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(General Dynamics Information Technology: Fairfax, VA) -- General Dynamics Information Technology, a business unit of General Dynamics, has been awarded a $9.2 million dollar, three-year contract to support the U.S. Army Medical Command (MEDCOM) and Office of the Surgeon General.
General…
(GBMP: Boston, MA) -- The 5th Annual Northeast Shingo Prize Conference will be held Oct. 7-8 at the DCU Center in Worcester, Massachusetts. The conference focuses on the lean manufacturing philosophy and best practices, and features talks by today's leading lean practitioners, teachers, and…
Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is a systematic analysis technique that facilitates the identification of potential problems (failure modes) within a design or manufacturing process. Problems can then be ranked in order of importance to prioritize improvement actions. These actions are…
The core of lean manufacturing, kanbans use the “pull” system to prevent waste by creating a cyclical relationship between the consumer, supplier, and manufacturer. The user of a material requests or "pulls" material from the supplier, as they need it. They do this using some form of notification…
The Society of Manufacturing Engineers presents a new book from Michael J. Termini, Concept to Customer: Portfolio, Pipeline, and Strategic Project Management (SME, 2009). Termini wrote Concept to Customer in response to the many questions from project managers and novices who have sought his…
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- Senior leaders from the three organizations selected for the 2008 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, as well as representatives from past award recipients, will share their best practices and results at one-day regional conferences on Sept. 15 in Milwaukee, and…
TRANE Residential Systems, is a lean organization that knows about growth through innovation. In 1931, TRANE came up with the radical idea of using technology to provide relief from the summer heat. The 1938 launch of the Turbovac, the industry's first hermetic, centrifugal refrigeration machine,…
(Dyadem: Toronto, Canada) -- Dyadem recently upgraded its Stature enterprise risk management platform. Stature 4.0 will enable Dyadem’s customers to make more informed and strategic decisions about the production processes and products they manage.
The Stature platform is built on the…
(New Mexico MEP: Albuquerque, NM) -- After enrolling its employees in New Mexico's Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) Lean Culture and Leadership program, Sennheiser raised its 2008 sales by $8 million, improved productivity by 28 percent, and experienced other significant improvements in…
(LEI: Cambridge, MA) -- Before offshoring work to low-wage countries, senior managers should use “lean math” to calculate the true total cost of relocating, according to management expert James P. Womack, Ph.D., founder and chairman of the Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI).
Companies usually…
(BMGI: Amsterdam) --To ensure its team was maximizing the business' performance levels, Graphic Packaging International (GPI), a producer of packaging solutions with 15,000 employees worldwide and annual revenues over €13 billion ($18.3 billion), turned to Breakthrough Management Group…
It started slowly but surely. With the slump of the U.S. economy, companies started downsizing first by the dozens, then by the hundreds. Today, thousands of organizations across the country have in one way or another had to perform some kind of cost-cutting measure.
And as unemployment started…
(Georgia Institute of Technology: Atlanta) -- When entrepreneurs Sherrie Ford and Steve Hollis purchased a manufacturing facility previously owned by the Swiss conglomerate ABB (Asea Brown Boveri Ltd.), six years ago, one of their first items of business was to realign the company’s mission.…
(Littelfuse: Chicago) -- A continous improvement team from the Littelfuse Inc. manufacturing facility in the Philippines leveraged its lean Six Sigma process to garner silver winner award honors at the American Society for Quality (ASQ) 2009 International Team Excellence Award competition at the…
This paperback book will be easy to find on library shelves; just look for the one with the most dog-eared pages. Lean Six Sigma Using SigmaXL and Minitab, by Issa Bass and Barbara Lawton, Ph.D. (McGraw Hill, 2009) may become your most greatly used reference book. It’s a practical introduction to…
(Aveta Business Institute: Cleveland) -- It's no secret that in today's economy no job is secure. For the first time in more than 25 years, the United States unemployment rate has risen to 9.4 percent, as of May 2009. Along with this grim statistic come salary cuts, demotions, layoffs, and job…
MAG Industrial Automation Systems has been granted the Caterpillar Inc. Supplier Quality Excellence Process Certification (SQEP). MAG's Six Sigma program helped the company achieve the award.
Caterpillar's SQEP is presented to suppliers that demonstrate strong values, ethical principles, and a…
(InfinityQS: Chantilly, VA) -- Learn how to maximize your investment in InfinityQS by attending its third annual user conference. Infusion 2009 features a new three-track format to empower you with the tools and skills you need to help your business save time and money.
Hear from InfinityQS…
As the global market becomes increasingly integrated, customers demand that businesses have a superior level of quality and performance. In that respect, geographical location is becoming irrelevant, says Robert Chalker, American Society for Quality’s (ASQ) global managing director.
“The…
(WCBF: Chicago) -- WCBF's fourth Global Lean, Six Sigma and Business Improvement Summit & Industry Awards will take place at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin, in Orlando, on October 13–16.
The event represents the largest gathering of leading experts and senior executives across various…
This is the second report from the author, who is currently working in Afghanistan. Don’t miss his first article, “Ensuring Quality in a War Zone.”
--Editor
They told us the road was clear. They didn’t say it was safe; it was a dirt road that ran seven kilometers through the district of Shah…
The 5S System is one of the most powerful activities of lean manufacturing. The 5S philosophy focuses on simplifying the work environment, reducing waste, and improving quality and safety.
It's the natural place to start your lean effort because lean is all about eliminating nonvalue-added…
(EtQ: Farmingdale, New York) -- The EtQ decision tree allows users to create a web-based list of related questions that are dependant on each other, so that the results of the questions will impact the business process and produce quantitative results such as a risk ranking, subsequent questions,…
(MoreSteam: Lewis Center, Ohio) -- MoreSteam.com announce the release of French and German versions of its Lean Six Sigma Green Belt course. These newest additions to MoreSteam’s e-Learning catalog are the first complete Lean Six Sigma Green Belt courses presented in French and German by any…
(MFGWatch: Atlanta) -- Results of a survey recently conducted by MFGWatch give a snapshot on the state of sourcing, sourcing preferences, company growth projections, and reactions to economic conditions. More than 200 purchasing professionals and engineers from the manufacturing industry…