Forrest Breyfogle—New Paradigms
Why did the current financial crisis occur? Among other things, we could point to greed, ethics, and policy creation. However, could we also consider commonplace business management systems and...
Greg Hutchins
One week in May, I spoke on “Risk in the Supply Chain and Other Changes” at the World Conference on Quality and Improvement (WCQI), the Macon, Georgia, ASQ section, and the Atlanta, Georgia, ASQ...
GHSP
The story of how one Michigan-based automotive supplier, GHSP, embraced the quality circle process and very quickly earned a spot as a leader from one of the most demanding customers in the business...
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
All the talk of health care reform has resulted in many hospitals turning to lean Six Sigma to help improve efficiency and aid in cost cutting. However, health care efficiency expert Ron Wince...
H. James Harrington
Two months ago my column “Are Quality Methodologies All Smoke and Mirrors? Part One” was a review of my interview in 1988 with F. James Mc Donald, the CEO of General Motors Corp. at that time. The...
Michael S. Flynn and Robert E. Cole
For some time, auto experts have reported that objective quality differences have all but disappeared across most automotive brands. Indeed, the Detroit Three automakers have eliminated or...
Kimberly Douglas
If your team members (or you) hear “Meeting at 3:00” and think, “Here comes another waste of my time,” then it’s time for a meeting overhaul at your organization. While meetings can be important...
William Scherkenbach and Mitchell White
While I have been saying this for decades, and while K’ung Fu-tzu implied it millennia ago when he called for a balance of knowledge and action, it takes a while to sink in. W. Edwards Deming showed...
Patrick Lanthier
There are several challenges that can arise when you start the process of measuring micro and meso scale parts. Some important factors to consider before you begin the actual part measuring are:...
David C. Crosby
Y
ears ago, when I was a field quality rep (source inspector), part of my job was to audit prospective suppliers. The basis of the audits was MIL-Q-9858A, the military quality system. Most audits...
Denise Robitaille
It was the great W. Edwards Deming who first applied this tenet, “Drive out fear,” to quality management in his book Out of the Crisis (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1982) It’s one of his...
Sidney Vianna
Aviation safety is a very critical issue. For millions of people to fly safely every day around the world, a very large and complex network of business and regulatory agencies have to operate...
Raissa Carey
As auto making evolves and cars increasingly become simply computers on wheels, independent repair shops are facing a new kind of problem: trying to decode and read cars’ on-board computer systems...
Bill Kalmar
Ritz-Carlton employees are passionate, disciplined, and fanatical about their jobs. Over the years, much has been written about the extraordinary customer service you can expect to receive from...
Forrest Breyfogle—New Paradigms
A previous article of mine in this newsletter, “NOT Transforming the Data Can Be Fatal to Your Analysis,” addressed the need for appropriate transformations and a predictive performance measurement...
Alex Lucas
Top-100 automotive supplier, Kautex, relies on Metris XC50-LS Cross Scanner on LK CMM to verify the production quality of composite fuel tanks. Kautex engineers set up and execute automatic...
Cathy Sunshine
When first hearing the word “clues,” your mind might start envisioning great fictional detectives such as Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple, but in the business world it is essential for every leader...
Steven Ouellette
If you have been following my articles over the last few months, you have seen that even though statistical process control (SPC) charts are very powerful tools for examining a process, it turns out...
James O. Pearson
We have all had to plan a trip to the airport. Sometimes it goes well and sometimes not so well. One of the problems we have is dealing with the variation in the trip time to the airport. Since I...
John Stiller
Story update 9/23/09: Reference to 9.5.2.f was changed to 8.5.2.f in second paragraph.
As more suppliers are required by their regulators and customers to achieve ISO 9001 certification, and...
