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All organizations are looking to increase the competency of their employees and, hopefully, of themselves. Looking at this from the base level up, in a practical sense our competency evolves with experience, expertise, and possibly, time.
1. Unknowing
We begin by not knowing about a skill, issue,…
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Data science is hot right now. The number of undergraduate degrees in statistics has tripled in the past decade, and as a statistics professor, I can tell you that it isn’t because freshmen love statistics.
Way back in 2009, economist Hal Varian of Google dubbed statistician the…
Whether you are booking a hotel room, choosing a restaurant, deciding on what movie to see, or buying any number of things, it is likely you have read online reviews before making your decision.
What makes a consumer review persuasive, though? No matter how short, it tells a story in much the same…
In his book, The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results (Bard Press, 2013), author Gary Keller reminds us that everyone has 24 hours in a day. So, why do some people earn more, achieve more, and get more done? They “go small.”
“When you want the absolute best chance…
I am writing today about “bootstrap kaizen.” This is something I have been thinking about for a while. Wikipedia describes bootstrapping as “a self-starting process that is supposed to proceed without external input.” The term was developed from a 19th-century figure of speech—“pull oneself over a…
If you are a CEO of a manufacturing company with many value streams, it’s impractical to think that you have the time to review all the performance measures of every value stream in your company. Yet you need to know the operational impact of lean on your entire organization.
The traditional…
(MIT News: Cambridge, MA) -- A material designed by MIT chemical engineers can react with carbon dioxide from the air, to grow, strengthen, and even repair itself. The polymer, which might someday be used as construction or repair material or for protective coatings, continuously converts the…
(RealWear: Vancouver, WA) -- Colgate-Palmolive Co. has selected RealWear as its strategic provider of hands-free wearable computers for its industrial workforce. RealWear’s smart, voice-operated HMT-1 will be worn by hundreds of its mechanics and engineers across 20 of Colgate-Palmolive’s largest…
Leaders lead. Those two simple words conceal the complicated fact that being a change agent means confronting the failures of the past and confidently facing the promise of the future. Stories addressing these facts, along with hot takes on current news and a preview of an exciting upcoming webinar…
It takes guts to come to the heart of high tech, in San Francisco, and preach a message that is about putting people—women, no less—onto the assembly lines of America’s factories. Danielle Applestone, of Daughters of Rosie, tells the hipsters gathered at Autodesk’s Design Night that, yes, there are…
Metrics are an important part of an effective quality management system (QMS). They are necessary to understand, validate, and course-correct the QMS. They should be used to verify that it is achieving the goals and objectives defined by management. In an ISO 9001 system, metrics must be available…
Traditionally, managers have relied on the annual performance review to provide employees with feedback. However, surveys indicate employees don’t find the process valuable. Simply meeting once a year to discuss their progress doesn’t give employees a thorough sense of their own performance. It…
It finally came to me last week. For more than a decade I’ve been working with corporations, trying to help them accelerate their ability to generate new, interesting ideas to market as viable products and services. In some instances we’ve been successful, and in other instances there were…
Every company I speak at, every leader I coach, I see a constant pattern: Virtually everyone sees struggle as something negative.
At the heart of this perception, people get too caught up in the idea of struggle to consider what struggle at its core is all about. Most people cannot see themselves…
It is all too common in the industry: A part design is created and sent out for production only to hit repeated snags as questions arise about datums, locators, symbols, and values. Even simple misunderstandings, such as where the geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) lines terminate,…
In this episode we look at data, data, more data, and then... engineering the perfect human?
“Your Data Are Your Most Valuable Assets”
Just what the heck is Quality 4.0? Remember this acronym: CIA. No, not that CIA. Nicole Radziwill explains.
“Applying Smart Manufacturing Technology to Conduct…
This is the second half of our two-part interview with Doug Fair, who is the chief operating officer of InfinityQS. In part 1, we chatted with Fair about data gluttony, the process for uncovering actionable information, and the power of sampling. The conversation continues here as we dive into a…
In an earlier article, I shared some reasons that so many leaders do not delegate more often and presented arguments why they should. I also spelled out seven steps to more effective delegation. Here, I will delve into whom to consider when seeking to delegate tasks and projects.
Though the term “…
(Intel: Santa Clara, CA) -- Irene Petrick is the director of industrial innovation in the Industrial Solutions Division of Intel, and a member of Intel’s Internet of Things Group. Faith McCreary is a principal engineer, experience architect, researcher, and member of Intel’s Internet of Things…
Have you heard this? “Just because this department is a bit dingy—and it’s sometimes harder than heck to get the scoop on things—doesn’t mean it’s a bad place. Good work happens here. In fact, we’ve been doing darn good work in this area long before you showed up with a bucket of hope called…
In my first article, the merits and cautions of AS9138 c=0 sampling plans were discussed and a simple formula was provided to determine the required sample size to detect nonconforming units. In the second article, the process control properties of MIL-STD-105 c>0 sampling plans were…
An international standard that specifies requirements for an occupational health and safety (OH&S) management system, ISO 45001:2018—“Occupational health and safety management systems–requirements” replaces OHSAS 18001 as the primary OH&S standard used internationally. It follows other…
In 2012, CMP Advanced Mechanical Solutions, a leader in the design and manufacture of sheet metal enclosures, mechanical assemblies, and machined systems, burst onto the Industry 4.0 scene with its avant-garde use of the visual work instruction software VKS. This software allowed the company to…
Propelled by 30 years of audit experience, Craig Cochran channels his vast knowledge to author quality publications and teach others the fundamentals of auditing excellence. In his current role as project manager with Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership at Georgia Tech, Cochran spends his…
One of the highlights on our calendar each year is the first Friday in October, which is Manufacturing Day here in the United States. This event offers us the perfect opportunity to celebrate the centrality of manufacturing as a driver of the economy, innovation, automation, education, and lots…
