All Features
Donald J. Wheeler
One-hundred-percent inspection is commonly used to avoid shipping nonconforming product. Each of the items produced is measured and judged to be either conforming or nonconforming. The conforming items get shipped, and the nonconforming items get set aside for use as factory-authorized replacement…
Tripp Babbitt
My first job was in industrial distribution, and with distribution came learning to count inventory. An annual inventory tax was levied, so an accurate count was important. I was given a computer list of items to count. An important lesson I learned was that to get an accurate count, there was a…
As robots and their control systems become more powerful and flexible, robotics are moving from heavy industrial applications into producing consumer products we all use in our daily lives. Fickle consumers demand products in new forms, which plays to the strength of robotics’ inherent…
Mark Patton
The U.S. Army aims to make ill-fitting uniforms and protective gear things of the past when it completes a body-measurement survey next year.
Supply officials ran into difficulty acquiring the correct sizes of chemical gear and body armor for troops at the beginning of the Iraq and Afghanistan…
Arun Hariharan
In part one of this article, I explained the technique of root cause analysis (RCA) in an easy-to-understand manner with simple examples. In part two, we looked at some critical success factors to get maximum results from your RCA. In part three, the conclusion to this article, we’ll take a look…
Ryan E. Day
Let me begin by saying that I have a great deal of respect for Mike Micklewright’s achievements and contributions in the realms of business, training, and writing. I feel the need, however, to explore the nature of his reasoning in reference to his “Croc of the Month” article published in Quality…
American Sentinel University
Critical care units at St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center in Syracuse, New York, were faced with a formidable task. They had applied to receive the Beacon Award for Critical Care Excellence, a distinction given only to the top intensive care units in the United States. One of the components on…
Mary F. McDonald
Every human being, over time, yearns to put his life in order—to have his expectations met, and to use filters to help him know how a situation will resolve itself. Consequently, we subconsciously strive to put new information into existing categories, based on previous patterns and preset concepts…
Georgia Institute of Technology
We couldn’t pass this story up. Sure, this toy isn’t anywhere near as accurate as a Steinbichler or Capture3D or Breukmann or any of the others, but it is really cool.--Editors
Leave it to an iPhone app developer to turn a tool that cost hundreds of dollars a year ago into something that can be…
Arun Hariharan
In part one of this article, the technique of root cause analysis (RCA) was explained using simple examples. Part two contains a detailed list of critical success factors to get maximum results from your RCA. These are based on lessons learned from experience, including mistakes made. Because RCA…
Jim Benson
There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking. —Alfred Korzybski
Over the last several years, I’ve studied a lot of processes and watched communities grow around them. I’ve been a member of many of these communities.…
Art Petty
When we focus on not failing, fear rents most of the space in our minds, and we see monsters in need of slaying everywhere we turn. We lose track of the original vision that propelled our actions, and the sheer act of working becomes at best a passionless exercise and at worst, drudgery.
Sadly,…
Michelle LaBrosse
Are you proactive or reactive in your work and personal life? Think about your career. Do you jump on tasks as they pop up, putting out fires as you go? Now consider your weekend. Do you wait until plans come to you, or do you make plans to ensure that you are having the kind of free time that…
Mike Richman
Welcome to Quality Digest Daily 2.0! This new format represents a significant re-imaging of our flagship brand (the industry’s only daily newsletter), which we first launched nearly two years ago. I hope you notice that we’ve added more video content to the newsletter as well as greater editorial…
Minitab LLC
Ford Motor Co. is one of the largest automakers in the United States, producing millions of automobiles each year at 70 plants worldwide. According to J. D. Power and Associates Initial Quality Survey, Ford has received more top rankings than any other automaker since 2007. It’s no surprise that…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
“Who wants to give their oral report first?” asked Mrs. Davis, my sixth grade teacher.
The dreaded day had finally arrived when each of us would have to stand in front of the room and speak to the class. The butterflies in my stomach were flapping up a tornado.
Not a single hand went up. In fact,…
William A. Levinson
The first part of this article illustrated the kinds of problems that can happen when data from non-normal processes are plotted on traditional control charts, and when traditional process capability assessments are applied to these data. This second part will show what to do about these problems…
Angelo Lyall
Leaders and managers are faced with difficult decisions every day. Even process-level decisions must be made with the firm’s overall strategy in mind. The difficulty is that business strategy is a topic that is often described in complex or unclear terms, leaving the reader still incapable of…
H. James Harrington
Back in 1986 I documented a list of 13 fundamental truths that applied to all organizations. I ran across these statements recently when I was looking for some comments made by a past IBM president that I wanted to use in a new book I am writing. As I thought back over the past 25 years, I realized…
Davis Balestracci
My March 30, 2011 article ended with wisdom from Yogi Berra as a warning to the quality profession. Some prickly reactions to it got me thinking about the last 30 years or so of quality improvement.
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The 1980 NBC television show, “If Japan Can, Why Can’t We?” introduced the…
University of Michigan
(University of Michigan: Ann Arbor, MI) -- With its sleek 2011 car, “Quantum,” now built and ready for testing, the nation’s No. 1 solar-car team is preparing to take on the world.
University of Michigan’s (U-M) reigning champions of the North American Solar Challenge will compete…
William A. Levinson
A normal distribution is far more common in statistical textbooks than it is in real-world processes, and untold grief results from the unquestioning assumption that all manufacturing processes follow the bell curve. The grief consists specifically of:
1. Out-of-control signals that send…
Chris Koehn
Air gauging has roots going back more than 70 years and is today a viable and highly reliable method for many industrial applications where a high volume of parts is produced, or where the precision of hard-to-access dimensions makes other measuring techniques impossible. This includes, in some…
Laurel Thoennes @ QD
“What makes a personal kanban any better than a to-do list?” asked Julie, crossing out a completed task on her “ta da!” list with exaggerated strokes.
“With personal kanban you visualize your work, it becomes tangible, you get kinesthetic feedback, it’s flexible, contextual, and it promotes…
The QA Pharm
A March 30, 2011, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Warning Letter to Ningbo Smart Pharmaceutical Co. revealed that it had reported conformance to specifications on certificates of analysis, when in fact no testing was done—among other issues.
The FDA rather understatedly informed Ningbo Smart, “…
