All Features
Davis Balestracci
In honor of baseball season, I’m going to apply some simple statistical thinking to my favorite sport in a two-part series today and tomorrow. I want anyone to be able to enjoy this, so I’ll mark any technical statistics as optional reading. For those of you interested only in the interpretations…
Giles Hutchins
Globalization, disruptive technologies, pressure on finite resources, increasing social disparity, and demand for business transparency: Enter the age of uncertainty. These transformative times are reshaping the workplace in profound ways, demanding the crossing of thresholds at myriad levels. …
Lillian Erickson
The updated version of ISO 9001, published in September 2015, generated much anxiety among companies fearing a bumpy transition to the updated and significantly changed international standard. Admittedly, we at MasterControl were not immune to those worries.
Despite having quality experts…
FDA
One of the vivid images that sticks with me from my tenure at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is of the port of entry at Nogales, Arizona. There, I saw large trucks from Mexico lined up as far as the eye could see, awaiting entry into the United States, many loaded full with fresh produce…
Tonianne DeMaria
I recognize that the title of this column might stir up some controversy, especially among fellow coffee enthusiasts. Not to mention it puts me at risk of getting exiled from my beloved adopted home, Seattle. And yes, perhaps “Clarity > Coffee” even seems a tad hypocritical, considering that I’…
MIT News
In March 2011, Leonardo Bonanni was preparing to defend his Ph.D. thesis about Sourcemap, software that lets consumers map every connection of a product supply chain on a digital map, when tragedy struck in Japan. Although the deadly earthquake and tsunami occurred half a world away, the events…
Jim Frost
P -values have been around for nearly a century, and they’ve been the subject of criticism since their origin. In recent years, the debate over p-values has risen to a fever pitch. In particular, there are serious fears that p-values are misused to such an extent that it has actually damaged…
Niranjan Deodhar
Previously in this series, we looked at applying the principles of process improvement (PI) to itself. We identified metrics that help define effective and efficient PI, and then analyzed some work practices that help drive these metrics. Here, we move on to analyze more work practices, this time…
Knowledge at Wharton
A trained mechanical engineer, Mark Chang found himself “totally uncertain and unprepared” the first time he was called on to hire someone else.
“I didn’t even know why I was hired in the first place—what did they like about me?” Chang recalls. “So, how do I go out and look for the next person?”…
NIST
I
n the age-old struggle between humans and microbes, bacteria seem to be regaining the offensive. Only about a dozen classes of chemicals protect us from the myriad pathogens that populate our environment. Numerous agencies have warned that evolved resistance could soon render common antibiotics…
John Nolan
The ultimate aim of ISO 9001:2015 is to enable businesses to satisfy their customers effectively. You could say that all the standard’s clauses help to provide your customer with a consistent and rewarding experience from your goods or services, but ISO 9001:2015 actually deals with “customer…
William A. Levinson
Experiments that might require a handful of real-number measurements (variables data) could need hundreds or more attribute data for comparable power, i.e., the ability to determine whether an experiment improves performance over that of a control. Sample sizes needed for ANSI/ASQ Z1.4 (for…
Donald J. Wheeler
Context involves both the background for the data and how the data behave. This behavior of the data is most easily seen by using two complementary graphs—the running record and the histogram. Here I address the secrets of creating useful histograms.
The first graph mentioned above—the running…
Gilles Hilary
Phil used to be a very senior financial executive. When asked for a number, he would typically provide with a rough ballpark answer, such as, “It’s about 5 percent.” He’d then be peppered with questions about how he had arrived at that figure.
After a while, he got tired of this questioning and…
Gallup
Increasingly dynamic workplaces have made organizational change an everyday reality. Demands for workforce agility require a step up from those commanding—particularly in ongoing measurement and making use of feedback during this breakneck pace of change.
There is a definite need for continuous…
Davis Balestracci
April Fool’s Day (today) and the opening of baseball season (this Sunday) are upon us. To mark the first event, I’ll let my distinguished colleague Donald Wheeler make some eloquent and crucial statistical points that turn out to be, well, laughably simple. (No fooling!) Regarding the baseball…
Joelle K. Jay
Do you have a regular support group of leaders, or, as I call them, a “mastermind?” Being a member of a mastermind is a powerful strategy used by high-achieving leaders to move ahead quickly and reach their goals.
A mastermind is a small group of dedicated peers who share and support each other…
Dan Jacob
Airbags, ignition switches, and even emissions software; although large recalls make the news at a regular pace, these are surrounded by scandal. News reports include claims of illegal or unethical activity executed by individuals or larger groups of people. Unfortunately, as new reports expose…
J.D. Power and Associates
According to the recently released J.D. Power 2016 Member Health Plan Study, critical factors of health plan member satisfaction are highest in areas of the country that have more competition between different health plans.
On a nationwide basis, member satisfaction with their health plans has…
Matthew Barsalou
The start of a failure investigation may involve brainstorming, but empirical methods will be required to actually identify a problem's cause. Implementing an improvement action without a confirmed root cause risks a reoccurrence of the issue because the true root cause has yet to be addressed.…
Richard Wilkinson
During the course of its 100-plus year history, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has had some researchers and scientists known to be colorful characters who were also pioneers in their fields. For computer scientist Karen Olsen, one scientist who stands out was Ethel…
Mike Micklewright
When considering any effort toward performance improvement, you should always start by looking at the organization’s principles and culture, and making sure these are aligned so they not only permit positive changes to occur, but also ensure that the changes will be sustained over the long run. By…
Kevin Meyer
Those of us in the lean world are accustomed to discussing "flow"—where work is performed in an even manner to reduce mura or lack of regularity, one of the three forms of waste. Activities are synchronized, layouts are optimized, resources are available exactly where and when they are needed, and…
Patrick Runkel
I live with a German national, who often tells me that we Americans spend way too much of our lives at work. He also frequently comments that we work much less efficiently than Germans do, during the increased time we’re at work.
Which reminds me—I need to pay my water bill online....
OK, I’m…
In the race to design smaller handheld devices and smartphones, a key factor is decreasing the sizes of components. As the demand for thinner and lighter microelectronic devices increases, manufacturers often are limited by how oddly shaped the energy sources must become to make them conform to…
