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The baseball thudded into the dirt at the batter’s feet causing a dusty orange cloud as the dry powdery clay splashed over home plate. “Ball four!” cried the umpire, and the batter took off for first base.
The coach signaled a timeout to the ump and walked toward the pitcher’s mound. When he…
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t’s no longer a secret that most companies struggle with strategy execution. McKinsey research tells us, for example, that 70 percent of change efforts fall short of desired results. The financial losses implied by statistics like these are massive, and corporate leaders have taken notice.…
Taking a cue from Toyota, the newly published book Lean Culture Change Using a Daily Management System (Align Kaizen, 2015) by lean transformation coach and author Steven Leuschel applies decades of organizational transformation knowledge deeply rooted in the Toyota Production System and in Toyota…
A question for devotees of the Baldrige Excellence Framework: Do people who passionately promote continuous improvement within organizations also tend to make New Year’s resolutions to improve their own well-being?
Seriously, I’m wondering if those who fully appreciate the framework’s value in…
We all have problems in life, in business, everywhere. Many of us have “solving problems” as the key component of our daily roles. Management and any form of supervision only exist in order to help solve problems. If problems disappeared, a great many of the structures within our businesses and…
This is an article inspired by the glut of recent football weekends. Lou Holtz, the legendary college and pro football coach, offers the following advice to coaches everywhere: “I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.”
Top managers often lament their employees’…
When people at your company think about “customer loyalty,” are they thinking about your customers’ likelihood to recommend, likelihood to repurchase, or likelihood to purchase additional products? How does your company define customer loyalty?
Recently I experienced a situation that caused me to…
(ANSI: Washington, DC) -- The American National Standards Institute (ANSI), coordinator of the U.S. voluntary standards and conformity assessment system, has released a revised version of the “United States Standards Strategy” (USSS), available online in digital format. The USSS describes the…
In this third and final article reflecting on the FDA’s work to protect and promote public health during 2015, we’ll take a look at our achievements in food, antimicrobial resistance, and tobacco product regulation. In part one I shared the FDA’s 2015 accomplishments in medical product innovation…
Wherever you stand, be the Soul of that place. —Rumi
I was blessed last week to spend two glorious days with my wife, Carole, our daughter, Lisa, and Lisa’s consulting partner, Rox. Those two days were a model for how we could be in every one of our workplaces... and the world would be a better…
(Mark-10: Copiague, NY) -- In an effort to reduce the incidence of accidental gun discharge, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) has been modifying its standard, off-the-shelf firearms to require a greater amount of force to activate the trigger.
Following any shooting incident, the weapon…
When a consumer goes to purchase a new car, the first thing they’ll notice is the vehicle’s make. Yes, the car may say “Toyota” or “Ford” on the outside, but what’s on the inside? In reality, the car’s components—from the tires to the transmission—are typically manufactured by third-party vendors…
In my first look back on the FDA’s 2015 accomplishments, I focused on our achievements in medical product innovation and our constant drive to make available safe, effective, and innovative products. Because the FDA’s responsibility covers the entire life cycle of products, in the second part of…
On Dec. 23, 2015, a vote was taken among 78 nations with accreditation bodies that are part of the International Accreditation Forum (IAF). From the vote it was determined that a new international database for quality management system (QMS) certifications should be created.
The intent of the…
Since March 2015 it’s been my pleasure to serve as the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Acting Commissioner. The FDA has broad responsibilities, and I’d like to share some important accomplishments during 2015.
Tasked with overseeing products that account for about 20 cents of the consumer…
As a city leader, Tommy Gonzalez started using the Baldrige Excellence Framework in 2008 to achieve operational excellence within a municipal government. In his role as manager of Irving, Texas, at that time, Gonzalez introduced the framework to improve the city’s performance in all areas. The…
I’ve made the point many times that the quality function and the lean/continuous improvement/kaizen function within an enterprise are really one and the same. Treating them as separate value streams with their own documentation, procedures, and goals is wasteful, short-sighted, and disrespectful…
A young man came to his wise leader and asked how he could be a better leader. The wise leader said, “Let me pour you a cup of tea.” And so he started pouring a cup of tea; he kept pouring and pouring and pouring until the young man screamed, “Stop! The cup is full.”
The wise leader looked at the…
A collaboration between NIST researchers and a private-sector firm has led to the development of a commercial device to fill a critical need in industry: calibration of laser tracking systems.
Laser trackers are state-of-the-art instruments capable of measuring the dimensions of objects as large…
I don’t claim to be qualified to advise other quality professionals. However, having had an opportunity to work for many years in this field with reasonable results and also having made my share of mistakes, I’ve observed that certain qualities help make a successful quality professional. I didn’t…
A study conducted by the Laboratory Accreditation Bureau of noncompliances during accreditation assessments to ISO/IEC 17025—“General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories” found that the most cited clauses were found in section 5.4—“Methods and method validation…
My article, “Change and Risk-Based Thinking” describes management of change (MOC) as a safety-related phrase from the chemical process industry. MOC says that anything new, different, or nonroutine (such as repairs, equipment replacement, and process startups) creates a safety risk, but the same…
You import promotional goods from China. You're sitting at your desk, staring down at the balance sheet, burning the midnight oil again. You have an order of 20,000 pens currently in production and scheduled to leave the factory in less than a week. You have a choice to make.
Do you save some…
(Fowler: Newton, MA) -- Fowler High Precision has announced the launch of its mobile tech centers (MTCs) and 3D mobile tech vans, which will travel across the United States, equipped with the newest, most popular, and technologically advanced products in measurement and inspection. These mobile…
Medical care and biomedical research are in the midst of a data revolution. Put together, networked systems, electronic health records, electronic insurance claims databases, social media, patient registries, and personal devices comprise an immense new set of sources for data about health and…
