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Annette Franz
Do you know the 12 Laws of karma? And did you know they can be applied daily to your customer experience (CX) efforts? If not, no worries, just read on. I’ll define them for you and tie them to this CX world we live in.
I came across these recently and thought they made sense—for life and for…
Dawn Bailey
Daniel Pink, author of five books about changing the world of work, recently offered attendees at the 28th Annual Quest for Excellence Conference insights on what science tells us about what motivates people on the job, and an alternate approach to the way most organizations view motivation.
“…
Chad Kymal
The aerospace standard AS9100 Revision D was originally planned to be released in April 2014. Many of us close to the standard expected it to be released in May 2016 after the April International Aerospace Quality Group (IAQG) meeting in Singapore. However, this was not the case; the IAQG decided…
Mike Beels
It’s amazing that, in this day and age, some manufacturers have not yet heard of “lean.” How are they surviving in today’s competitive market without it? The issue is that, in many ways, the customer sets pricing. If manufacturers want to be profitable, they must find ways to become more efficient…
John Bell
Should every company be striving for the type of strategic advantage that has become the hallmark of Amazon, Google, and Facebook? For sure, in the tech world, it’s hard to imagine success without quick and continuous technology improvement. What about your world?
Whether you sell information or…
Stephan Manning, Marcus M. Larsen
One of the big themes in the current presidential race is how decades of free trade have dealt a heavy blow to the U.S. worker as millions of jobs were shipped overseas to take advantage of cheap labor.
That’s even turned some pro free-trade Republicans into protectionists. As a result, the…
Harish Jose
May 8 was Mother's Day. In today's article I will be writing about somebody who has been called "The Mother of Modern Management" and "America's First Lady of Engineering." Many of this woman's concepts and ideas lend themselves really well to the Toyota Production System.
Lillian Moller Gilbreth…
Barbara A. Cleary
Trivia question of the day: What do toilet paper, sugar, coffee, cheese, ice cream, and sugar have in common? Two things, actually. Their prices are up, and their packaging units are down.
A can of coffee is now likely to be only 11 ounces, diminished from a full pound several years ago. Likewise…
Harry Hertz
I recently read an HBR blog by Sunnie Giles that reported the results of a study of 195 leaders representing 30 global organizations. The leaders were asked to identify the most important competencies for leadership. The study reminded me of a complementary article in Forbes, written by Glen…
Jennifer Marshall
For as long as we have had automobiles, we have had traffic accidents. Even the vehicles that we depend on to take care of us in the event of an accident—ambulances—get into accidents nearly every day. Because ambulances are basically a small emergency room on wheels, the occupants in the back are…
Patrick Runkel
The Pareto chart is a graphic representation of the 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto principle. If you’re a quality improvement specialist, you know that the chart is named after the early 20th-century economist Vilfredo Pareto, who discovered that roughly 20 percent of the population in Italy…
Hubert Gatignon
There can be little argument that consumers are growing more suspicious of business. They question its motives, and increasingly, its marketing, which recently has been said to be manipulative. Consumers are ever more aware of the Internet pop-ups and exaggerated claims they receive in a targeted…
Evan Miller
Sponsored Content
PLZ Aeroscience is North America’s largest custom aerosol manufacturer and packager. It produces its own private-brand products and custom formulations, and provides contract filling for other customers. PLZ has been in business for more than 100 years and during the last six…
Takehiko Harada
Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from the book, Management Lessons From Taiichi Ohno: What Every Leader Can Learn From the Man who Invented the Toyota Production System, by Takehiko Harada (McGraw-Hill Education, 2015).
The phrase, “kaizen equals getting closer to the final process” was hardly…
Rachel E. Sherman, Robert M. Califf
In an earlier article, we discussed a pair of concepts—interoperability and connectivity—that are essential prerequisites for creating a successful national system for evidence generation (or “EvGen”). Here, we take a look at how we would apply these constructs as we go about building such a…
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
The map is not the territory.
—Alfred Korzybski
This column is a tribute primarily to Jamshid Gharajedaghi, a long-time teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend. My wife Carole and I recently visited him while in Philadelphia doing a presentation for the International Society for Performance…
Sponsored Content
The portable measuring arm, or portable arm coordinate measuring machine (CMM) has become an important quality control tool at many manufacturing companies. With the flexibility to be used nearly anywhere on a manufacturing floor, from in-process checks to large-scale assembly to…
William A. Levinson
Colonel Paul M. A. Linebarger’s authoritative Psychological Warfare (Infantry Journal Press, 1948) defines propaganda as any planned communication with the purpose to influence behavior, but this definition is actually too narrow. Propaganda consists of any action or communication, whether…
Gwendolyn Galsworth
Visual scheduling is a plain, two-dimensional format that maps out which products, parts, or subassemblies need to be produced, and when, in what quantity, and in what order. Nothing could be simpler.
In companies where schedules aren't published in a single, centralized location for all to see…
Superconducting (SC) magnetic and SC radiofrequency (SRF) devices designed for use in particle accelerators present challenging alignment problems. These devices are assembled and aligned at room temperature but operate at 2 Kelvin (K) to 4 Kelvin (K), with thermal offsets being large relative to…
Rina Molari-Korgel
On World Metrology Day this Friday, May 20, I ask that you pause a minute when you look at the alarm clock in morning, and then again as you set the thermostat or look at the weather report. World Metrology Day celebrates a link that binds humanity—the bond of a common measurement that is…
Belinda Jones
When the PrecisionPath Consortium concluded its second working meeting on February 25, 2016, noteworthy progress was made in the roadmapping process for advanced, large-scale manufacturing. More than 20 members of the consortium participated in this pivotal "“Needs Assessment and Gap Analysis”…
ECM Global Measurement Solutions
In greater Downeast Maine, boat builder Hodgdon Yachts plans for the construction of the 100-ft racing yacht called “New3” (also known as “New Cubed”). Set to be constructed and finished toward the end of the year, the vessel will be shipped to Australia for its first race. As Tim Hacket, the…
Jim Benson
We are all cursed with “surprises” at work. We come in, sit down, get ready for the day. We select a task to start on, and about halfway through, it explodes on us. The seemingly simple task now has 30 subtasks all lined up, ready to destroy our day.
This is stressful. Since we’re likely already…
Davis Balestracci
I’ve mentioned that design of experiments (DOE) is one of the few things worth salvaging from typical statistical training, and I thought I’d talk a bit more about DOE in the next couple of columns. The needed discipline for a good design is similar when using rapid-cycle plan-do-study-act (PDSA…