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On April 9, 2017, a passenger was forcibly removed from a United Airlines flight from Chicago O’Hare to Louisville after the carrier was unable to find volunteers to accommodate four of its employees on standby. Many articles have reported that airlines routinely overbook their flights, and…
Employee absenteeism is a problem for companies everywhere. When employees are away from the office, for good reasons or not, the cost has been measured at somewhere around 4 percent of the world’s gross domestic product. Absences lead to delayed work, colleagues take on more, and projects are…
The mismanagement of bet-the-company business crises has become pandemic. Consider just the most recent examples.
In December 2016, Yahoo disclosed that three years earlier hackers had stolen confidential information from more than 1 billion accounts, including users’ names, birthdates, phone…
Like a lot of scientists, I am very goal-oriented, so after I got my Ph.D. in toxicology, I set out to become a leader in my field by the time I was 40. To get there, I knew I had to be acknowledged by the top researchers in my field, get invited to speak at important conferences, organize…
It is well known that small business is vital to the success of the U.S. economy. Less known, though, is how instrumental it has been to the growth and innovation in drug development.
We may think of the pharmaceutical industry in terms of giant corporations, but the fact is that there are…
It is well known that small business is vital to the success of the U.S. economy. Less known, though, is how instrumental it has been to the growth and innovation in drug development.
We may think of the pharmaceutical industry in terms of giant corporations, but the fact is that there are…
(The Jon Gordon Companies: Ponte Vedra Beach, FL) -- Author and speaker Jon Gordon shares these 11 thoughts about teams. And check out his video clip, “The 3 C’s to Get your Team on the Bus.”
1. Teams rise and fall on culture, mind leadership, healing relationships, attitude and effort. Great…
(Eastern Michigan University: Ypsilanti, MI) -- An undergraduate degree helped get you where you are today. Preparation for a management-level position is the obvious next step. Eastern Michigan University has designed a program that will help you become proficient at managing quality and…
(Aven: Ann Arbor, MI) -- Aven’s innovative E-Arm Focus Mount with integrated LED ring light and independent brightness controller provides ease of use for inspection purposes. An eco-friendly 60 LED ring light provides even, shadow-free illumination, and a variable light control adds flexibility.…
The year: 1989. Florida Power & Light had just won the Deming Prize, Japan’s national quality award, and became the first overseas company to do so. There were a lot of high-flown speeches in the aftermath and deservingly so. But for me, what stuck were the words of CEO Charles Turner.
“The…
A conversation the other day involved how or why someone would use the mean of a set of data described by a Weibull distribution.
The Weibull distribution is great at describing a dataset that has a decreasing or increasing hazard rate over time. Using the distribution we also do not need to…
Sponsored Content
For manufacturers, big parts pose big challenges. How does one measure parts that are in excess of 15 ft and also have complex geometry? Design and inspection are part and parcel of all manufacturing operations, but as product size increases, and part geometry grows more complex…
(ASQ: Milwaukee) -- The ASQ Statistics Division announces that nominations are now open for its William G. Hunter Award for 2017.
William G. Hunter was the founding chair of the Statistics Division of the American Society for Quality Control (now American Society for Quality). His leadership as a…
(Exemplar Global: Sydney, Australia) -- Join experts in the quality auditing profession to hear about trends in the workplace, learn practical tips of the trade, and earn low-cost continuing professional development credits—all from the comfort of your home or office. Exemplar Global has gathered…
On our most recent episode of QDL from this past Fri., April 14, 2017, we took a close look at innovation and engineering. Here’s a quick recap:
“SAE Institute Creates Webisodes to Benefit STEM Education” This piece demonstrates the good work that the San Jose, California, campus of the SAE…
Many talk about reducing variation to improve quality. Does that include human variation, where everyone takes a different approach to improving overall improvement processes? What would happen if this variation were reduced?
Would some of you lean folks be interested in spearheading an effort to…
Let’s say you’re interviewing a new applicant for a job, and you feel something is off. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but you’re a bit uncomfortable with this person. She says all the right things, her resume is great, she’d be a perfect hire for this job—except your gut tells you…
Occasionally, my colleagues and I will take a step back from the day-to-day and have a more philosophical discussion about the field of ergonomics. Recently, the question was raised, “In the plan-do-check-act continuous improvement cycle, which step is the most important?” This sparked some…
(ACSI: Ann Arbor, MI) -- Gas and electric service recovers after three years of declining customer satisfaction, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Household satisfaction with utilities is up 4.2 percent to a score of 74.9 on a 100-point scale. According to residential…
(Beamex: Atlanta, GA) -- Beamex announces the opening of attendee registration for Calibration Best Practices: Interactive Workshop, which will be held Wednesday and Thursday, Aug. 2–3, 2017, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The workshop will explore the latest insights, trends…
In last week’s Quality Digest Live: Enterprise quality management vs. integrated quality management. Our deteriorating U.S. infrastructure. Stress testing composites. The Fowler Precision Mobile Tech Center.
“Save Costs When Implementing Enterprise Quality Systems”
An integrated quality management…
One of the biggest drivers for innovation is scarcity—of resources, time, even knowledge. Necessity and scarcity drive you to look at your approach differently than when you are surrounded by abundance. Forced to use different methods and tools, you improvise, you MacGyver, and the result is often…
This month’s column comes from a convergence of finishing my article, “Statistical Thinking for OD Professionals,” for the OD Practitioner, and reading “How Statistics Lost their Power—and Why We Should Fear What Comes Next” in the Guardian, and Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil (Crown…
In a previous column based on our recent book, Manufacturing Money (Amazon Digital, 2015), we explained how to maximize ROI. Here we describe some changes that business owners and managers can make on their way toward becoming a Black Belt in a manufacturing and distribution business.
Before any…
Supplier quality assurance (SQA) is the process that ensures a supplier reliably provides goods or services that satisfy the customer’s needs. This process is collaborative to make certain the supplier’s offerings meet the agreed-upon requirements with minimum inspection or modification.…
