All Features
Bruce Hamilton
In 1996, the TSSC (Toyota Production System Support Center) began working with my company to create one-by-one production capability in our product assembly. Previous to TSSC’s assistance, we’d moved the furniture and machines into cells, creating the appearance of flow production, but we lacked…
Tim Mouw
Color accounts for 60 percent of acceptance or rejection in consumer products. Maintaining accurate and consistent color is critical. If a color starts to drift, this leads to rework, wasted materials, and added costs.
To avoid color drift over time, consider the following.
1. Are you using…
Corey Brown
Even with advancements in technology and automation, the frontline workforce remains essential to modern manufacturing operations. In fact, 72 percent of factory work is still performed by people.
This means that operators, technicians, and line managers are all your biggest operational risks.…
Bastin Gerald
It’s a great feeling for business leaders when they find a framework they know can change the way their company formulates and executes their goals. The feeling of possibility that comes with finding the right goal-setting framework acts as motivation to achieve more, more efficiently. Many leaders…
Aron Solomon
The past few weeks I advised several entrepreneurs who are trying to bring a product or service to market. Each is struggling with whether the minimum viable product (MVP) they’re launching is too minimum and would therefore be nonviable. The notion of the MVP has always had its pros and cons, but…
Ian Williamson
Finding good employees has always been a challenge, but these days it’s harder than ever. And it’s unlikely to improve anytime soon.
The so-called quit rate—the share of workers who voluntarily leave their jobs—hit a new record of 3 percent in September 2021, according to the latest data available…
David Gillum, Kathleen Vogel, Rebecca Moritz
The origin of SARS-CoV-2 remains a mystery. One theory is that the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 was transmitted from animals to humans—a fairly common occurrence. Another is that it came from a laboratory accident—a more infrequent circumstance.
Around the world, scientists conduct many kinds…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
The other day I heartily congratulated a friend on her job promotion. She replied, “What if they made a mistake? What if I’m not really qualified, and it’s the Peter Principle in effect—that I’ve risen to the level of my incompetence?”
“You’re totally qualified,” I responded, “They wouldn’t have…
Nate Burke
With the rise of online shopping continuing to increase, thanks to the convenience and comfort of shopping from home, it's important for e-commerce businesses to look to their returns policy to ensure they’re not only catering to the tech-savvy, modern consumer, but also the environmentally…
Angus Robertson, Ahmet Abaci, Beth Somplatsky-Martori
Often, there’s a razor-thin margin between success and failure. Not long ago, Gillette—which dominated the $3.5 billion market for razors and accessories for longer than a century—was challenged by a little upstart called Dollar Shave Club, which had just starred in its first commercial for a…
Rachel Gordon
First published Nov. 5, 2021, on MIT CSAIL News.
At just 1 year old, a baby is more dexterous than a robot. Sure, machines can do more than just pick up and put down objects, but we’re not quite there as far as replicating a natural pull toward exploratory or sophisticated dexterous manipulation…
William A. Levinson
Shigeo Shingo was able to summarize entire concepts in single phrases, such as “paint parts, not air.” This meant that paint which misses parts in a spray booth constitutes wasted material and also an environmental aspect. “Ship product, not air” defines similarly empty space in packaging as wasted…
Maureen Metcalf
Many organizations feel the need to be leaner, faster, stronger, more adaptable, and more profitable. The right tool set to get them to that outcome may not be intuitive or singular. Building organizational agility is a solid approach to help organizations develop the capacity to perpetually evolve…
Jeff Dewar
There are many endangered industries today, and publishing is certainly among them. In 2009 we didn’t know if we would survive the monumental changes that had torn through all areas of the publishing world.
W. Edwards Deming once said to me during an interview, “Pray that your competitors are…
Scott Paton
It seems like yesterday that I walked into 1425 Vista Way in Red Bluff, California, to begin what I thought was a part-time data-entry job that was supposed to last just a few weeks. Instead, I ended up working for Quality Digest for 21 years; made lifelong friends; became a journalist, writer,…
W. Edwards Deming
Editor’s note: The following is from a transcript of a forgotten speech given in Tokyo in 1978 by W. Edwards Deming for the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE). Because the original was a poor photocopy, there are small portions of text that could not be transcribed. Transcript…
Taran March @ Quality Digest
In publishing, anniversary issues sit in the ambiguous space between news and marketing. News because, at 40 years and counting, it’s not every magazine that makes it to middle age in these times. Marketing because it’s all a bit brash, like asking for presents on your birthday.
However, it’s worth…
Quality Digest
As part of QD’s 40th anniversary hoopla, we wanted to hear from those in the quality field. Tribal knowledge is real and valuable. What you’ve learned as a quality professional can help others starting out in the field. Here are words of wisdom from readers respresenting a diverse array of…
Dan Hamilton
X-ray fluorescence (XRF) is an analytic method used to define the elemental structure of a material. Companies use specific XRF instruments when determining the chemistry for a sample of a material. How is this done? The machine measures the secondary or fluorescent X-ray that is released after…
Jon Speer, Devon Campbell, Christie Johnson
When I began my medical device career, I started as a product development engineer. Part of the role included—right, wrong, or indifferent—project management. And I’ve found throughout my career and from discussions with hundreds of others in the industry that this is commonplace.
What I learned,…
Daniel de Wolff
For years, companies have managed their extended supply chains with intermittent audits and certifications while attempting to persuade their suppliers to adhere to certain standards and codes of conduct. But they’ve lacked the concrete data necessary to prove their supply chains were working as…
Henning Piezunka, Vikas Aggarwal, Hart Posen
Does this situation sound familiar? You’re sitting in a meeting, and you and your colleagues are energetically discussing how to handle an important issue or challenge. Ideas and suggestions are bouncing around so fast that the designated note-taker can barely keep up. Then a new voice chimes in,…
Matt Fieldman
In September 2021, I was fortunate to attend the FABTECH conference in Chicago, a sprawling trade show with what must have been billions of dollars of manufacturing equipment on display: robots, automation, 3D printers, you name it. While there, I had the privilege of listening to a keynote address…
Bryan Christiansen
There are various nondestructive testing (NDT) methods we can employ to evaluate the condition of different machine components, without the need to stop and disassemble the equipment. Vibration analysis is a prominent NDT tool used across many industries.
In this article, we will take a good look…
Mark Schissel
Increasingly, consumers, investors, and other stakeholders are looking to companies big and small to do what’s right for people and our planet. To meet the demands of these stakeholders, transparency is key. In fact, an Innova Consumer Survey in 2020 revealed that six in 10 global consumers are…