—a more infrequent circumstance. Around the world, scientists conduct many kinds…

With the rise of online shopping continuing to increase, thanks to the convenience and comfort of shopping from home, it's important for e-commerce businesses to look to their returns policy to ensure they’re not only catering to the tech-savvy, modern consumer, but also the environmentally…

There are many endangered industries today, and publishing is certainly among them. In 2009 we didn’t know if we would survive the monumental changes that had torn through all areas of the publishing world.   W. Edwards Deming once said to me during an interview, “Pray that your competitors are…

It seems like yesterday that I walked into 1425 Vista Way in Red Bluff, California, to begin what I thought was a part-time data-entry job that was supposed to last just a few weeks. Instead, I ended up working for Quality Digest for 21 years; made lifelong friends; became a journalist, writer,…

In publishing, anniversary issues sit in the ambiguous space between news and marketing. News because, at 40 years and counting, it’s not every magazine that makes it to middle age in these times. Marketing because it’s all a bit brash, like asking for presents on your birthday. However, it’s worth…

As part of QD’s 40th anniversary hoopla, we wanted to hear from those in the quality field. Tribal knowledge is real and valuable. What you’ve learned as a quality professional can help others starting out in the field. Here are words of wisdom from readers respresenting a diverse array of…

Believe it or not, the technology that brought you Bitcoin is beginning to make waves in the food manufacturing industry. This technology, called blockchain, is a digital ledger maintained across several computers, then linked through a peer-to-peer network. The system's design makes it difficult…

This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine. The way the United States typically finances hospitals isn’t working. The coronavirus laid this bare, along with many other long-standing societal problems. Before Covid-19, most hospitals were operating on a standard “fee-for-service”…

When the City of Germantown, Tennessee, was named a Baldrige Award recipient in 2019, the small suburb of Memphis (just 20 square miles in size) became only the fourth city to earn the prestigious, presidential award for organizational excellence. During the Baldrige program’s 32nd Quest for…

In 1978, inventor Thomas Jake Lunsford patented a new form of plastic packaging and unknowingly triggered the ire of hundreds of millions of consumers. His invention was the “clamshell”—a type of packaging that envelops a product in two form-fitting, sealed plastic shells. The public frustration…

More and more people are doing their shopping from home these days, and whether they’re ordering groceries, home office equipment, or Covid-19 tests, they increasingly expect their deliveries to be fast and on time. Companies have struggled to keep up with the rise in orders and expectations. One…

For most of 2021, roughly 4 percent of the retail workforce has quit every month; in June alone 632,000 workers quit their retail job. Even though retail workers are quitting at a record pace, more new stores are opening than expected and looking to hire new employees. So how can retail chains…

‘We didn’t get here on our own,” said Brian Dieter, president and CEO of Baldrige Award-recipient Mary Greeley Medical Center (MGMC), speaking at the 32nd Baldrige Quest for Excellence Conference. “We think we are very much better as a result of having learned from [other Baldrige Award recipients…

I was recently on a trip to visit a manufacturing facility for one of our clients. My connecting flight didn’t arrive on time, which delayed my arrival and put me on a tight schedule. When I got to the rental car agency, I saw more than 20 people waiting in line, and my heart sunk. “Should I call…

Following any tech transfer project, the subsequent startup of the manufacturing line is almost always full of challenges. The goal is to start up as soon as possible once the project is completed but also to achieve steady-state throughput as quickly as possible after the startup begins. This type…

Labor demand is continuing to outstrip labor supply by a wider margin despite record job openings. The hospitality industry is just one industry taking hard hits, with some restaurants reporting temporarily closing or cutting hours due to the labor shortage. But just as restaurants look to robotics…

Necessity is the mother of invention. And few things are more necessary to the success of an organization than customers. Leave that thought on the page, and we will return to it shortly. Napoleon knew that a military force’s success directly correlated to the food it was provided. He offered a…

Like it or not, work-from-home (WFH) is here to stay. This is not just a perk that employers might offer, but a requirement on which many employees, current and future, are demanding. According to several surveys, between 30 and 50 percent of employees surveyed said they would leave their jobs if…

There are many control chart rules to detect special causes (i.e., out-of-control conditions). Although most of these rules are clear, the one that seems to befuddle most people is the rule about trends. Is it six points (including the first point), six points (excluding the first point), or seven…