Davis Balestracci
Do top managers still view financial performance as the sole indicator of success, despite mouthing platitudes about dazzled customers and fulfilled employees? Is there a point when reductions are...
Miriam Boudreaux
Well, a simple answer is no, you don’t need a consultant to achieve ISO 9001 certification. In fact, many companies achieve ISO 9001 on their own, by appointing key employees to the task. The...
Donald J. Wheeler
The symptoms of leptokurtophobia are (1) routinely asking if your data are normally distributed and (2) transforming your data to make them appear to be less leptokurtic and more “mound shaped.” If...
Samar Azmashly
(Eurojar: Damascus, Al-Hayat) -- Syria has decided to open its economy to the world after long years of centralized economy and to broaden its economic options east and west. Despite the opposition...
Denis Leonard and William Murphy
As quality professionals, we find ourselves in a never-ending search for breakdowns in systems, targeting opportunities for improvement with a relentless eye on the ever-out-of-reach but always-in-...
NASA Kennedy Tech Transfer News
What does an innovator do when existing methods of calibrating a critical environment pressure sensor are cumbersome and produce shoddy results? Richard Deyoe and Stephen Stout, ASRC Aerospace...
Bill Kalmar
Sometimes in our attempt to correct a quality oversight we end up creating more havoc than if we had done just nothing. Looking for problems in an otherwise smooth running operation can result in...
Chip R. Bell and John R.
It was her first flight. Her parents had finally settled a bitter divorce resulting in her dad moving three states away. The 10-year-old was nervous about pretty much everything. As soon as she was...
David C. Crosby
When I say quality manager, of course I’m talking about the department he or she manages as well.
I’ve been in the “quality business” for fifty years now. That’s right, fifty years. Much of my...
H. James Harrington
World War III has begun. This time it’s not a war of battleships, bullets and bombs—this is an economic war. The weapons are televisions, steel, cars, and clothes. This is a war where we have no...
R. Eric Reidenbach Ph.D.
Pick up any article or book, attend any conference on Six Sigma, or talk with any Black Belt or Master Black Belt and you will hear the Six Sigma gospel about the importance of the voice of the...
Julia M. Rahn Ph.D.
A
debate exists as to whether making an error is the same as making a mistake. In baseball, it's an error if a fielder misplays a ball in a way that allows a batter or base runner to reach one or...
Alex Lucas
For decades, traditional touch probes on coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) have been the gold standard by which parts have been inspected and verified. However, this time-consuming process...
Tom Pyzdek
Today I received a sales call from a person interested in becoming a certified Six Sigma Black Belt. He had what I call a "can't do" personality. This is the diametric opposite of the...
Tracy Willis
Do you hear Six Sigma professionals express frustration that the organization does not support their efforts?
Are there department heads in your life who have complained that their Six Sigma...
Aaron Sabino
The aerospace sector has the most stringent quality standards in the world. The big name manufacturers and their suppliers are constantly adapting new technologies to speed up inspection while...
Georgia Institute of Technology
In 2008, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta saw more than 170,000 patients across all three of its three emergency departments. That kind of volume demands an effective and efficient process, and...
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
When I started at General Motors (GM) in the 1960s, we were the biggest and best company in the United States and most of the world. As a matter of fact, I believe that only a couple of state...
Bill Kalmar
Before some of you fact checkers write me to explain that locoism is a disease cattle contract by eating loco weed and a malady not inflicted on humans, let me assure you that there are some in our...
Tom Pyzdek
In a recent post on the Evolving Excellence blog, Bill Waddell tackles one of my pet peeves: activity-based costing, or ABC. Few things do more harm to lean Six Sigma than this method of accounting...
