Bob Cramblitt
Although he’s not one for clichés, Rus Emerick, process improvement specialist at Schneider-Electric, endorses this one: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
This concept, which...
Bill Kalmar
Here it is, one week into August with loads of summer days still staring us in the face, and yet the “back to school” ads have been popping up for weeks. Every day brings advertisements for...
Stewart Anderson
The recession has been an extremely disruptive event for many organizations. Many bear relentless pressure to identify new market needs, create appropriate products and services, become more...
Robert Parsons
Finally, the long and arduous process that appears to be a requisite phase in the development of an international quality management system standard appears to be nearing an end. Though the AS9100:...
Gwendolyn Galsworth
Editor's note: In this first in a series of articles on workplace visuality, Gwendolyn Galsworth, Ph.D., author of Work That Makes Sense (Visual Lean Enterprise Press, 2010) and Visual...
Tripp Babbitt
While reading an issue of Quality Digest Daily, I came across an article by Kenneth Levine and Peter Sherman titled, “Ten Simple Principles for Treating Employees as Assets.” I thought it followed...
Steve Moore
An article titled “Sharp Drop in Firefighter Fatalities in 2009” appeared in a safety trade journal recently. For the first time in three years, it said, on-the-job firefighter fatalities dropped...
Environmental Quality Corner with Ken Appel
On July 8, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced an initiative “… to evaluate industry’s compliance and understanding of Part 11 in light of the enforcement discretion described in the...
Walter Pastorius
In sawmills, optimization is an in-process procedure that maximizes output of the highest-value board size and quality from the limited and environmentally valuable input of randomly shaped logs....
Tess Woods
Since almost 70 percent of all changes in organizations fail, you might be interested in knowing why that’s so. Rick Maurer, author of Beyond the Wall of Resistance: Why 70% of Changes Still Fail...
Steven Ouellette
Story update 10/05/2010: Corrections were made to captions for Figures 6, 7, 8, 9.
As I was teaching class the other day, I told the students I was going to reveal to them the one secret they...
Donald J. Wheeler
Capability indexes allow us to characterize the relationship between the process potential and the specifications. Performance indexes characterize the past performance relative to the...
Bill Kalmar
The current economic uncertainty has many of us seeking ways to cut back on expenses and streamline our lifestyle. Using grocery discount coupons or looking for those “buy one, get one free” meal...
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
A dish-style radio telescope is being constructed in China that will allow astronomers to detect galaxies and pulsars at unprecedented distances. Not only will the Five-hundred-meter Aperture...
Jay Elepano
For decades we were taught to believe that if you ever wanted to measure anything properly, you needed a coordinate measuring machine (CMM). A couple of decades ago, portable arms were released and...
Mike Micklewright
In part one of this series I described what dyslexia is and how I linked “dyslexia” with “lean.” In part two, I suggested an approach to training in the work place called “universal design for...
Lee Froschheiser
On June 5, 1944, just hours before D-Day was to begin, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower paid a visit to the paratroopers of the 101st Airborne. He walked among the men, shaking hands, patting them on their...
Richard Lepsinger
This three-part series about strategy and its execution is based on Richard Lepsinger’s book, Closing the Execution Gap: How Great Leaders and Their Companies Get Results (Jossey-Bass/A. Wiley, 2010...
Mike Micklewright
In part one of this series I described what dyslexia is and how I linked “dyslexia” with “lean.” I described how, despite the many positive attributes of people with dyslexia (e.g., tending to be...
Richard Lepsinger
This three-part series about strategy and its execution is based on Richard Lepsinger’s book, Closing the Execution Gap: How Great Leaders and Their Companies Get Results (Jossey-Bass/A Wiley...
