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This month let’s examine another common mistake that some people (not my loyal, intelligent, heretical and, let’s face it, downright attractive readers) make when they use Six Sigma. I expect to seriously annoy some practitioners when I say that Six Sigma isn’t a method of continuous…
In a certain operation, a part is subject to a high-temperature curing cycle. The ideal curing scan is illustrated in the chart below. The oven chamber begins at room temperature, ramps up to a conditioning temperature of about 80 degrees, dwells for four minutes, ramps up again to the curing…
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…
The pipette is a reliable precision instrument that has been used and trusted for many years. However, as with many forms of instrumentation, a pipette performs only as well as the operator’s technique allows. Differences in technique—some more than others—can alter delivery volumes and affect data…
No, this isn’t about promises you made on New Year’s Eve and broke the next day. It’s about measurement resolution—the number of decimal places to which a measured value is calculated and presented. The measurement can be of any parameter—voltage, distance, weight, temperature, whatever. The…
This is the first of a series of articles intended to share with Quality Digest’s readers key aspects of the global movement toward hazardous substance–free (HSF) products and processes and how they affect organizations. SBGi helps producers of electronic and electrical products prepare…
I was recently asked to comment on the ISO 9001 requirements regarding external documents. My first reaction was to point out a distinctive subtlety in the actual text of the requirement. Many users have gotten into the habit of referring to this category as “external documents” when in fact, the…
For 20 years, I have worked with many companies to achieve a variety of registrations. As a sales manager, auditor, consultant and trainer, I have noticed that a number of companies haven’t realized the benefits that they expected from standards registration. Some of them have actually become worse…
The tagline to the 1989 film "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" was “The Enterprise is back. This time, have they gone too far?”
With up to 10 years of continued process improvements on the plant floor, and in back office and distribution operations, manufacturers have finally arrived at the front…
Editor’s note: This is an attempt to use DMAIC methodology to resolve conflicts, in concert with the approach presented in an article titled “Feds may unleash Six Sigma on terrorism” by Del Jones in USA Today, October 30, 2002. By no means does either the author or Quality Digest consider the…
Rather than travel to Pamplona, Spain, for the annual Running of the Bulls, one need go no further than the parking lots of many U.S. companies. Here people described in many company brochures as “our most important asset" are being herded and unceremoniously told to go home after years…
The last 20 years of my professional career have consisted of helping manufacturing organizations understand and deploy statistical methods. I’ve worked with operators on the shop floor, consulted with Six Sigma specialists, cajoled managers and convinced engineers. I have worked with and…
Advancements in diabetes treatments By any measure, diabetes is a huge health problem. Approximately 16 million people in the United States have diabetes, and it’s a leading cause of associated medical conditions such as blindness, circulatory problems and digestive disorders. While…
The key to quality throughput within a warehouse, especially in a high-speed/high-volume environment, is the ability to move a carton into and out of a pick zone expeditiously.When a warehouse control system (WCS) doesn’t process the information to divert products quickly enough, it causes…
One of the latest trends in the ongoing evolution of Six Sigma is its rising popularity among college students and its appearance in universities’ curricula. These courses are exposing students to the power of data-driven quality improvement and, in many cases, giving them firsthand…
As I said in my premier Heretic column, “Dogma and Definition,” I’m interested in examining our assumptions and premises about Six Sigma so we can discard the dross and refine the potential benefits in implementing it.To that end, I have decided to co-opt an omnipresent element of pop…
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 150…
Many people know about William Tell shooting the apple on his son’s head. What can this archery event teach us about accuracy and precision? What do these words mean? When are they equal, and when are they not? “Accuracy,” “precision” and “resolution” are sometimes misunderstood or…
Don’t you love it when you go to the store and they have a “BOGO” sale? BOGO, as in buy one, get one. Who can resist the attraction of being able to get two things for the price of one?
Being retired affords one the opportunity to relax periodically in a hammock on a hot summer afternoon, doing a crossword puzzle and contemplating quality and customer service. While trying to think of an eight-letter term for "a person used as cover," my thoughts wandered to several topics:…
Considering the leadership at Motorola and General Electric provided by stalwarts such as Bob Galvin and Jack Welch, respectively, I believe that two leaders with totally different styles can get similar results using the same tools. When I worked at Motorola in Bob Galvin’s time, there was a rule…
The concept of total quality management (TQM) rose to prominence more than two decades ago. There were many reasons for it, the most important one being the European Union’s move to allow imports only from companies with ISO-standards certification. The International Organization for…
We’ve all heard about how calamitously insufficient a quality standard of 99 percent would be: One percent of airplanes crashing on take-off would mean nearly 200 domestic commercial airline crashes each day. One percent of erroneously filled prescriptions would mean about 35…
Once upon a time, in a real, live U.S. corporation, top management decided that Six Sigma was a good idea. They trained up many Black Belts to lead projects to produce documented savings as defined by the existing accounting system. To encourage people to be successful, the Black Belts—…
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…