All Features
Thomas R. Cutler
One of the most demanding problems lean manufacturing faces in discrete manufacturing is control of first operations, where raw material may be cut into multiple parts. First operations such as laser or CNC Punch Press processes dictate what parts are available to subsequent operations, thereby…
Akhilesh Gulati
"We have had a series of power outages even though we have central and local uninterrupted power supply (UPS) systems. This disruption causes a loss of service to our customers. While we don’t necessarily lose data, it’s an irritant, and also results in loss of productivity. Perhaps we could…
Douglas C. Fair
I travel too much. Invariably, though, it enriches me. I typically return with some unusual experience or a new story with which to regale my colleagues. One day, while sitting in another aluminum tube with wings, I struck up a conversation with the person next to me, an engaging, interesting…
John J. Casey
When I was a boy, my grandmother used to read me nursery rhymes to entertain me and teach me about the world. One has resonated with me for years:
"For want of a nail the shoe was lost
For want of a nail the horse was lost
For want of a horse the warrior was lost
For want of a warrior the…
Steven Ouellette
In the Six Sigma world, we give a lot of lip service to the importance of the customer; we even have an official name for it—voice of the customer, or VOC. The problem is that many businesses don’t really have a good system for giving the customer what they ask for, much less one for listening to…
jmarzola
A mortgage lender in Kansas implemented a customer relationship management (CRM) solution and experienced a 304 percent return on investment (ROI) over three years. Would a similar investment make sense for your organization? Upgrading or changing your CRM system can be a big decision, and many…
Mike Thelen
As with any lean implementation in a traditional environment, culture change is the most difficult obstacle to success. A company can hire consultants, develop work teams, and begin lean initiatives, but if it only talks the talk, the initiative soon becomes just talk.
Early in 2007, we hosted a…
Fred Mason
There’s an amazing amount of information available about what uncertainty is and how to specify it. If I understood it completely, I would become a consultant and stop writing this column. In spite of that, this column may shed some light on this increasingly popular, and misunderstood, topic.…
Ron Kirscht
Donnelly Custom Manufacturing of Alexandria, Minnesota, a short-run injection molding company, knows that proper training is vital to productivity and quality. Still, using traditional methods, training at Donnelly was taking longer than desired and employees often weren’t retaining enough of what…
Denise Robitaille
E
mpowering people is a cool idea. Giving individuals authority and responsibility has many benefits. It fosters accountability and communicates confidence. It avails people the opportunity to contribute in a manner that allows their voices to be heard. They experience the self-satisfaction of…
Akhilesh Gulati
Since one of the pillars of lean thinking is the visual workplace, why hasn’t problem solving in the workplace been taken to the visual level?
Flowcharts are popular visual tools that can show what’s currently happening, what could be happening, or what should be happening—a great opportunity to…
Gregory Roth II
In the 1990s the theme seemed to be, “Don’t compete against your competitors, buy them and compete with yourself.” It appeared that every company was merging with another. To their stockholders, companies pitched, “We’re going to buy company XYZ and increase economy of scale for both companies and…
Lori Loethen
When organizations decide to deploy a Six Sigma initiative, there are several foundation stones required for a successful venture. One of those building blocks is leadership. From executive-level support to assigning champions and choosing the right projects, leadership is critical for Six Sigma…
Carolyn Clancy
Choosing a hospital that scores well on quality can make it easier and safer for you to recover from a serious event, such as heart surgery, or a routine one, such as having a baby. Doing a little homework before you choose a hospital can do more than give you peace of mind.
As a physician, let…
Akhilesh Gulati
Remember way back when you knew Newton’s Third Law, how to do long division, how to solve quadratic equations, and the difference between mean, mode, and median? As quality professionals, we’ve probably all had to learn these basic concepts at some point in our careers. Do we remember them?
While…
Bill Kalmar
To illustrate how out of place he sometimes felt, comedian George Gobel once remarked, “Have you ever felt that the whole world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes?” When it comes to good customer service I sometimes feel like those brown shoes. Poor service seems to find me, as though…
James Jardine
The International Organization for Standardization has developed more than 17,000 international standards on numerous subjects. For medical device companies, the most important of these standards is ISO 13485, which provides internationally recognized guidelines pertaining to quality management…
knowledge.smu.edu.sg
In the world of marketing and branding, sticking out like a sore thumb isn’t necessarily bad, advised brand innovation specialist Chandran Dharmarajan, a co-founder of I-morph, a marketing innovation consultancy based in Singapore. Dharmarajan, who worked for more than a decade with Unilever in…
James Jardine
The International Organization for Standardization has developed more than 17,000 international standards on numerous subjects. For medical device companies, the most important of these standards is ISO 13485, which provides internationally recognized guidelines pertaining to quality management…
knowledge.emory.edu
Harley-Davidson knows how to build ownership. For decades, the motorcycle company has attracted and retained a client base that shows no signs of waning. People purchase its products without solicitation, and collectively they gladly spend millions of dollars to wear its advertising on clothes,…
Steven Ouellette
I read an article in Wired magazine the other day that got me to thinking about the relationship between statistics, engineering knowledge, and theory. The article claimed that with the era of massive data storage and analytical capabilities, the scientific concept of the “theory” was becoming…
M. Scott Tillison
As the skilled, baby-boomer workforce nears retirement, years of technical expertise is exiting as well. Factories are watching years of knowledge leave their organizations, and how to replace these skilled workers has manufacturers concerned.
In a 2008 survey of 100 senior manufacturing…
Mike Micklewright
Question: Many modern enthusiasts claim that feng shui is Chinese for the practice of arranging objects (such as furniture) to help people achieve their goals. What is the American corporation translation of feng shui?
Answer: 5S (5 = feng, S = shui)
A very good client (definition: one in…
Mike Thelen
I received an interesting piece of junk mail recently. What caught my attention and provoked me to open it was simply that it was from an overseas automobile manufacturer and my lean obsessiveness engaged.
I know this manufacturer isn’t necessarily using the Toyota production system, but I…
Niraj Goyal
Abbreviations
t
Thickness of stack of product
T
Batch average of t sampled in the hour
Ta
Average if batch averages T…