All Features
Bill Kalmar
How many times have you viewed a compelling story on TV, or read a newspaper or magazine account of an investigation of wrongdoing and then never discovered the outcome? Mass media tantalize us with sensational reports, and after the hoopla the stories just fade away.As I lay here recently in my…
Paul Midler
Numerous news stories this past month have focused on concerns about the quality and safety of certain Chinese exports. In this opinion piece, Paul Midler discusses “quality fade” in China, which he defines as “the deliberate and secretive habit of widening profit margins through a reduction in…
Mike Micklewright
“I’m starting with the man in the mirror, I’m asking him to change his ways.”by Michael Jackson
Question: What did the registrar auditor do after informing his client that he wasn’t allowed to give advice?
Answer: He gave them advice.
I like to listen to Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror.”…
Bipin Roy
Story update 11/1/2010: We had the incorrect author shown for this story. The author is Bipin Roy.
Welcome to the information technology world of governance boards, compliance councils, Sarbanes Oxley, and audit committees that continually invent stringent rules and regulations to make the…
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
We recently lost two great American authors, Kurt Vonnegut and David Halberstam. I liked them because they told the truth. At least their truth agreed with my truth, and it seems like the truth of a great many other people.I first became aware of Kurt Vonnegut in my late teens, a time when I…
For nearly 20 years, the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence have proven themselves time and again to be a path to exceptional organizational performance. Used in more than 70 countries around the world, the seven categories of the criteria are often seen as essential for excellence.
What’…
Bill Kalmar
Whenever I enter a Ritz-Carlton hotel, I know “I’m not in Mediocreville anymore!” Walking through those doors transports me to a world unparalleled in service, with guest amenities and services consistently beyond my expectations. Unlike the Wizard of Oz, the hotel is everything it purports to be…
Douglas C. Fair
I frequently hear discussions among engineers, managers, and higher-ups concerning process capability, an alphabet soup of indexes and three-letter designations. The indexes are bandied about as though a single number communicates knowledge, understanding, and certainty. My experience is that this…
Craig Cochran
A few years ago, I had the good fortune of doing some consulting with B&C Specialty Products in Hopeulikit, Georgia. B&C does light manufacturing, primarily plastic molding and assembly, and they also distribute imported products produced by companies in the Far East. They have…
Prasad Nair
Quality and customer focus have always been topmost strategic weapons in the arsenal of successful corporations, which nurture strategic initiatives like a gardener looks after a garden. It’s quite an imaginative thought to see the resemblance of the deployment of a quality system to…
Bill Kalmar
Organizations that provide spectacular customer service always keep their line people informed of new developments or offers that will improve a process, and of glitches in the system that may have an adverse effect on customers. Similarly, great customer service means being flexible to the needs…
I recently got a call from the owner of a local manufacturing company asking my advice on whether to implement SAP. This is a single-site, $5 million operation with one nice, big, contiguous manufacturing floor, making rather uncomplicated widgets that have a raw material lead time of a couple…
Mike Micklewright
Question:Why was the son of an accountant for a U.S. manufacturing company forbidden to name his dog Fifo?
Answer: His Dad told him that all four-letter words starting with F are bad.
Last Tuesday, I performed another long, exhausting, internal audit with a client near my hometown in Chicago…
Thomas R. Cutler
Customer relationship management (CRM) usually refers to sales activities, and CRM software is commonly purchased, and occasionally used, to track potential customers, existing customers and sales activities.
“Contract manufacturing is unquestionably a relationship business. CRM must manage the…
Thomas R. Cutler
Customer relationship management (CRM) usually refers to sales activities, and CRM software is commonly purchased, and occasionally used, to track potential customers, existing customers and sales activities.
“Contract manufacturing is unquestionably a relationship business. CRM must manage the…
Craig Cochran
Last year, I had the good fortune of doing some consulting with B&C Specialty Products in Hopeulikit, Georgia. B&C does light manufacturing, primarily plastic molding and assembly, and they also distribute imported products produced by companies in the Far East. They have about…
Peter Tzaklev
The quality level of Bulgarian companies is far from the six sigma level, but so far they have been satisfying requirements. Many manufacturing firms in Bulgaria are registered to ISO 9001, especially those that are working for foreign customers in a sort of outsourcing. Every year,…
Bill Kalmar
Recently, the AAA organization named its annual list of Five Diamond restaurants. As experienced travelers and faux epicureans, as I consider myself, my wife and I have become accustomed to seeing quality proclamations and awards on a yearly basis, but I didn’t actually know what…
Thomas R. Cutler
Food quality and safety are priorities for consumers, and from Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) to the Bioterrorism Act to lot traceability, food manufacturers are responding. Reputations and brands are at risk when safety concerns and product recalls are front-page news. There…
Thomas R. Cutler
Food quality and safety are priorities for consumers, and from Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) to the Bioterrorism Act to lot traceability, food manufacturers are responding. Reputations and brands are at risk when safety concerns and product recalls are front-page news. There…
Craig Cochran
A few years go I had the good fortune of doing some consulting with B&C Specialty Products in Hopeulikit, Georgia. B&C does light manufacturing, primarily plastic molding and assembly, and they also distribute imported products produced by companies in the Far East. They have about 150…
Michel Podevyn
In the old days at Soliant LLC in Lancaster, South Carolina, employees pushed 275-lb drums filled with acrylic resin powder to a scale for weighing and adding to a mix. Once the powder was weighed out, two employees manually scooped 1.5 lb at a time from the drums to the mixing vessel, the…
Bill Kalmar
Recent department store sales figures in the Wall Street Journal are interesting and intriguing. Despite a slow economy in parts of the nation and frigid February weather in some states where several retailers experienced a decrease in sales, some high-priced retailers had exceptional results. What…
Mike Micklewright
Question:What do you call a root cause analyst?
Answer: A whys guy!
I had been summoned from my Chicago suburban home and office to visit a company in Wisconsin—Land of Cheese—to discuss the possibility of providing some lean training requested by the director of operations, Brent Favor. This was a…
Thomas R. Cutler
More than 13 hours per week creating documents and nearly seven hours per week organizing documents are common among small and midsize engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturers; four hours per week are spent managing document routing and another 10 hours per week searching for information. All this…
